For many decades, nutritional science has been focused on identifying nutrients, such as proteins, vitamins and minerals, and understanding their role in biological processes. Understanding how these nutrients reinforce the health of the cow, and thereby prevent diseases resulting from their deficiencies, has been a major objective in the dairy industry. Recently, a new science, referred to as nutrigenomics, has emerged as a result of significant developments in genetic research. Nutrigenomics is the study of molecular relationships between genes, their response to specific nutrients and how those responses can impact animal health and performance. Through the use of microarray technology, we can now study the impact of nutrients on specific genes and their genetic expression.

Harvesting, storing and feeding high-quality forages can help your dairy survive a challenging dairy economy by increasing your margin of milk income over feed cost. If nature is forgiving and highly digestible crops are chopped, the next daunting task at hand is fermenting, storing and feeding with a minimal loss of nutrients. Feeding high-quality forage makes more milk, but what does forage temperature have to do with several pounds more milk? We’ll take a look at two forage temperature measures – surface and core – to find the answer.

An analysis was made from 993 individual calves used in 20 trials published in two U.S. peer-reviewed journals. Results of this analysis were presented at the Joint Annual Meetings of ADSA and ASAS, held recently in Denver, Colorado. Each trial used Holstein calves that were initially 2 to 3 days old and on trial for eight weeks. All calves in these trials were housed and cared for individually in an unheated nursery in Ohio.

Feeding calves to their potential is critical during the first 60 days. Research has shown that the nutrition a calf receives during its first 60 days of life has a lasting impact by affecting both her age at first calving as well as her first-lactation performance. An automatic calf feeder can be a great way to feed calves the nutrition they need to grow and perform to their full potential while providing the proper management and observation needed to raise a healthy herd. Because of increasing interest and use of automatic calf feeders on farms across the country, we purchased our own automatic calf feeding unit two- and-a-half years ago for the purpose of testing the usability and effectiveness of automatic calf feeders.

Obtaining and maintaining high corn quality silage requires good management in the areas of forage management harvest, storage and feedout. For this article’s discussion, it is assumed that proper genetics have been selected to provide maximum levels of milk per acre of corn silage. Harvest The most important things to remember when harvesting corn silage are whole-plant moisture level, theoretical length of chop and kernel processing. The desired level of whole-plant moisture will depend on whether the silage is stored in upright or horizontal silos. For bunkers and drive-over piles, I like to see whole-plant moisture at 66 to 68 percent and for vertical storage structures, 63 to 66 percent.

Anyone remember the old Dunkin’ Donut commercials, “Time to make doughnuts”? The commercial dramatized the constant attention and long hours required to bake fresh doughnuts every morning. We received a call from a dairy producer in North Dakota that felt the same way about changing his inflations as the doughnut guy did about making doughnuts. “Time to change the inflations.” It was to the point that the producer was spending way too much time and money maintaining his milking equipment.

TRENDING TOPIC ARTICLE: HERD HEALTH Published: September 22, 2010 print issue In this article, University of Kentucky’s Jeffrey Bewley outlines several ways producers can achieve and maintain low somatic cell count milk, including adjusting milking protocols and culturing high-SCC cows. or scroll down to jump to the article. Because this article was so popular, we asked Bewley, “Of the best management practices you outlined, which practice do you think producers and employees most struggle with?” Bewley says, “Of those management practices listed, I think using bacteriological cultures is the most underutilized. So much information can be obtained from culturing milk samples. On-farm culturing systems make this practice even more useful.

Management and environmental factors account for about 96 percent of fertility variation in a dairy operation. Our challenge is what are those factors affecting fertility, and how do we help improve them? The answer to this question is too broad to summarize in this article, as it includes facilities, nutrition, overcrowding, semen handling, A.I. technique, etc. In this article, I will summarize challenging issues that are frequently found on U.S. dairy operations while conducting on-farm visits.