In my 50 years of experience, managing the level of SCC and mastitis in fresh heifers is critical to achieving excellent milk quality. There are many important ways to improve milk quality on your dairy, but don’t let fresh heifers contribute to your issues.

Productive life can be like a New Year’s resolution. It sounds like a good idea, but often it doesn’t come true. Increasing the productive life of dairy herds needs to be a priority for the dairy industry.

The number one goal of a feeding program is to promote healthy development from birth to freshening. Additionally, we want to maximize each heifer’s growth and genetic potential to its fullest – while also promoting healthy hair coats, good muscle tone and ideal body condition – when it matters most, show days.

Long-day lighting for heifers follows the same recommendations as lactating cows. The goal is to provide constant and evenly distributed light levels for a period of 16 to 18 hours of light and six to eight hours of darkness in the barn.

Dairy heifer grazing increases the amount of well-managed grassland in an area – improving dairy’s climate performance and supporting the regeneration of soil, water and biodiversity resources.

Learn how to manage forage inventories after harvest, improve average daily gain of calves and capitalize during times of tight farm margins.

Dairy replacement heifers are an extremely valuable component of a dairy operation. Not only are they the future of the lactating herd, but they determine your long-term profitability. That’s why providing them with adequate and consistent vitamin and trace mineral nutrition is important to help support optimal growth, health, immunity, reproduction and hoof integrity.