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On Feb. 13, 42 western Canadian producers and a few WestGen staff boarded a red-eye flight in Toronto bound for Sao Paulo. The participants in the first international WestGen dairy tour had signed up to see dairies and cattle breeding operations, and to enjoy the sites and attractions offered by the fifth largest milk producing nation in the world.
In all aspects of your farming and dairy operation, you are applying increased precision to accomplish tasks, leaving less to chance and directing resources to where the return on investment will be greatest.
Robotic milking has established itself more and more across the country – to the detriment of tiestall barns. Although this milking and herd management method provides several advantages, it also requires producers to adapt their level of management and choice of bulls in order to achieve success.
Hoof health is a top priority for the Canadian dairy industry right now. An online questionnaire in 2014 revealed lameness is considered the number one health issue by Canadian dairy producers.
A dairy cow’s immune system, along with reproduction, is an important fitness trait.
It’s a trait that’s of major consideration for producers because the ability to find and identify cows with a superior immune response can reduce disease incidence and improve milk quality and farm profitability.
Fill in the blank: When making genetic selection decisions, my ultimate goal is to create a ___________ cow. If you filled in the blank with the word “profitable,” a new tool is on the way that will be of interest to you.
The immune system is the body’s natural defense system that provides protection from a wide range of pathogenic micro-organisms.
Although there is an obvious role that environmental exposure plays in building immunity to specific diseases, the proficiency and robustness of the entire immune system is actually genetically regulated.
Following a coordinated industry effort, a national system for collecting health events was implemented in 2007.
Since that time, approximately 40 percent of all herds enrolled on milk recording are voluntarily recording the incidence of eight key diseases: mastitis, displaced abomasum, clinical ketosis, milk fever, retained placenta, metritis, cystic ovaries and lameness.
Breeding cows back in a timely manner hinges upon that first estrous cycle after calving, but sometimes the return to estrus is delayed. However, there are things you can do to identify and manage these cows and improve your herd’s pregnancy rate.
After nearly a decade of being widely available to dairy producers, sexed semen is now commonly used across the country.
What is interesting about sexed semen, however, is the various ways and reasons it is being used, and it isn’t just about making more heifers. When deployed as part of a greater genetic strategy, sexed semen will open up new opportunities and change the way you manage your herd.
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