Selecting bulls based upon percentages instead of yield, however, can lead to financial disaster. The purpose of this publication is to demonstrate why bulls should be selected on component yield rather than component test. Milk price is absolutely meaningless until it is multiplied by the number of hundredweights sold. The only purpose is to tell us how many pounds of fat and protein are in the milk. We determine fat and protein pounds by multiplying the percentages times the volume of milk.
Many dairy farmers have the misconception that they are paid for fat and protein percent.
They are paid for fat and protein pounds. Therefore a pound of carrier is worth 2.74 cents. The column headings indicate the trait on which bulls were selected. The highlighted values on the diagonal are the averages for the top 50 bulls for each trait listed at the top of the column. The remaining values in the column are the average values for each of the other traits.