Most dairy processors in the upper midwest of the US will no longer accept milk from cows treated with the rBST hormone, writes John Boylan.

Bovine somatotopin is a peptide hormone produced by cows’ pituitary glands. It is produced in small quantities and is used in regulating the metabolic process. During the 1970s, pharmaceutical companies discovered and patented expertise to synthesise the hormone using recombinant DNA technology to create recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST).

Joan Behr, director of communications for Foremost Farms USA, has said it will be rBST-free by 1 June as “the market is requesting it”.

Land O’Lakes will be rBST-free by year end, because a number of customers who purchase ingredients from it plan to become rBST-free before 1 January 2018.

Customer requests

Requests from cheese customers was the reason given by Associated Milk Producers and First District Association in Minnesota for cutting out rBST by year end.

Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the largest co-op in the US, has not yet cut out rBST. It said: “We are working with our customers to supply their evolving needs.”

Elanco Animal Health, which market rBST, has a different view. It said: “The consequences of these actions have a direct impact on the sustainability of dairy farms. Research shows that rBST helps cows produce more milk – about a gallon (3.7 litres) more per cow per day – which means farmers can produce the same amount of milk with six cows instead of seven. The use of rBST also reduces the carbon footprint of a gallon of milk by 9%. The collective of this increased productivity each year in the US alone saves 95.6m gallons of water, reduces land needed for dairy farms by 1,023 square miles, and eliminates 2.9m tonnes of greenhouse gases.

The use of rBST has been banned in the EU since 1999.

Source: Irish Farmers Journal

Fonterra farmers to trial innovative technology that will allow them to take insights from the weather and bring greater precision to New Zealand dairy farms.

Fonterra is playing its part in fuelling the revolution of on-farm weather forecasting by working with MetService and BloomSky – a smart weather camera station that delivers hyperlocal weather information in real-time to any laptop, tablet or smartphone.

More than 70 BloomSky weather stations will be installed by farmers across the country in the coming months. MetService will use observations from the devices to provide forecasting and greater seasonal insights through data analytics to all users of Agrigate – the online dashboard developed by Fonterra Farm Source and LIC to give farmers the data they need to make faster and smarter decisions.

Fonterra farmer Kevin Argyle is trialling the solar-powered ‘SKY2’ device as well as the wireless add-on called ‘Storm’, and has seen first-hand how the BloomSky system measures temperature, humidity, rainfall, wind speed, wind direction, UV and barometric pressure to give him a detailed view of his farm’s climate.

“It really personalises it and enables us to make optimal on-farm decisions,” says Argyle.

“People often underestimate the variability within relatively small geographical areas. The other day we had 29 millimetres of rain and a few kilometres down the road they had five. That’s a big difference when you’re thinking about the best time to cultivate a paddock or move stock.

“Weather is one of the more significant risks that impacts a farming operation so to have a real-time app that provides insights in terms of what has happened, what the current weather is and what it’s forecast to be for your property has huge potential value.”

BloomSky, which is an Internet of Things (IoT) start-up that became the most-funded weather project on global crowdsourcing platform Kickstarter in 2014, aims to make microclimate data more accessible to everyone.

Looking ahead, the integration of new weather technologies with other gadgets offers up exciting possibilities. Already, BloomSky’s tech can work in with smart devices such as thermostats or irrigation systems to control them based on the weather outside.

“By working with MetService and BloomSky we’re able to offer our farmers the latest technology while also looking for ways to innovate further in the future,” says Tim Cutfield, Fonterra Head of Agrigate.

“We know that the weather stations will be popular because of the positive feedback we’ve already had from those trialling the system, and also because our farmers are amongst the best in the world when it comes to the adoption of technologies that enhance animal health and wellbeing, environmental sustainability, and efficient farm management.”

A BloomSky weather station is on display at the LIC Innovation Farm in South Waikato this week as part of the Farming2020 event.

Source: New Food

A new advert from the Farm Safety Partnership in Northern Ireland has focused on the dangers of freshly calved cows.

Teagasc recently published its analysis of dairy profit monitor results for 2016. For the first time Teagasc has included an own labour charge (for the farmer’s own and unpaid family labour).

This is a welcome development as it recognises that farmer’s labour input (and that of other unpaid family members) is required and rewarded for the milk produced, according to Tom O’Dwyer, Head of Dairy Knowledge Transfer with Teagsac.

On spring milk dairy farms the estimated own labour efficiency is greater for the top 25pc (4.1 hours less worked per cow) than for the average farm.

After adjusting for own labour the most efficient farms generated €811 more per ha than the average farm.

Source: Teagasc

Among the other highlights on spring milk farms from this years results is that the top farms generated a gross output of €4,402/ha compared to €3,471/ha on the average farms, a difference of 27pc.

