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Essential forage concepts
Increasingly, our goal is to successfully feed higher-forage diets to dairy cattle. The two components of forage fiber – digestibility and physical effectiveness – must be in balance to optimize feed intake, promote rumen health and boost milk component output.
Your TMR mixer is an integral part of your feeding program. By understanding how to best utilize your mixer, you’ll be able to achieve the optimum performance from your ration ingredients and obtain the maximum return for your machinery investment.
See "Peak milk, intake and body weight: How curvy is your cow? Part One" to learn more about your cow's curves.
As your dairy herd moves through the lactation, body weight and feed intake curves discussed in Part One, Dr. Mike Hutjens, extension dairy specialist with the University of Illinois, offers these feeding guidelines.
You remember the bell curve – a common distribution of values. If you’re taking a poll, you chart the responses and the resulting chart resembles a bell shape with most responses falling within the “middle ground” or “top” of the bell. The bell creates down-sloped curves at either end of the continuum where extreme responses fall, representing the less common values or deviations.
At Rosy-Lane Holsteins LLC near Watertown, Wisconsin, calf and heifer manager Tracy Loos was looking for a better way to keep calf feed dry. She found her fix with a repurposed soap barrel, some left-over metal tubing and a little creativity.
Are you at risk of losing money?
Much attention has been devoted to estimate the economic impact of heat stress on lactating cows; in 2003, researchers estimated that production losses in the U.S. reached $900 million. During the summer months, cows produce less milk volume and milk components.
When it comes to managing rations for dairy cows, it is always better to be proactively making decisions versus reactively. That’s according to Dr. Dwight Roseler, a dairy nutritionist with Purina Animal Nutrition in Ohio.
Two dairies that will test-drive a new handheld feedstuff moisture monitor as part of Progressive Dairyman’s first-ever peer technology user group say they want to use and evaluate the device to determine its effectiveness on their farms.
Jim Winn of Cottonwood Dairy in South Wayne, Wisconsin, and Jack Pirtle of P7 Dairy in Roswell, New Mexico, both recently received a new Moisture Tracker from Wisconsin-based Digi-Star.
Baling corn stover is a dirty business. Because of that, there are many factors to take into consideration when determining your equipment needs for the job.
Durability is key, but there are several other items to keep in mind to help keep things running smoothly and efficiently when it comes to baling corn stover.
Current dairy economics result in very tight margins. Feed cost continues to be a dairy’s biggest expense in milk production.
A comprehensive and detailed analysis of TMR preparation and delivery often reveals ways to improve milk production while reducing feed shrink, fuel and labor costs. Over the last five years, I’ve conducted many TMR audits. Whenever possible, I use the manager’s own “electronic feed monitoring system” or EFMS.
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