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One of our favorite research activities is conducting cow watch. Something about the solitude of being with the cows, free of all other responsibilities, focused on documenting their movements, every five minutes for a four-hour shift… time and cares seem to fade away.
Our cow watch protocol is to document cows’ body position (lying, standing or perching) and jaw movement (eating, ruminating, drinking or nothing) every five minutes over three consecutive days. We used to use 10-minute intervals, but for statistical purposes, five minutes is more precise and more statistically powerful.
The onset of cold, wet winter weather can present a unique set of challenges when it comes to managing infectious lesions that cause lameness on a dairy.
“While many dairies use footbath programs throughout the year to help control infectious lesions, use typically decreases during winter months due to the potential for ice formation and the fact that some footbath products, such as formaldehyde, are ineffective in cold conditions,” says Dr. Jeff DeFrain, research nutritionist, Zinpro Corporation. “The result is that the typical weather conditions can lead to a breakdown in skin integrity, allowing easy entry of bacteria into the foot.”
As the days get shorter and the temperatures begin to flirt with freezing, it is time to start thinking about proper teat dip management for cold weather. In fact, any dairyman who faces cold, wet and windy conditions, whether in New Mexico or Wisconsin, needs to address general teat condition when temperatures fall.
It is important to continue an efficient teat dip program on the farm to aid in mastitis control during cold weather, but you also need to take precautions to avoid cold weather effects on the dairy cow’s mammary system.
While cleaning up around the farm, it is a good time to take a look for possible chemical contaminants that could impact the health of your animals or the safety of the products they produce. Dairy farmers are aware and diligent about avoiding antibiotic residues, but a multitude of other chemicals exists that also could end up in animals and contaminate milk and meat. Environmental hazards, pesticides and herbicides as well as feed contamination issues should be kept on your chemical residue awareness radar screen.
Recent accidental exposure of cattle to chemical hazards include accidental exposure to high doses of Rumensin®, anhydrous ammonia, benzene from gasoline, organophosphate insecticides and feed-grade antibiotics. In each of these cases, quick action prevented any food safety issues and limited animal health consequences. If a chemical contamination event on farm is discovered or suspected, immediately notify your veterinarian or the Department of Agriculture in your state.
Maintaining a low bulk tank somatic cell count has always been a good dairy management strategy. Low somatic cell counts are associated with improved milk quality, increased shelf life and cheese yield after the milk leaves the farm, increased milk production, and reduced veterinary and drug costs.
Recent market changes have led to an increased emphasis by milk buyers toward lowering bulk tank somatic cell counts at the farm level. As a result, many dairy producers have refocused efforts to lower somatic cell count. Often, the reasons for a high bulk tank somatic cell count can be found in the milking parlor. Following are five common parlor mistakes that should be avoided to keep somatic cell counts low:
In her latest video blog on the Proud to Dairy network, Barbara Martin describes a displaced abomasum procedure being performed by veterinarian Alvaro Magalhaes. (Warning: video contains graphic images.)
Alvaro answers questions and explains the importance of the procedure.
Of all the important areas to monitor on a dairy, management of the entire transition period (3 weeks pre- and 3 weeks post-freshening) can have a huge impact on lactation performance and profit per cow. Transition periods that are not optimized pose increased risk of postpartum metabolic and immune- related diseases, early culling and poor reproductive results, all having a potentially significant negative economic impact on your herd.
Optimizing the health of postpartum cows is critical to every dairy herd to ensure both production and reproduction goals are met. During the past several years, producers and industry experts have adopted several useful benchmarks to evaluate postpartum health (see Table 1), and as expected, many managers have effectively reached or exceeded them.
If you’re in the dairy business, you’ve no doubt seen the grim results of an acute case of coliform mastitis. The fever; hot, painful udder swelling; grossly abnormal milk; lack of appetite; and shock-like symptoms are difficult to watch and even harder to forget. Often, severe cases like this lead to loss of a quarter, at best; and loss of the animal, at worst.
We tend to think of these sporadic cases as the only instances in which we deal with coliform mastitis. But, in fact, about half of all clinical cases are caused by noncontagious environmental organisms, including E. coli, Klebsiella and Enterobacter, which fall together under the umbrella of coliform or gram-negative mastitis.
For decades we have been sending sick or special-needs cows to the hospital pen, assuming this is a safe place for them. But how much of this is true? Are we actually helping these animals or making their life worse and riskier? How is this long dairy recession affecting the health of our animals?
I will share my experience about the actual situation for hundreds of different herds in the U.S. It will show you how with little or no money at all, common sense and employee training in basic equipment maintenance and sanitation, you can make the hospital pen a healthier place for your cows to be.
It’s a recurring nightmare. Dairy producers shocking their CIP system in hopes to get it clean. Too many times we hear about the gory details, instead of a happy ending.
Such is the case with a Wisconsin farmer milking almost 900 cows, three times a day. He was shocking his system every Saturday, hoping to reduce bacteria counts. In order to shock the system with an alkaline/chlorine base product, this producer pinched off the hose leading to the acid base product, because the two products are not compatible.
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