The higher output on the top farms reflected a combination of both higher stocking rate (14pc higher) and higher output per cow (9pc higher milk solids output per cow).

Output per ha on the top 25pc of farms was 226 kg milk solids per ha or 23pc higher than on the average farm (9546 kg per ha). This is as a result of a higher stocking rate (+0.33 LU per ha) and higher milk solids yield per cow (+ 37 kg per cow).

Average spring milk dairy farms had lower variable costs than the top farms at €1,367/ha versus €1,496/ha.

However, as a percentage of gross output they accounted for 39pc on the average farms compared to 34pc of the output on the top farms.

The gross margin was €2,904/ha on the top spring milk farms which was 38pc or €800/ha higher than those on the average farm.

The biggest variable cost on spring milk dairy farms in 2016 was purchased concentrates and forage accounting for 34pc or €448/ha of total variable costs on the average farm.

The average spring milk dairy farm in 2016 generated a net profit of €1,043/ha compared to €1,827/ha on the top 25pc of farms.

Profit monitor results also show that dairy farms where more than 80% of the diet is composed of grazed grass or grass silage generated a 15pc greater net profit of €1,125/ha compared to €957/ ha on the grass poor farms.

Meanwhile, on a regional basis compared to the overall average, spring milk dairy farms in Cork had this highest gross output of €3,928/ha compared to an average of €3,471 per ha.

The higher output in the Cork region reflects the higher output per cow (443 kg MS) and per hectare (1,067 kg MS).

The North West region had the lowest total variable cost per hectare of €1,260 reflecting lower stocking intensity; Cork had the highest variable costs at €1,531 per hectare.

Source: Farm Ireland

Utilizing pasture on dairy operations can benefit the animals and the cash flow in several ways. Maintaining forage quality and quantity has a significant effect on cash surplus. Grazing adult cattle and young stock can help extend stored forages. Maintaining carry over of ensiled forages benefits the bottom line and animal performance. Incorporating grazing for the dairy herd also gets them off concrete for a period of time. As with any management practice there are perks and drawbacks.

Production Perspective

Weather conditions during the spring, summer and fall usually dictate how much pasture can be incorporated into any animal group’s ration. A feeding strategy should be developed for any grazing system similar to the approach for planting, harvesting and feeding stored forages. If lactating cows are the main animal group to graze there are several factors to consider.

To maintain production, body condition and reproduction plan for: stocking density, maintaining 6 to 8 inches of grass, implementing intensive or rotational grazing, the fencing and water requirements needed, and the way animals will be supplemented.  Animal performance and components can be maintained if a strategy is thought out prior to just turning cows out to pasture. From a nutritionist’s standpoint, grazing programs are challenging because pasture intake is an estimate. However, monitoring pasture quality, quantity and supplement intake can provide an economical feeding strategy whether producers use a TMR or component feeding approach.

Heifers and early dry cows can perform very well with pasture incorporated in their diet. In the spring the major supplementation required is usually minerals and vitamins. As the season progresses even heifers will require additional supplementation for energy and fiber. Monitoring heifers for growth, parasites, flies, and foot rot is recommended.

The focus area for dairy producers working with Penn State Extension on their cash flow plans is their ration and crop plan. This includes recording diets fed during the grazing season. The Penn State Cash Flow Excel spreadsheet allows the user to enter in partial rations for the year that include the number of animals and days fed. The partial rations are annualized giving the producer an accurate accounting of stored inventory as well as the feed costs across all animal groups. Using either DHIA or the monthly milk slips, animal performance can be evaluated during and after the grazing season.

Pasture is often treated as “free” feed. Based on Penn State’s yearly crop summary report the cost for pasture can range from $3 to $50 per ton. On average a realistic cost is $10 to $15/ton considering some pastures are seeded and many are fertilized. Forage yield greatly influences the cost for home raised feeds and the amount harvested (by the animal) per acre is going to affect the unit cost for pasture as well. Evaluating total feed costs, costs for each animal group, feed inventory for the year and the farm’s breakeven cost of production can create some good discussion points. Depending on the bottlenecks limiting cash flow, strategies can be reviewed, ideally with the nutritionist’s input, on management practices to improve milk income or reduce feed costs. It is ultimately this big picture approach that will define a successful pasture program.

Action plan for implementing a grazing system for the dairy operation.

Goals

Utilize available pasture for the appropriate animal group(s) that will benefit the operation the most by conserving forage inventory and maintaining an adequate income over feed cost.

