Each day over 50,000 producers in this country go about their business producing the safe, nutritious and affordable dairy products that consumers enjoy. In our society, we expect perfection when it comes to food safety. A food safety breach can be devastating to an individual consumer and catastrophic for an industry.

Ration starch content is a hot topic among dairy nutritionists these days, as we look for ways to create more economical rations. Dairy cows need to consume adequate starch for proper rumen fermentation. Traditionally, corn provided this source of fermentable energy because it was cheap, available and high in starch. However, concerns about high corn prices and potential cow health problems have many producers looking for grain alternatives.

A byproduct is by definition “a product made during the manufacture of something else.” So when we are referring to byproduct feeds, we are talking about feedstuffs fed to livestock that are secondary products produced after the primary product is made. Typically, these byproduct feeds are of less value than the primary product, and thus the producer of the product is less concerned about their quality.

How do we determine what nutrients we need to feed a dairy cow? Do you know what goes into balancing your herd’s rations? Do you need to know differences in dairy nutrition models? You most likely will not need to know all the numerous, intricate details of a complicated nutrition model. But it would help your understanding of how nutrition data input into a nutritional model affects your herd’s rations.

The 2010 Winter Olympics were held this past February. I always enjoy watching the best athletes in the world compete. Whether they’re snow skiing, snow boarding, bobsledding or ice skating, they’re at the top of their form, having devoted many years of their life getting to where they’re at.

Managers of dairy businesses should take time to evaluate their dairy businesses and identify areas where change is needed. Then, a game plan for accomplishing these changes needs to be designed and implemented.

Nutritionist Deb Wilks has been formulating “well-balanced, high-forage, healthy rations” for her clients in Washington for the past nine years. While other dairies struggled last year to make the right changes, some of them drastic, to their rations in order to account for lower milk prices, Wilks advised Bartelheimer Brothers Dairy, a 900-cow dairy and one of her 30 clients, to stick with ingredients that provide the best income over feed cost.

This article was #4 in PDmag's Top 5 most-well read New Technology articles in 2010. Summary: Ron Fritsch designed the Push Away Grapple to penetrate feed in silage bags and pull away with a full load. An adjustable hydraulic valve allows the grapple to “push away” from the feed with 12 tons of force. When the grapple cylinders reach the end of their stroke, another set of cylinders automatically push against the pile, separating the feed in the bucket from the pile. A bucket equipped with this grapple can load in half the time, twice as much feed as a bucket alone, Fritsch says. Tests show it can grab a full bucket of haylage in less than 10 seconds from a silage bag. Because this article was so popular, we asked Fritsch some follow-up questions:

Achieving peak milk in the lactation curve has been a topic of discussion for a long time in dairy nutrition, and a benchmark used by dairymen as an indicator of early lactation and transition cow nutrition. Most cows achieve peak milk 45 to 90 days in milk (DIM) and slowly lose production over time until dry-off. It is commonly cited that each pound of additional peak milk forecasts 200 to 250 pounds of milk for the entire lactation. This rule has great significance on the revenue capability of the dairy.

I’m often approached by dairy producers and nutritionists who feel like their herds have hit a production wall. They ask what nutrition solutions can help their herds break free from the plateau, resulting in higher peaks with maintained health and fertility.