The following preliminary benchmark reports for 2007 have been added to the CDP website:

Farm Earnings (comparison Per Farm, Head and Unit Sold)
2007 Balance Sheet (per Head)
Dairy Cost of Production
        - Per Farm, Head and Unit Sold
        - Per Unit Sold (cwt sold, cwt eq)
        - 2005-2007

 http://cdp.wisc.edu

In my last posting, I had intended the news release to be attached. I don't think that happened, so here it is.

The attached news release has gone out from the Extension News Office. I have asked for it to be published in the Crop Manager Newsletter. The attached speadsheet was used to develop the news release. I have requested the spreadsheet be placed onto the Team Forage-Harvest & Storage web page.

Pricing corn silage can be a tough task for both buyers and sellers. To help producers find a starting point for negotiations of fair market value, UW-Extension agents and specialists have devolved an easy to use spreadsheet that values standing corn silage for both buyer and seller. The spreadsheet allows users to input a variety of variables, such as yield, harvest costs, storage loss, a quality adjustment, and more. A copy of the spreadsheet, which includes an introduction and guidlines, is attached.

I was just emailed a question regarding use of sex-sorted semen, so I thought I would blog my answer since many of you are probably fielding this question out there as well.  

Most of the AI studs claim that sex-sorted semen yields fertility in heifers of about 80% to 85% of non-sorted semen. In general, herds with good heifer fertility can achieve good results with sex-sorted semen, whereas herds with poor heifer fertility can experience disastrous results. This variability occurs because there is less room for technical error when using sex-sorted semen. Also, keep in mind that Accelerated Genetics is marketing their own proprietary sex-sorted semen they call Bovatel which only slightly skews sex ratio compared to all of the other studs, which are using the Beltsville method of sorting. The studs only recommend using sex-sorted semen in nonlactating heifers; however, I have run across a few herds that are breeding first lactation cows using sex-sorted semen. This is not something I would recommend, but it is hard to argue against if fertiltiy results are reasonable. 

My impression is that there is alot of sex-sorted semen being used in Wisconsin. As for how widely sex-sorted semen is being used, Ryan Sterry, Denise Brusveen, Kent Weigel, and I are going to crunch the results from our sex-sorted semen survey at the Dairy Team meeting the end of this month. Many of you participated in administering this survey. Basically, we asked dairy producers who attended UWEX programs this past winter about whether or not they used sex-sorted semen and their perceptions of sex-sorted semen. The results should be interesting, and we will be getting that information out to the Dairy Team as soon as we can get it analyzed.

Finally, Weigel and I addressed this issue at the 2005 Wisconsin Road Show meetings. I have uploaded a pdf of that slide set entitled "Can We Change the Sex Ratio of Calves?" to my web site at: http://www.uwex.edu/ces/dairyrepro/topics.cfm. This slide set overviews data comparing fertility of sorted vs. non-sorted semen, and Kent included a brief economic analysis. Roy Wilson's MS data is also included in these slides, and there is some other interesting stuff in there as well.