Imagine watching your cows’ herd health decline while the somatic cell count continued to rise. Now picture bringing in a wide array of dairy industry professionals, only to have them all pointing toward a different solution that never seemed to solve the problem completely. This was a reality for more than 11 years for Joan Hohag and her husband, Dean, on their 175-cow operation in Waverly, Minnesota. The problems started escalating in 1999, when they put in a new facility. Minnesota requires an equipotential plane, which is installed in a concrete floor, connected to the electrical grounding system and supposed to reduce stray voltage.

Last year, we wrote about a producer from North Dakota who was constantly changing his inflations (see “Time to change the inflations … again,” Progressive Dairyman, September 22, 2010, pg. 85). You may recall … we associated the old Dunkin’ Donuts commercial “Time to make the doughnuts” with this producer’s tedious task of changing inflations. Here’s an update on that “inflation devastation”: The results are a slam-dunk where time, money and milk quality are concerned.

The following is the first part of a two-part series of articles regarding freestall design and its impact on the cow’s comfort and health. The dairy expansion era in North America, which gathered pace throughout the 1990’s and continues to this day, has resulted in the migration of dairy cattle from traditional tiestall and stanchion barns to the freestall facility, which has emerged as the dominant form of dairy cattle housing worldwide. The basic premise of milking more efficiently through a parlor, while being able to keep larger groups of cows together in management groups in larger herds, is sound from a management and economic perspective.

This column was written by Doug Johnson (pictured at right), who can be reached at: djohnson@modernmachinery.com A snowstorm on a southern Idaho dairy farm – with thousands of cows needing feed and a way to it – is no place for a wheel loader to stop working. Today’s dairyman also can’t afford a machine that operates poorly. So imagine the benefits of a system that can tell you precisely, and in real-time, what’s going on, or going wrong, with your key equipment.

TRENDING TOPIC ARTICLE: COW COMFORT This article was originally published February 28, 2011 and featured in March 1, 2011 Extra e-newsletter: http://bit.ly/030111_PDExtra. to jump to the article below. Progressive Dairyman asked three industry experts, “What do you think is the most often missed symptom of stray voltage? Their responses were: “An increase in the number of animals in the hospital barn,” Jacques Dion of Agrivolt “How cows drink water; if the cows tend to lap, or dip, to get water, there is a strong possibility of a stray voltage problem,” Jerry Lush of Stray Voltage Consulting “Subtle changes in animal behavior; we are often too willing to ignore small indications until it causes severe behavioral change – this is obviously too late,” Chuck Untiedt, dairy farmer, Udder Chaos Inc.