Dream of a high-performance sports car and a Corvette or Camaro may come to mind. In many ways, dairy cows are high-performance machines too. However, some dairy producers may still treat their top-performing “cowmaros” like their old, trusty farm trucks, which may not allow the cows to reach their full genetic potential. Just like a sports car, cows require maintenance and upkeep. By treating your cows like top performers instead of old farm trucks, you can increase cow productivity and maximize profitability.

Klebsiella is a difficult bacteria to deal with because infections can come on quickly without warning and have the potential to be fatal. Understanding how it spreads and how to prevent it is important for protecting herd health.

While most of us focus on how to move manure, store it and land-apply it, there's a growing interest in what else manure can do for the dairy. One of the more intriguing ideas? Turning it into bedding.

Choosing the right bedding is essential for cow comfort, herd health and overall dairy performance. Sand is a popular choice thanks to its comfort, cleanliness and long-term affordability – especially when paired with an effective recovery and recycling program.

Whether or not a dairy is using sand bedding, nuisance sand can infiltrate manure systems through feed, equipment and environmental exposure, creating hidden operational headaches. While removing 100% of sand from manure is not realistic, proactive manure management strategies can significantly reduce its impact, helping to preserve both the longevity of your equipment, your manure system’s performance and the quality of your bedding.

Cow comfort and herd health are essential factors to achieve higher milk quality and production. Bedding plays a critical role in both, which is why many dairy farms have long relied on sand as their go-to bedding. However, questions sometimes arise as to which bedding is better – fresh or recycled sand?

Cow people create environments for cows to thrive in. This is common knowledge to many in the dairy industry, but for Allen Bent and the team at A & J Bent Farms Ltd., it is integral to achieving a somatic cell count (SCC) of 56,000 in a herd of 150 Holsteins.

Running a successful dairy involves navigating a range of variables, such as breed, feed mix, barn layout, bedding type and more. There is one topic, however, every farmer will have to face, which has an impact on the function of the entire barn: manure.

Locomotion and hock scores, along with resting time, are indicators of the quality of the lying surface and bedding choice. With many bedding options available, this article provides recommendations for how to optimize each of them to improve cow comfort.