| Outcome | Quantity | Value per unit | Value |
|---|
| Total benefit | $0 |
Deaths, premature culling and empty cows are all valued at heifer-rearing cost, not open-market cow value — most farmers are already rearing replacements for their expected empty rate rather than buying in, so the real cost of an unplanned loss is the extra rearing spend it forces, not what a mature cow would fetch for sale. The $1,800 defaults are placeholders; use your own NZ rearing-cost figure if you have one. Premature culling and empty cows are two separate, sequential cuts — premature culling is cows that failed to recover from transition disease before mating even started, empty cows are a distinct later cut after mating for cows that didn't hold — so both carry their own rearing cost without double-counting each other. The empty-cow line also carries its own production-loss component, from the shortened season of an early dry-off — a different effect again from the per-cow yield lift in the Production line below. Retained placenta and metritis costs are direct treatment costs only, for the same double-counting reason culling and production are costed separately — a fully-loaded published cost-per-case figure would already have culling risk and lost production baked in. Subclinical hypocalcaemia is shown as an outcome above but not costed here for the same reason — its financial impact is mostly captured through retained placenta, metritis, culling and production, all of which are driven off it. First service conception and 6-week in-calf rate aren't costed here either, even though Pihama showed a real effect on them — that gain lands in next season's calving pattern and days in milk, not this season's numbers, so it's left out of this season's total below.
