First, I am a Braves fan. I’ve written of my devotion to Atlanta’s major league baseball team before. (Click here to read my 2009 editorial "Recharged by the Tomahawk Chop.")

The transition period of a dairy cow is one of the most crucial and vulnerable stages of a lactation cycle. During the last three weeks before calving through to the first three weeks of lactation, your cows’ metabolic needs dramatically increase. How the animal copes with this high-energy transition can have a drastic impact on how well she will perform throughout the remainder of her lactation. Research has shown that at the time of calving, a cow’s requirement for calcium increases fourfold, glucose demand triples and protein requirements double.

TRENDING TOPIC ARTICLE: HERD HEALTH This article was featured as one of our most popular herd health articles. to jump to the article below. University of Wisconsin’s Garret Oetzel and Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc.’s Brian Miller drilled down on the causes and effects of hypocalcemia. Many readers were likely surprised to learn that when combing clinical and subclinical cases, incidents of hypocalcemia in a 2,000-cow herd can cost a producer more than $60,000 a year. Oetzel is still providing information about the disease. Click here to read a recap of his presentation at the Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference in June, where he said nutritional management is the key to prevention.

One of the foundational elements of successful and profitable commercial dairy farming is the continuous entry of fresh cows into a milking herd. The fresh cow that’s in proper health will be the most cost-efficient cow on the dairy – having the highest feed-conversion-to-milk- production efficiency. Herd profiles that show low days in milk (DIM) indicate there are more cows freshening in a herd than there are cows headed for the dry corral. Even in the most desperate of economies, fresh cows are critical to keeping the business solvent.

“Corn grain is a seed first, then a feed,” to paraphrase Pat Hoffman, professor at University of Wisconsin (UW). The starch in corn seed contains energy the seed uses to sprout and grow. The energy (starch) is protected for overwintering by a coating of zein (prolamin) protein. The zein is resistant to digestion by rumen bacteria, which must break through and degrade the protein coating to access the starch.

How important is it to know your forage quality? Forage quality directly affects milk production and, therefore, your bottom line. The higher the quality of your forage, the more forage you can feed, supporting higher milk production and eliminating the need to purchase supplemental fiber.

Legendary commentator Paul Harvey always ended his daily lunchtime radio broadcasts with the affirmation, “Now you know the rest of the story.” I’m not so sure we’ll ever know the “rest of the story” when it comes to all the factors affecting total tract starch digestibility. In a previous issue of Progressive Dairyman this past spring, I explored the influence of corn silage processing on the resulting fecal starch.

Internal parasites can affect every segment of dairy production when animals have been grazing even for short periods of time. Parasite infections have a costly effect on cattle health and performance including reproductive losses, hampered immune responses, reduced appetite and lower weight gain.

With fall approaching, graziers are entering the season of opportunity. While year-round pasture management is essential, fall sets the stage for the quantity and quality of pastures in the spring. This year fall pasture management will prove especially important, given the lack of rainfall many graziers in the southern U.S., and in Texas in particular, are experiencing.

Cow health is perhaps the most critical aspect of every dairy operation. Optimizing cow health not only optimizes production performance of the dairy, it helps ensure quality milk is produced by cows with reduced health issues and increased reproductive performance.