The dairy industry is known for using a lot of metrics. There are reproductive metrics, financial metrics, production metrics, and nutrition metrics. In the best cases, metrics help us make decisions and justify the decisions we make. They give us an indication of the benefit or the lack of benefit of doing some particular action. These metrics are rarely stagnant. As the industry evolves, the metrics we rely on change to meet modern efficiency standards.

There are several metrics that we use to evaluate feed cost and how it impacts performance. The most common are feed cost per hundredweight (F$/CWT), feed cost per cow (F$/Cow), and income over feed cost (IOFC). IOFC is a decision-making tool for feeding decisions and evaluating changes in the feeding program. The basic definition of IOFC is the dollars left for other expenses like labor and maintenance after lactating cow feed cost. It can be done on a herd basis, pen basis, or even for an individual cow.

Download Standard Dairy Consultants’ spreadsheet that facilitates tracking IOFC and an Indexed IOFC on a monthly basis. For more on IOFC and why it is important, read Evaluating financial metrics: Income over feed cost—IOFC, by Standard Dairy Consultants’ Dan Hein, on Progressive Dairy.