There will be a financial incentive to increase milk sales available to each farm. Assuming milk sales increase over the previous year, an additional incentive will be paid for high-quality milk as measured by somatic cell count (SCC) for the herd. The SCC is the number of cells, primarily leukocytes, per milliliter in milk. Leukocytes, or white blood cells, are produced by the cow’s immune system to fight an inflammation in the mammary gland or mastitis – either clinical or sub-clinical. The SCC also increases during a myriad of stress conditions. Monitoring SCC is especially critical in diagnosing cows with subclinical mastitis, because no visible signs of an inflammation are observed by the dairy producer. That was the original intent of the California Mastitis Test that estimates SCC of individual cows by stripping milk into a four-part plastic paddle, adding the test solution and then swirling the contents to visually measure the gel formation.

Tail docking is still a common practice – the recent NAHMS survey of U.S. dairy farms shows that about 50 percent of dairy cows in the U.S. are docked. Of course this means that about 50 percent are not docked, and there is much debate about the practice. To help foster discussion among dairy producers and document the most common reasons for why we should or should not be docking tails, we asked Progressive Dairyman readers to respond to an online survey. In this article we report back to you on the main results from this research. A total of 192 people responded to the survey. Of these 30 percent were producers, 23 percent veterinarians, 15 percent students, 4 percent instructors and 3 percent other dairy professionals; 25 percent of participants said they had no experience with the dairy industry.

Have you been at the end of your rope when dealing with a respiratory outbreak, a nutritional meltdown or a series of fatal calf scours, and then, as a last resort, decide to run some diagnostic tests? If you answered yes to any part of this question, have the results been too late, too costly or provided the wrong information? If so, there may be newer technologies and better strategies to help with this dilemma. When the need for diagnostic testing arises, dairy producers have a variety of tests available, some of which are outlined here.

The transition dairy cow continues to be somewhat of an unsolved mystery. We continue to learn that how cows are fed, handled and managed during the three weeks before through three weeks after calving can have a definite influence on production, health and reproductive performance. We know that reproductive performance can be directly influenced by metabolic disorders, early lactation performance and nutrition. The dairy is responsible for helping transition cows navigate a myriad of challenges leading up to calving through the initial weeks in the milking herd. And when properly handled, the returns in production, health and breeding pen performance can be great.

Anyone remember the old Dunkin’ Donut commercials, “Time to make doughnuts”? The commercial dramatized the constant attention and long hours required to bake fresh doughnuts every morning. We received a call from a dairy producer in North Dakota that felt the same way about changing his inflations as the doughnut guy did about making doughnuts. “Time to change the inflations.” It was to the point that the producer was spending way too much time and money maintaining his milking equipment.

TRENDING TOPIC ARTICLE: HERD HEALTH Published: September 22, 2010 print issue In this article, University of Kentucky’s Jeffrey Bewley outlines several ways producers can achieve and maintain low somatic cell count milk, including adjusting milking protocols and culturing high-SCC cows. or scroll down to jump to the article. Because this article was so popular, we asked Bewley, “Of the best management practices you outlined, which practice do you think producers and employees most struggle with?” Bewley says, “Of those management practices listed, I think using bacteriological cultures is the most underutilized. So much information can be obtained from culturing milk samples. On-farm culturing systems make this practice even more useful.

One of the critical time frames in a cow’s life is around the time before and after calving. Proper dry cow nutrition and management is critical, since decisions made during this period will have a tremendous impact on milk production and health during the next lactation. As producers begin to think about the next fall harvesting season, it is important also to keep in mind how the cows coming into lactation will be affected by season and the potential new forages that will be provided to this group.