PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
Dairy production in the UK has undergone substantial restructuring over the last few decades. Farming intensification has led to a reduction in the total numbers of farms and animals, while the average herd size per holding has increased. These ever-changing circumstances have important implications for the health and welfare of dairy cows, as well as the overall business performance of farms. For decision-making in dairy farming, it is essential to understand the underlying causes of the inefficiencies and their relative impact. The investigation of yield gaps regarding dairy cattle has been focused on specific causes. However, in addition to the risk of overestimating the impact of a specific ailment, this approach does not allow understanding of the relative contribution to the total, nor does it allow understanding of how well-described that gap is in terms of underlying causes. Using the English and Welsh dairy sectors as an example, this work estimates the Loss Gap-composed of yield losses and health expenditure - using a benchmarking approach and scenario analysis. The Loss Gap was estimated by comparing the current performance of dairy herds as a baseline with that of scenarios where assumptions were made about the milk production of cows, production costs, market prices, mortality, and expenditure related to health events. A deterministic model was developed, consisting of an enterprise budget, in which the cow was the unit, with milking herd and young stock treated separately. When constraining milk production, the model estimated an annual Loss Gap of £148 to £227 million for the whole sector. The reduction in costs of veterinary services and medicines, alongside herd replacement costs, were important contributors to the estimate with some variation between the scenarios. Milk price had a substantial impact in the estimate, with revenue from milk yield representing more than 30% of the Loss Gap, when milk price was benchmarked against that of the top performing farms. This framework provides the boundaries for understanding the relative burden from specific causes in English and Welsh dairy cattle, ensuring that the sum of the estimated losses due to particular problem does not exceed the losses from all-causes, health or non-health related.
摘要：
在过去的几十年中，英国的乳制品生产经历了重大的重组。农业集约化导致农场和牲畜总数减少,而每个持股的平均牛群规模有所增加。这些千变万化的环境对奶牛的健康和福利有着重要的影响,以及农场的整体经营业绩。对于奶牛养殖的决策，了解低效率的根本原因及其相对影响至关重要。对奶牛产量差距的调查一直集中在具体原因上。然而,除了高估特定疾病影响的风险，这种方法不允许理解对总体的相对贡献，它也不允许理解这种差距在根本原因方面有多好的描述。以英国和威尔士的乳制品行业为例，这项工作使用基准方法和情景分析来估计由产量损失和卫生支出组成的损失差距。损失差距是通过将奶牛群的当前表现作为基线与假设奶牛产奶量的情景进行比较来估计的。生产成本，市场价格,死亡率,以及与卫生事件有关的支出。建立了确定性模型，由企业预算组成，奶牛是其中的单位，挤奶牛群和年轻的股票分开处理。当限制牛奶生产时，该模型估计，整个行业的年度亏损缺口为148英镑至2.27亿英镑。兽医服务和药品费用的降低,除了羊群更换费用之外，是估计的重要贡献者，两种方案之间存在一些差异。牛奶价格对估计产生了重大影响，牛奶产量的收入占亏损缺口的30%以上，当牛奶价格以表现最好的农场为基准时。这个框架为理解英国和威尔士奶牛的特定原因造成的相对负担提供了界限，确保因特定问题造成的估计损失的总和不超过所有原因造成的损失，健康或非健康相关。
