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Family relationships are not easy. While there is nobody we’d rather spend relaxed evenings with, family members can be so irritated with each other that they sit on opposite sides of the funeral home, the church, and sadly, in some instances, opposite sides of the attorney’s office or courtroom.
Most farmers would never dream of building a real-estate development around their farm or marketing their products in China, but that’s exactly what can happen when well-intentioned business owners spend time planning the future of the business.
Dairy owners and managers from around the country learned how to improve their hiring practices and build better teams at the most recent PDPW Managers Academy held in Charlotte, North Carolina. More than 80 dairy professionals from 17 states participated in the three-day training.
Editor’s note: Kirt Lindley will be part of a video farm tour at World Ag Expo on February 11 at 1:30 p.m.
The first week after dairyman Kirt Lindley installed his fodder growing system, he checked on the barley seeds growing in his new building every day, multiple times. The $120,000 investment for his 65-cow dairy had to work. He needed it to save him money on his feed bills.
In layman’s terms, what does metabolizable protein (MP) mean?
Metabolizable protein (MP) is the total amount of amino acid absorbed in the small intestine. The main sources of amino acid to the intestine are rumen-undegradable protein (RUP), microbial crude protein (MCP), and to a lesser extent, endogenous crude protein (ECP).
The costs to produce milk continue to increase. Feed is the largest cost on the dairy, so it is important for dairy employees and individuals in industries that support dairies to have at least a basic understanding of nutritional terminology.
Why didn’t it ferment? This question arises more often than you may think.
Having reviewed and shared the results of several thousand forage samples in the past few years, when the fermentation profile does not conform to the dairyman’s expectation, invariably the question is asked, “Why didn’t it ferment?”
Feed accounts for more than 50 percent of the costs of milk production. There are numerous causes associated with feed shrinkage on a dairy. There can be losses of feed weight related to harvesting, delivery, storage, handling, mixing and delivering.
Most dairy nutritionists report that they balance the amino acid levels in their dairy rations to bolster income over feed cost (IOFC). Typically, this includes the use of supplemental methionine and lysine, the first two limiting amino acids.
They are limiting because, when in short supply, they can limit herd performance. Supplementation is required as they do not naturally occur in high enough levels in feedstuffs to meet dairy cow needs.
Many dairy farmers have had times when the cows back off on feed consumption for no apparent reason and milk production drops. Then just as mysteriously, everything returns to normal. The conception rate may drop for a month – and it too then returns to normal.
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