How much is a high BMCC costing?
At this time of year as the cell counts rise the penalties for high BMCC's become more frequent and bonuses paid for high quality milk increase. Each factory calculates these payments in their own way. In some circumstances the penalties can be so severe that it is not viable to continue to supply milk. The payment schemes for each factory are set out in the table below, based on the losses incurred at each level.It is obvious that in most cases, there are strong financial incentives to stay out of high cell count milk supply, especially for supply to factories which exclude seasonal incentives from the higher categories.
The highest payment category for all factories offers an incentive of less than one cent per litre. Although this represents approximately 3% of the milk cheque and can add up over a large number of cows, it may not necessarily be cost effective to cull high cell count cows to stay in this high bracket.
A cow consistently delivering a cell count of 2 million, producing herd average in a 200 cow herd, will only drop the BMCC by 10,000. If the drop required is 100,000 to make the highest payment bracket it will require at least 10 such cows to be culled (5% of the herd). Often farmers attempt to stay in this bracket by culling, yet poor mastitis control or deteriorating production will soon see the count rise again. Unless there are fewer than 2-3% of the herd contributing to the high count (in this case that is 5 or 6 cows), it is advisable to keep these till the end of the season since their production at the higher payment levels may well exceed the lower payment differential.
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