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How well prepared are you for a health crisis on your farm or in the dairy industry at large? Are you doing things that help avert a crisis?
Do you incorporate processes in your management that minimize risks of introducing or spreading costly infectious diseases to your cows?
This fall I participated in a “dairy industry crisis drill” in Denver. The event was sponsored by DMI, NMPF, the U.S. Dairy Export Council, Milk PEP and IDFA.
While paying off-farm professionals to trim feet on your herd may be cost-effective, relying upon them to treat lame cows is probably not profitable. Lame cows produce less milk, suffer from pain and may become chronic problems unless the issue is dealt with immediately and treated correctly.
Waiting even a couple of days for your foot trimmer to return and treat a lame cow is much more costly than training one of your workers to handle lame cows as part of the work routine.
A new synthetic zeolite feed additive that binds to calcium in dry cow feed and helps prevent milk fever is grabbing attention in Canada.
The new product was introduced in 2009 and was originally marketed in Europe in 2008. Seven farms throughout the country are now using the new product.
Bacteriological culture and intramammary infusion are two very powerful and important tools of an effective mastitis control program.
They have been used for several decades and, when coupled with good management practices, they have helped to produce better-quality milk.
Improper supervision and lack of training in this area can make these important tools useless and cost the dairy lots of money.
I enjoy reading Tom Wall’s monthly articles on employee management in Progressive Dairyman. He brings intelligent ideas to the important topic of managing your employees.
For understandable reasons, I am seeing more small dairy farms hire outside help to reduce the burnout from a 24-7, 365-day work schedule.
So keeping employees happy is on the management plate of most dairy owners across the country today. But are you sure all your employees are happy?
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.
It isn’t every day that a simple concept replaces a management practice that has been carried out for many years in the dairy industry.
California, the country’s largest dairy state, became the first state in the U.S. to ban tail docking of dairy cattle in early 2010 as a way to improve animal welfare.
When the bill was signed into law in January of 2010, California dairy producers were no longer able to “dock” or amputate the tails of dairy cattle, which created a need for other alternatives.
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.
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