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The day I left Montana for New Zealand, it was cloudy and cold. We had just gone through a week of sub-zero temperatures, freezing fog and snow, and more of the same was headed our way.
Farmers across the valley where I live were talking about the snow, the cold and how this winter was quite unusual.
Everyone is scrambling to provide healthy, balanced rations for dairy cattle while dealing with changing feed prices and fluctuating ingredient supply.
One component of dairy rations that constitutes a large expense, yet is critically important for maintaining production in high-producing dairy cows, is protein and amino acid nutrition.
Milk components are the principle source of revenue on dairy farms and vary with milk volume and fat and protein content.
While it is often said that on a given farm production will be a function of genetic potential and the meeting of nutrition requirements, in the case of milk fat content, this may not be true.
Since a dairy cow’s diet consists of from 40 to 60 percent forage, the quality of that forage has an enormous impact on the performance and profitability of the dairy. What exactly determines the quality of forage?
Forage quality is determined by the nutrient content and the digestibility of those nutrients. Protein, NDF, fat, sugar and starch are the nutrients to be most concerned with.
Due to my interest and background in purebred dairy cattle, I have followed the price of dairy replacements for many years. While working with a Florida-based dairy cooperative, my interest in watching dairy replacement prices grew for another reason.
Many of the cooperative members purchased all or a large percentage of their replacements. Some members purchased hundreds of replacements each year. Watching the replacement buying patterns of cooperative members provided me another barometer of what was happening on their dairy farms in terms of profitability.
The extra point in football has been called pointless. The National Football League has discussed getting rid of it because the kick is easy, almost always made and just takes up valuable game time to move the kicking unit on and off the field.
What if the NFL decided to add a wrinkle to the extra point kick? Let’s say the opposing team could line up, and when the whistle blew to start the play, they could move the goalpost one way or another to fool the kicking unit.
I’ve often said “I am not good with numbers, but I can spot a trend.” I have spent hours poring over data from milking machines.
Unit-on time, peak milk flow, average milk flow, milk in the first two minutes, first 30 seconds and first 15 seconds are all data points that can be analyzed and at times need to be. But the truth is: At times the data can be truly overwhelming. What does it all mean?
