I have often made the statement, “the more feed an early lactation cow eats, the more milk she can produce and the more profit she can potentially make for her owner.” This statement emphasizes the importance of managing dairy cows to optimize feed intake, especially in early lactation and during the pre-fresh period. Why is this?

For many decades, nutritional science has been focused on identifying nutrients, such as proteins, vitamins and minerals, and understanding their role in biological processes. Understanding how these nutrients reinforce the health of the cow, and thereby prevent diseases resulting from their deficiencies, has been a major objective in the dairy industry. Recently, a new science, referred to as nutrigenomics, has emerged as a result of significant developments in genetic research. Nutrigenomics is the study of molecular relationships between genes, their response to specific nutrients and how those responses can impact animal health and performance. Through the use of microarray technology, we can now study the impact of nutrients on specific genes and their genetic expression.

Harvesting, storing and feeding high-quality forages can help your dairy survive a challenging dairy economy by increasing your margin of milk income over feed cost. If nature is forgiving and highly digestible crops are chopped, the next daunting task at hand is fermenting, storing and feeding with a minimal loss of nutrients. Feeding high-quality forage makes more milk, but what does forage temperature have to do with several pounds more milk? We’ll take a look at two forage temperature measures – surface and core – to find the answer.

Obtaining and maintaining high corn quality silage requires good management in the areas of forage management harvest, storage and feedout. For this article’s discussion, it is assumed that proper genetics have been selected to provide maximum levels of milk per acre of corn silage. Harvest The most important things to remember when harvesting corn silage are whole-plant moisture level, theoretical length of chop and kernel processing. The desired level of whole-plant moisture will depend on whether the silage is stored in upright or horizontal silos. For bunkers and drive-over piles, I like to see whole-plant moisture at 66 to 68 percent and for vertical storage structures, 63 to 66 percent.

As dairy producers search for solutions to ongoing reproductive challenges, nutrition remains one of the leading avenues to improve breeding pen success. New research presented at the 2010 ADSA meetings by Drs. Jose Santos, Bill Thatcher and Charlie Staples, reported new results further linking nutrition to production performance, reproductive success and health through essential fatty acid (EFA) supplementation.

Dairy producers many times find themselves in a balancing act when striving to maximize their reproductive and nutrition programs. Nutritional deficiencies and ration imbalances can lead to poor reproduction performance, but there are also many other factors to consider before altering your current nutrition program. Poor reproduction performance can also be the result of poor heat detection, time of insemination, insemination practices, diseases, toxins and other management-related problems.

Players in the World Cup are amazing! Great players can kick a ball above their head, spin a ball so that it slides around the keeper and make a ball look like it is attached to their shoe string. We know that these players did not wake up one morning with these skills. They started with the basics. They needed to learn the simple skills like dribbling and passing well to make them great.

Are the feeders you work with doing a good job? How accurate are they when loading those expensive mineral blends or supplements into the mixer? How is their bunk delivery accuracy? These and others are some of the questions I ask herdsmen and managers when discussing feeding programs. Remember that feeders play a key role in the profitability of the dairy. Feed cost represents more than 50 percent of the cost of milk production. Therefore, the feeders’ work should be monitored periodically to ensure they are performing to your expectations.

Talking with nutritionists drives home the practical importance of a healthy energy status during the transition period in 2010. Energy status and transition performance move in lockstep in well-managed dairies, they say.