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Implications "Corn Picker for Corn Silage" is an Excel spreadsheet program that more accurately determines a superior corn silage hybrid based on all relevant costs and returns that affect corn silage and dairy nutrition. It can be localized to specific farm situations or one can use a standard set of costs such as "Estimated Costs of Crop Production in Iowa-2010" FM-1712 and "Livestock Enterprise Budget for Iowa-2010" FM-1815. Both are available from ISU County Extension Offices. Ranking of hybrids for total farm net profit gives considerably different results than using "Milk2006" per acre. Participating Seed Companies: American Organics www.american-organic.com Croplan Genetics www.croplangenetics.com Monsanto Seed Group, DeKalb Genetics www.asgrowanddekalb.com Mycogen Seeds www.mycogen.com NuTech Seed, LLC www.nutechseed.com Pioneer Hi-Bred International www.pioneer.com .

Producer surveys showed very positive results in switching from flat barn parlors or stall barns to LCP's. An average of 54% more cows are able to be milked with an average of 2.44 less daily hours of labor. Producers on average doubled their labor efficiency in number of cows milked per hour with some reaching the goal of 70 cows milked per labor hour including setup and clean-up. Production increased 15% while SCC dropped 22.3%. Feeding and housing efficiencies were gained as well. Investment in a LCP allowed producers to drop cost of milking cows to $1.27 per hundredweight (some less than $1 per hundredweight) with labor included. In sum, LCP gave a very positive quality of life, financial return, and milking labor advantage over stall barns or flat barn parlors.

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