“This compass is a ‘what if?’ decision support tool for service providers assisting heifer-focused pasture conversions, dairy farmers, or any farmers interested in starting a dairy heifer enterprise,” says Conner Mulholland of UW-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences who is one of the tool’s creators along with John Hendrickson of UW-Madison CIAS, beef farmer Jim Munsch, and Bradford Barham with the Department of Agriculture and Applied Economics.
The tool helps farmers lay out a pasture plan, considering both a financial and ecological strategy. One feature of the compass allows users to compare heifer-raising systems while keeping animal growth and development outcomes constant. The compass is site- and operation-specific. It is tailored toward Wisconsin farmers, but still has great utility throughout the United States.
"The cost of herd replacements in a dairy operation is significant,” says Munsch. “As operators seek ways to lower this cost, one effective option is using managed grazing as a feed source during the grazing season. The Heifer Grazing Compass is used to quantify these savings in dollars and labor hours for a producer’s own land and animals. Using the tool you can easily see that the cost of managed grazing is nearly 3-fold less expensive than confinement. It might challenge how some folks think of dairy heifer economics.”
The Heifer Grazing Compass developers are further collaborating on a Beef Grazing Compass and a Pasture Management Compass to be released this summer. The Pasture Management Compass will be useful for any beef or dairy enterprises, as well as sheep and goat operations. Download the tool here: https://grasslandag.org/the-heifer-grazing-compass.
