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Hoof blocks are an important component of the lameness management toolbox. Diseased or overtrimmed claws are both likely candidates to receive therapeutic hoof blocks.
Blocking helps provide much-needed relief from weight-bearing by transferring weight onto the healthy claw so the damaged claw has sufficient time to heal.
In the U.S., even on well-managed dairies, there’s a good chance that digital dermatitis (DD) is present. It is highly contagious and if left unchecked can cause painful ulcerations that often lead to lameness.
Common practices for controlling DD have been limited to footbaths and topical treatment of severe lesions with no clearly established guidelines for optimal management.
Preparing cows’ feet for the transition to a robotic system should be a fairly easy task for most dairy farms to accomplish well in advance.
Usually the system and tools needed are already in place to prepare hooves before the robots start, so there are just a few straightforward things to do to ensure hooves are protected during and after transition.
While summer is one of the more pleasant times to look forward to after a rough winter and wet spring, it requires a bit of annual thought to protect the production level the dairy farm seeks to achieve. Weather variability, too, can provide challenges that influence foot health of dairy cattle.
Alfalfa haylage has become a staple in the diets of high-producing dairy cows across the nation, due primarily to its significant contributions of crude protein and physically effective fiber (peNDF) in most TMRs, but still it remains one of the most difficult and challenging forages to ensile properly.
Optimum performance in a dairy herd requires high-quality feed. Hay is often tested for nutrient levels before purchase, or when determining how to best feed or supplement homegrown hay.
Some of the common tools used for hay analyses include analytical tests for crude protein (CP) and fiber components – which are stated as acid-detergent fiber (ADF) and neutral-detergent fiber (NDF). Many dairy producers and hay growers also use an index system such as relative feed value (RFV) to compare forages.
Q. Why is this a top resource article?
"Calculating feed efficiency continues to be a metric that producers follow on how well cows are converting feed into milk. When feed efficiency is not where it should be, that is when we evaluate forage quality and the ration to examine what adjustments need to be made. On some profit team meetings, feed efficiency continues to be one of the key performance indicators."
—Virginia Ishler
The livestock industry has used feed conversion ratio, feed conversion rate or feed conversion efficiency to measure an animal’s efficiency in converting feed mass into increased body mass. This has been used by the beef, poultry, swine and fish industries as a way to measure profitability.
Q. Why is this a top resource article?
"I believe the reason for continual reference to the corn silage article is because every year corn silage growers and cattle/dairy producers need to review corn silage production goals with their respective teams. These teams include people harvesting the crop in the field, people filling the silos and finally people involved in feedout management and working to balance around transition from old to new crop corn silage. Once everyone on the team is aware of what is expected with the corn silage crop, then those beef and dairy end users have a better chance of feeding the highest quality silage to their cattle. As has been my goal with writing my articles for farm publications, I've always tried producing a list of basic action points for discussion along with providing recommended goals.” —Bill Seglar
Inclusion of corn silage into dairy rations is more complex than other feed ingredients because corn silage is really two feedstuffs: high-moisture corn grain and grass silage.
As a result, the nutritional value of corn silage can vary based on crop growing conditions, harvest moisture and the type of fermentation that occurred in the silo.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae fermentation products, more commonly but less accurately referred to as yeast fermentation products (Saccharomyces cerevisiae is one species of yeast which is commonly used for baking, brewing and wine-making), are one of the most commonly used feed additives currently on the market for dairy rations.
Dairy producers seeking to increase the ration energy level for high-producing cows have increasingly turned to feeding supplemental fat as a way to accomplish this goal.
That’s because supplemental fat, especially in early lactation, supports milk production, helps cows retain body condition and positively influences reproductive performance. Plus, fats contain 2.25 times more energy than starches and digestible fiber found in common grain or forage sources.
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