Mastitis causes more than $2 billion in production losses to the U.S. dairy industry each year. Traditional mastitis testing can be prone to error and be slow – barriers that may prevent dairy farmers from testing as often as necessary. Bacterial culturing has been the standard method for mastitis testing for many years. However, this method has several drawbacks which cause it to be an inefficient method in mastitis analysis. Bacterial culturing is slow, inaccurate, prone to errors and, most importantly, it cannot be used with preserved milk samples. Dairy herd improvement samples used for somatic cell counts cannot be utilized in mastitis testing where bacterial culturing is the method of choice.

It’s awalys a good idea to set your sights on milk quality improvements that can help you capture greater return from your milking herd. “There is always room for improvement when it comes to milk quality, and small steps taken today can reap rewards tomorrow through increased production, higher premiums and reduced labor and treatment costs,” says Dr. Bradley Mills, senior veterinarian for Pfizer Animal Health Dairy Veterinary Operations. “In addition, progressing your mastitis management is part of doing what’s best for the health of your cattle and dairy operation.”

Metabolic syndrome poses a significant public health threat in the U.S. Affecting more than one-third of American adults, it is a cluster of symptoms that increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes and accounts for billions of dollars of health care costs annually. Research has associated dairy consumption with a reduced risk of metabolic syndrome and its related diseases. A new scientific review, published in Advances in Nutrition, discusses how components of dairy’s unique nutrient package may account for dairy’s positive effects. The review was authored by research scientists at the Dairy Research Institute, an organization founded under the leadership of dairy farmers who have a commitment to product, nutrition and sustainability research.

The transition period of a dairy cow is one of the most crucial and vulnerable stages of a lactation cycle. During the last three weeks before calving through to the first three weeks of lactation, your cows’ metabolic needs dramatically increase. How the animal copes with this high-energy transition can have a drastic impact on how well she will perform throughout the remainder of her lactation. Research has shown that at the time of calving, a cow’s requirement for calcium increases fourfold, glucose demand triples and protein requirements double.

TRENDING TOPIC ARTICLE: HERD HEALTH This article was featured as one of our most popular herd health articles. to jump to the article below. University of Wisconsin’s Garret Oetzel and Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc.’s Brian Miller drilled down on the causes and effects of hypocalcemia. Many readers were likely surprised to learn that when combing clinical and subclinical cases, incidents of hypocalcemia in a 2,000-cow herd can cost a producer more than $60,000 a year. Oetzel is still providing information about the disease. Click here to read a recap of his presentation at the Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference in June, where he said nutritional management is the key to prevention.

One of the foundational elements of successful and profitable commercial dairy farming is the continuous entry of fresh cows into a milking herd. The fresh cow that’s in proper health will be the most cost-efficient cow on the dairy – having the highest feed-conversion-to-milk- production efficiency. Herd profiles that show low days in milk (DIM) indicate there are more cows freshening in a herd than there are cows headed for the dry corral. Even in the most desperate of economies, fresh cows are critical to keeping the business solvent.

The use of antibiotics and analgesics (pain medication) in the dairy industry is coming under increased scrutiny by regulators. Although other commodities have primarily been targeted in the past, a 2008 USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service study on meat residues found that dairy market (cull) cows and bob veal calves were responsible for a majority of the problems detected at slaughter. This has resulted in various groups wondering aloud if it would not be easier just to exclude the bob veal and market dairy cow from the food chain.

Bovine leukosis is a contagious disease of cattle caused by Bovine Leukemia Virus (BLV). The disease is characterized by a persistent leukemia which can culminate in malignant lymphosarcoma. The National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) determined that BLV is present in 89 percent of U.S. dairy operations. Only 30 to 40 percent of BLV carriers will develop leukemia, while less than 5 percent develop malignant lymphosarcoma. A later study determined the incidence of lymphosarcoma was six to seven cases per year per 1,000 cows if the herd prevalence of BLV was 50 percent.