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Eighty-seven percent of a cow’s milk is water. So it is critical to recognize that providing clean, safe water is essential to maximizing herd performance and that not all water is acceptable for cows to drink.
The largest factor affecting forage drying is sunlight. Thus, a previous article I wrote showed that putting forage into a wide swath following mowing had the largest effect on drying rate.
Tedding and inverters can fluff the swath to enhance drying. Rakes and mergers will narrow the swath into a windrow for the baler or choppers and also expose some wetter material to sunlight to enhance drying.
Mailbox milk prices do change; this is the reality of the matter and one that dairymen have to deal with. When the price within a year drops more than 30 percent, as it did in the last 12 months, it raises yellow flags. And for many, this means looking for ways to cut ration costs. Milk price changes should not be a surprise. In the recent past, we have experienced similar, if not wider, swings.
We feed lactating dairy cows starch sources that may be ground, flaked, processed, rolled or ensiled. In addition, we store feeds containing starch in bags, bunkers and bins at different moisture contents for different lengths of time.
The dairy industry has become increasingly precise in identifying and meeting the protein requirements of dairy cattle.Most notably, the industry has moved from focusing on the diet’s content of crude protein to metabolizable protein and now to individual amino acids.
Dairy producers and nutritionists understand the importance of providing adequate levels of nutrients in dairy cow rations. However, it is possible to provide too much of a good thing, which can lead to some undesirable consequences.
Feed represents more than half of a typical dairy farm’s operating costs. When milk prices decline, cutting feed costs is often a tempting first strategy for producers and their nutrition consultants.
Alfalfa haylage is a staple in the diets of high-producing dairy cows across the nation primarily due to its significant contributions of crude protein and physically effective fiber (peNDF) in most TMRs.
Still, alfalfa remains one of the most difficult and challenging forages to ensile properly. The vast majority of alfalfa is harvested correctly and ferments properly, but we still see about 5 to 10 percent that goes “butyric” due to clostridic fermentation.
For many dairy farmers, having milk cows that spend a good deal of their lives grazing on well-managed and productive pastures is an environmentally friendly and profitable way to dairy.
Every inoculant comes with a salesperson who professes how great their product works and how much their inoculant will save the producer money by reducing shrink and preserving feed quality.
In response, the producer mutters, “I wish there was a way to tell if it’s really working. How do I know if your inoculant, or anyone else’s, is doing anything?”
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