Over the past few decades, North Florida Holsteins has figured out how to achieve more than 90 pounds of milk per day in an environment where extreme heat stress is the norm.

Mastitis is the most common disease and the leading cause for antibiotic use on dairy farms. Due to consumer demand, antibiotic use is becoming more scrutinized in animal agriculture. This year at the National Mastitis Council meeting, Dr. Pamela Ruegg from the University of Wisconsin – Madison discussed how treatment practices could lower antibiotic use on farms and save money. Ruegg listed five steps and considerations for making optimum mastitis treatment decisions.

The sheer volume of information collected on a dairy farm may seem daunting to track, but proper record-keeping can play a vital role when making decisions.

Think about your most stressful day. Now imagine that day lasts for several months. How productive would you be? How hard would you work? How much harder would you work if you weren’t stressed?

Consumer demands may be fickle and often are not based on a realistic view of livestock production. Yet today’s consumer focus on animal welfare should factor into dairy producer decisions. While market demands have to be taken into consideration, farm management decisions must be based on the science behind animal health and welfare.

Heather Dann of the Miner Institute defines cow comfort as being “a function of the cow’s management,” which has both social and environmental components. Comfortable cows are able to naturally balance their basic needs for rest, rumination and feeding. When these needs are met, cows are healthy and productive.

Similar to how humans use crutches to limit the use of an injured foot in order to heal, cows rely on a similar approach called blocking to allow abscesses, claw injuries or other conditions to heal. Blocks are applied to a cow’s healthy claw to elevate the injured one off the ground so that it can heal and avoid lameness.

When talking about hoof lesions, stop using the “a” word. On many hoof trimming records, the term “abscess” is a catchall for just about any insult to a dairy cow’s foot, but according to University of Minnesota’s Dr. Gerard Cramer, “That doesn’t tell us anything.”

One of the major changes in my business over the years is the type of records I keep on trim day and how I record this data, but even more important is how and with whom I share these records. When dairy producers put this information to work, they can make great strides to reduce lameness.

When helping a dairyman sort cows to be trimmed, I often point out cows in the herd that have a limp or long toes. All too often, I hear the dairyman saying, “We won’t trim her because she’s a cull cow.”