The objective of this research was to compare some economic indicators of dairy farms with high daily production volume, in semi-confinement and total confinement regimes, located in the state of Minas Gerais, through the cost center methodology. The data used was collected between the months of March, 2008 and February, 2009, in six milk production systems, three being in semi-confinement and three in total confinement. All of the expenses regarding the lactating matrices, as well as expenses with dry cows were considered as the milk production cost center. The total and operational cost methodology was used for the production cost in the profitability analysis. The semi-confinement production systems had economical viability and producion conditions over the short, medium and long term, with consequent capitalization of the dairy farmers; while the total confinement production systems presented positive gross and liquid margin and negative result, demonstrating to have survival conditions over the medium term, and over the long, the farmers are being decapitalized. The items that exercised higher "impact" on the effective operational cost were, in decreasing order, feeding, labor, miscellaneous expenses, sanitation, energy, milking, reproduction, equipment rental, BST and taxes.
cost center; dairy cattle; production costs; profitability analysis