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Cows have a history of being easy targets for blame. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow was credited with starting the fire that burned down Chicago when she kicked an unfortunately placed lantern on Sunday, October 8, 1871.
Now, some 140 years later, cows are being blamed for methane pollution and for the inefficient use of nitrogen in feedstuffs, an inefficiency tied to pollution from needlessly high levels of nitrogen in urine.
Change is not always an easy concept to embrace. But for dairy producers and nutritionists willing to look at their rations in a new light, getting in on the leading edge of change with amino acid balancing offers environmental rewards as well as benefits in herd performance.
That’s because dairy diets have long been formulated to oversupply protein in hopes of delivering adequate levels of limiting amino acids. While certainly understandable in theory, this practice has its drawbacks. It is:
For over a decade, the importance and the value of balancing for specific amino acids in dairy cow diets has been a very hot topic.
Amino acids play a direct role in a cow’s metabolism including milk production and milk protein synthesis.
The challenge for researchers and scientists is figuring out which amino acids are the most important for producing milk and milk components and, most importantly, how any of this helps the dairy farmer make any money.
What is the best measure of feeding economics? There are a variety of ratios used in the dairy industry to evaluate feeding economics – and they are misleading or inaccurate if used inappropriately.
Examples include milk price to feed price (USDA’s milk-to-feed ratio), dry matter intake to milk production (milk-to-feed) and feed cost per hundredweight (cwt).
Maintaining good udder health and low bulk tank somatic cell counts (SCC) is increasingly important to dairy profitability, particularly in light of the recent marketing requirement adopted by most milk processors to limit bulk tank SCC to a maximum of 400,000 cells per ml.
Compliance with this new standard generally means that dairies must implement consistent and correct practices in a number of areas.
A focus on clean cows, dry environments, proper udder prep and milking machine function, along with prudent monitoring, treatment and culling decisions, is commonly emphasized by herds with perennially low SCC.
From 2007 to 2011, an average of 108.5 million tons of whole-plant corn was harvested annually for silage in the U.S.
The majority of corn silage was stored in large bunker silos and drive-over piles.
But filling bunkers and piles can pose serious risk to you and your employees – especially those who operate the pack tractors.
I know you’ve heard it before but, given the current volatility in both the milk and feed prices, I thought now would be a good time to review the importance of hedging the milk-feed margin.
Some of you are more familiar with hedging your milk price, while some may be more familiar with hedging feed prices.
With extreme drought conditions affecting more than half of the U.S., and in excess of 30 percent of the corn crop rated at poor or very poor conditions – this year’s forages are likely to present some challenges.
“Unfortunately you can’t control the plant that’s presented for harvest,” says Martha Baker, dairy nutrition specialist with Purina Animal Nutrition LLC. “But you can control what you do with it.”
The upside to dealing with drought-stressed forages is that total plant digestibility tends to go up and they tend to be good quality feeds, because of higher stem to leaf ratios.
Extremely hot and dry weather this summer has most of the country suffering from moderate to exceptional drought conditions. It has been more than two decades since the last major drought and many people are wondering what to do with their crops.
Vita Plus Forage and Technical Services team members John Goeser, Chris Wacek-Driver and Randall Greenfield led a webinar to help get a grip on this unique situation.
Pioneer Hi-Bred’s Jim Smith provided information about managing silage feedout in hot weather in the trending topic article, "Maximizing silage feed value during hot weather requires extra management." Click here to read it.
Because this article has been so popular, we reached out to Pioneer to respond to a followup question:
Q. Many areas experienced warmer-than-usual winters and springs. What advice do you have for feed storage this summer when temperatures have already been a bit higher the whole year?
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