Resumen de Desarrollo de un simulador de explotaciones lecheras para valorar el efecto de diferentes estrategias productivas sobre el rendimiento técnico y económico

Sergio Calsamiglia, L. Castillejos, Susana Astiz Blanco, Q. Baucells

• A stochastic model was developed to simulate a dairy farm to evaluate the consequences of technical or economic changes in farm performance. Data individual cows and indexes of production, reproduction, diseases incidence, costs, finances, management and environment are introduced. Farm performance is modeled over a 10 year period and technical and economic performance is provided in the output. An 810 dairy cow farm (10.800 L/cow) was used as a model. Three scenarios were tested: 1) CON = No change in the current conditions; 2) CULL = Increase culling rate 5 percentage units (31 vs 36%); and 3) SEMEN = Change from the use of low cost semen vs high cost semen (10 vs 20 Euros) assuming that the use of the more expensive semen results in an increased genetic potential of 2% in the daughters. Simulation were conducted under stable conditions. After 5 and 10 years simulation, CULL increased benefits by 78 and 8% versus CON. After 10 years. SEMEN resulted in 8 and 12% lower benefit compared with CON and CULL, respectively. Although genetic improvement cannot be ignored in dairy farms, the benefits are long term. In contrast, CULL resulted in short and medium term benefits