Two things worth tracking on a dairy and crop farm
A working farmer said the two numbers she wished she had were milk production amongst certain cows and field by field yield for different crops. This is what we found when we went looking: what the options are, what they cost, and how to start this fall. Pick a topic.
Milk per cow
Why monthly DHIA testing is enough for most herds, how to read peak, persistency, 305-day, and somatic cell count, and which tools fit a 40 to 300 cow herd. With calculators for linear score, days in milk, persistency, energy-corrected milk, and income over feed cost.
Open the milk guide →Yield per field
One load, one field, weighed, with a moisture reading. How to correct grain to standard moisture, put forage on a dry-matter basis, calibrate a yield monitor, and which tools are free. With calculators for grain yield, dry-matter tons, days of feed, and monitor reconciliation.
Open the field guide →The short version. Both records are easier to keep than they sound, and the best first step for each is cheap. For cows, join monthly DHIA testing. For fields, weigh every load and write the field on the ticket. On a dairy, the link between the two is forage yield in dry-matter tons per acre, because feed is half or more of the cost of making milk.
Who this is for
Family farms that milk cows and grow their own feed or cash crops: roughly 40 to 400 cows and a few hundred to a couple thousand acres. Farms with a full-time herd manager and a robot barn already have systems for this. Farms with a notebook in the parlor and a spreadsheet on the kitchen computer are who we wrote it for.
How it was put together
Two AI research systems (GPT-5.6 and Claude) were each asked to research both topics from several angles, then every number that mattered was checked against university extension bulletins (Penn State, Ohio State, Purdue, Iowa State, Cornell), USDA Risk Management Agency documents, DHIA providers, and vendor pricing pages. Prices are planning ranges as of September 2026. Get local quotes before spending money. Nothing here is veterinary, agronomic, financial, or insurance advice.
Download the 15-page printable guide (PDF)
Tell us what you think
If you farm, we want to hear whether this matches what you actually do. What do you track today? What did we get wrong? What would you want that isn't here?