Ever stop to total your assets and review how well they're stacking up performance wise? We need to size up asset performance from time to time. Then we can determine what other options are available to us and what fine-tuning is necessary to insure we get the most return from them. This is true whether we're dealing with race cars or cows.

The production race
Race-car owners view their vehicles as valuable assets, (the same way you feel about your cows). They want their investments to perform. They go all out to ensure their cars can win the race. They buy the best available fuel in ample amounts--no one wants to run out of gas with two laps to go.

They find the best mechanic and hire a great driver with a passion for winning. Car owners know if they don't use the car to its fullest capability, they're wasting investment potential. That's true for dairy cows, too.

Manage Investments
Money is invested for various reasons. Maybe it's to secure a comfortable retirement nest egg, grow the kids' college funds, remodel the house or buy that 80 acres next door. Regardless of the reason, you want your investment dollars growing.

Is your dairy fully capturing the available opportunities from your investment partners (cows), or are you letting something slide? For example, do you let daily feed intakes slip?

As a good producer, you know that a good feeding program is worth much more that the latest "silver bullet" additive that comes along. You know the importance of basics.

Boosting milk produced per cow in the most cost-efficient manner requires boosting feed intake. The extra pounds of milk produced are the cheapest to produce, and they yield the greatest profit per pound. This is known as "marginal milk" (the extra profit margin potential is in the extra milk produced). Thus, your focus should be on increasing dry matter intake of quality nutrients to take full advantage of the additional milk. Conversely, lowered intakes bring cows closer to meeting maintenance needs, not increasing production.

The payoff
As this goes to press, prices for milk with 3.5 percent butterfat are at levels more than $16/cwt. At these prices, a pound of milk is worth far more than the feed to get there. Once you've met lactating cow maintenance requirements, each pound of high-quality feed produces about 2 pounds of milk. At today's milk prices, if feed costs $160/ton, a pound of extra feed that costs eight cents produces 2 pounds of milk worth 32 cents or more. That's a 4:1 return on your money--a whole lot better than the stock market.

Nobody likes average
Moreover, who wants to have an average dairy? Dairy producers in MFA's trade territory are capable of achieving greater milk production in a cost-effective manner. MFA encourages its employees to challenge themselves by stretching their minds and abilities through various training programs. Position your herd for success by challenging your cows to reach their genetic capability.

The keys
Three key ways of increasing profit dollars to your operation include:

1. Increase the amount of marginal milk per cow. That is the amount of extra milk produced from extra nutritional intakes. MFA NutriServe consultants can help you develop a plan that's right for your herd.
2. Work to reduce overhead costs. Those include machinery costs, debt load and interest loads.
3. Make use of management programs. That means paying attention to things like heifer-raising and dry-cow programs that increase the overall volume of milk produced. Those work by ensuring that adequate numbers of healthy females come into lactation.

Whether it's motor sports, team sports or dairy cows, producers should demand 110 percent from their key "players." Is your herd giving you their best? You can't afford anything less.

There is an excellent opportunity to generate profits in today's dairy economy. Take advantage of it.

Challenge your cows to produce more. Challenge your operation to grow in a key area (total pounds milk produced, gross revenues, bottom line profit). Challenge yourself to be open to change.

Then get ready for that victory lap.