A Profitability Analysis of Dairy Feeding Systems in the Northeast

This study analyzes the use and profitability of three distinct feeding systems; confinement feeding, traditional grazing, and management-intensive grazing from a randomly selected sample of northeastern dairy farms. The confinement feeding farms were significantly larger and produced more milk per cow, while the farms using management-intensive grazing incurred the lowest production costs. Both confinement feeding and management-intensive grazing generated significantly higher rates of return to farm assets relative to farms using a mixed system. Multiple regression analysis confirms the critical importance of herd size, milk production per cow, debt level and veterinary expenses to farm profitability in all production systems.