MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON VIRGINIA DAIRY FARMS

SATISFACTION WITH DAIRY FARMING

Respondents were asked to rank their production success and quality-of-life issues based on a scale of 1
to 5 (1 = very dissatisfied and 5 = very satisfied). Overall, respondents are neither satisfied or
dissatisfied (3.09) with their dairy operation in 1996 (Table 10). On average, purchased feed costs
received the lowest rank (2.13) of all responses in all groupings. 1996 was a year with increasing feed
costs contributing to the higher level of dissatisfaction. Respondents were most satisfied with yields of
corn silage (3.95) and hay (3.70).

Satisfaction by group

Surprisingly, few significant differences were observed between respondents’ level of satisfaction based
on grazing intensity. Some agricultural press reports say that farmers adopting management-intensive
grazing have more free time, are less stressed by the daily routine of dairy production, are more satisfied
with financial progress or profit, and have fewer herd-health problems. Analysis of the satisfaction index
based on reliance on grazing does not re-enforce this conclusion.² Only satisfaction with corn silage
yields and corn silage costs resulted in means that were significantly different. Intensive Grazer farmers
were significantly less satisfied with corn silage yields than were Moderate Grazer and Confinement
² In all the satisfaction indexes, confidence intervals (spread of the data) for Intensive Grazer farms were larger
than for the other two groups. This spread difference implies that within the Intensive Grazer group, farmers tended
to be either very satisfied or very dissatisfied.

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