These Excel-based decision support tools (DST) are designed to help dairy producers make informed management, processing, and investment decisions for their operations. Each tool is built on extensive research and industry data and allows the user to enter information specific to their farm and explore different scenarios, costs, and outcomes. The goal is to provide practical, easy-to-use resources that inform and support decision making for both day-to-day operations and long-term planning.
Tool 1: Bottled Milk DST
This Excel workbook is designed to provide producers with helpful financial and processing information in order to support decisions about starting or expanding a bottled milk value-added dairy operation. This tool is intended to be used for investment planning considerations and should not be used for a day-to-day processing guideline.
Please review the user guide before using this tool.
More tools coming soon!
Note Regarding Security Settings: These decision-aid files contains macros (examples: buttons for printing and moving from the intro page to the calculator) which are required for the calculator to function properly. Security settings for Microsoft Office or Excel may give you warnings when you open the file regarding the safety of enabling the macros. This will especially be true if your security settings are set to high or very high. The macros in the file must be enabled for the calculator to function properly.
Contacts
Caitlin Zaring Weir, Post Doctoral Research Associate, Department of Animal Science, University of Tennessee
Liz Eckelkamp, Associate Professor and State Dairy Extension Specialist, Department of Animal Science, University of Tennessee