Recent research has shown the epigenetic influences of colostrum feeding practices on the long-term productivity and health of dairy cows. This article delves into the importance of timely colostrum feeding and its epigenetic impacts, providing insights for dairy farmers and dairy consultants.

Raising healthy, high-performing calves starts with the right housing system. As calf care practices have evolved, many dairy and veal producers are now exploring how indoor housing systems can better support their operational goals.

Dairy enterprises invest considerable resources to raise replacements. To capture the opportunities that raising programs offer to farm profitability, dairy operations should not only make efforts to control raising expenses but also to ensure the return of their investment by evaluating the resulting quality of their replacements.

Through our experience of working with numerous dairies to troubleshoot early calf health challenges, we’ve identified several critical, nonnegotiable colostrum management practices.

Over the past few months, we’ve shared insights from this program on topics such as locomotion, nutrition and social housing for calves. One key topic remains: pain mitigation.

I have had the opportunity to analyze dairy software files from dairy operations across many states in the U.S., and I still see great opportunities to reduce herd turnover costs within many dairy operations. Here are a few areas to consider as you look at how to plan for your future replacement costs.

Seeing beef cow-calf pairs on pasture caused me to consider how we have raised dairy calves. Granted, most of our commercial dairy management systems don’t allow this kind of environment for the cow and her newborn calf, but what can be done to make our systems better?