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The producer/veterinarian relationship is an important piece of the herd health puzzle. One way your veterinarian can contribute to your operation’s success is by putting together the pieces of an effective vaccination program to help prevent respiratory and reproductive diseases.
With nearly 125 different respiratory and reproductive disease vaccines available, the ever-growing vaccine marketplace can make purchase decisions difficult. But your veterinarian can cut the confusion with a tailored vaccination program that takes into account your individual herd health history, production goals, management capabilities and performance measurements.
Bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) affects cattle of all ages, in every herd size, worldwide and in every U.S. state. This aggressive enemy has infiltrated herds for 60 years. Testing can aid in defeating BVD, but eradicating the costly disease calls for dairymen to do their part in the fight as well.
“It is possible to eradicate BVD from all dairy herds,” says Dr. Scott Smith, of The Dairy Authority (TDA) in Greeley, Colorado. “All it takes is compliance and cooperation.”
Smith, who has practiced dairy medicine exclusively since 1999, is passionate about BVD control programs in cattle and oversees the IDEXX HerdChek BVDV Antigen ELISA Ear-Notch and Serum testing at TDA Lab.
Due to the global spread of digital dermatitis (hairy heel wart or strawberry heel) over the last 25 years, the prevention of lameness in dairy herds now ranks alongside fertility and mastitis as one of the top three farm management issues that have the most negative economic impact on a dairy.
In the same time period, it has been widely accepted that once digital dermatitis is present on a given farm, it cannot be eradicated and so a regular footbathing regime must be implemented on-farm in order to control the background levels of causative organisms and to stop the spread of infection.
Who is responsible for the safety and quality of dairy products? Dairy producers? Processors? Retailers? Consumers? In fact, all of these parties – from farm to fork – share in this responsibility.
What starts as a high-quality product on the farm can be ruined somewhere along this chain. However, a poor-quality, inferior raw product leaving the farm cannot be transformed into a safe and high-quality product for the consumer.
A long, hot summer will impact the health and performance of dairy herds. There are many different systems that can be used to effectively cool cows in the summer. So, instead of focusing on the how to keep your cows cool, I want to discuss some common areas to watch to make sure your cows don’t get overheated and where the impact of heat stress may show up in your herd.
If you haven’t heard about the E.U.’s latest request for the U.S. dairy industry, you probably will soon, especially from your co-op.
Several processors sent letters to their dairy producer members in early May informing them that if they cannot ship milk that is on-farm tested to be lower than the E.U.’s legal somatic cell requirement of less than 400,000 SCC per milliliter (mL), they may not have a market for their milk later this fall.
“Being a solo practitioner gives me many opportunities to interact with dairymen. Not every time that I go to the dairy do I find the dairyman, the owner, but most of the time they are around when I visit. Some of my procedures I do with the owner, so we have good contact and very direct communication.
“My situation is a little different from a large clinic that has 15 to 20 vets where everyday there is a new vet that goes to a dairy. In big rotations you lose the ability to talk and address all of the issues, all of the concerns, all of the new ideas, all of the problems brought about by change.
On a dairy farm, only the cows produce income. Everything and everyone else – veterinarian included – is an expense to the bottom-line profit margin. How a veterinarian works with a dairy is based on whatever return on investment the dairy owner thinks he or she is receiving from the use of that veterinary practice.
As we learn more about the negative impact heat stress has upon cattle, technological advances provide options to make your dairy operation more profitable during summer heat. Some technologies include capital investments, such as fans, misters, shades and other cooling apparatuses, to reduce the ambient temperature in the cow’s environment.
August and September are the times of year when dairy cows in some areas are dry or close to going dry. Now is a good time to review your overall management program, but especially for dry cows.
Pregnant cows
If you do not have a recent pregnancy check, have a veterinarian check the bred cows and heifers that have not been confirmed pregnant to verify that they are pregnant. Some cows will lose their calf in the summer heat.
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