Steps

• Step 1: Working with a nutritionist, evaluate ration scenarios utilizing pasture for the selected animal group(s). Estimate pasture intake and examine supplementation strategies.
• Step 2: Evaluate stocking density, water requirements, and fencing needs for the animal group(s) being considered for grazing.
• Step 3: Implement a wellness plan on pastured animals such as parasite and fly control, feet and leg evaluation, and observations for injuries.
• Step 4: Complete a cash flow plan including feed inventory usage and feed costs to evaluate the best pasture strategy to implement.
• Step 5: Monitor animal performance (milk production, components, and growth), body condition score, and reproduction on animals during and post grazing season. Use information to make decisions about utilizing pasture for the following year.

Economic perspective

Monitoring must include an economic component to determine if a management strategy is working or not. For the lactating cows income over feed costs is a good way to check that feed costs are in line for the level of milk production. Starting with July’s milk price, income over feed costs was calculated using average intake and production for the last six years from the Penn State dairy herd. The ration contained 63% forage consisting of corn silage, haylage and hay. The concentrate portion included corn grain, candy meal, sugar, canola meal, roasted soybeans, Optigen (Alltech product) and a mineral vitamin mix. All market prices were used.

Also included are the feed costs for dry cows, springing heifers, pregnant heifers and growing heifers. The rations reflect what has been fed to these animal groups at the Penn State dairy herd. All market prices were used.

Income over feed cost using standardized rations and production data from the Penn State dairy herd.

Note: April’s Penn State milk price: $17.23/cwt; feed cost/cow: $5.68; average milk production: 84 lbs.

Feed cost/non-lactating animal/day.

Source: PennState

There are more Holstein dairy twins today than in the past – from just over 3 percent in 1975 per herd to 10 percent or more today.

High milk production seems to figure into more twins, and the vast majority of Holstein twins are fraternal. These twin calves come from separate eggs that are released at the same time from an ovary, but are fertilized by separate sperm.

The result is a challenging situation for many dairy farms. The cow’s nutritional requirements are large. The cow may have difficulty giving birth to twins and passing the afterbirth. It’s possible the dairy will lose both the valuable cow and the twin calves.

“It appears that cows that have some predisposition for double ovulating have a great chance of double ovulation under a low progesterone environment,” said Richard Pursley, Michigan State University professor of reproductive management. “If we grow these follicles under low progesterone, we get a really high rate of double ovulations – that is not a good thing.”

This process is explained by Paul M. Fricke, University of Wisconsin professor of dairy science as “increased hepatic metabolism of progesterone as a result of the increased feed intake associated with high milk production provides a physiological mechanism for decreased progesterone levels in high-producing dairy cows resulting in an increase in dizygotic twinning.”

Fricke’s research indicates that double ovulation can be decreased in high-producing Holstein cows by “manipulating ovarian function to increase progesterone during growth of the preovulatory follicle before timed AI,” he wrote in a 2015 paper called, “Double Vision: management of twinning in dairy cows.”

Pursley’s recent research showed similar results, and he shared his results in an April Dairy Cattle Reproductive Council webinar entitled “Ovulation Synchronization Programs: An Update.”

In an interesting aside, Pursley mentioned that studies on Holstein dairy cows 20 years ago showed a 5.5 percent loss of calves from 98-282 days of gestation. In his recent studies, he found that dairy cow stillborn losses have only slightly improved today for the latter portion of gestation.

The vast majority of noted embryo losses occur in the first two to four weeks after a pregnancy is confirmed.

In his recent studies, Pursley found that cows were also much more likely to lose their pregnancies when they had double ovulations verses single ovulations.

In an attempt to reduce double ovulations, Pursley manipulated progesterone to test the role of progesterone during the first four days of follicle development and the last three days of follicle development.

“We were able to create a situation where we had high progesterone verses low progesterone in essence and testing whether or not that impacts fertility or not in these cows,” he said. “Our hypothesis was that cows under high progesterone would have higher fertility. The outcomes. It didn’t turn out exactly like we would expect it.”

The scientists knew that low progesterone leads to more double ovulations.

They also learned that when they manipulated cows into four groups of progesterone levels (high for the first four days/high for the last three days; and similarly, with high/low, low/high and low/low progesterone levels) the greatest percent of pregnancies 23 days following AI occurred with the low/low progesterone level (66 percent).

The next greatest pregnancy rate was the low/high progesterone group at 61 percent, followed by high/low progesterone at 60 percent, and high/high progesterone at 49 percent.

“We saw about a doubling of double ovulations in cows under low progesterone,” he said.

Twinning is a significant concern in many dairies today, and dairies and researchers will continue to look into methods to reduce double ovulating resulting in twins in the first place.

Source: Minnesota Farm Guide

Off-farm supplements cannot replace pasture in a profitable dairy farming system, says DairyNZ principal scientist John Roche.

Roche and DairyNZ economist Matthew Newman spoke to farmers about whether they were making money from milk or milk from money at the DairyNZ Farmers’ Forum in Wallacetown on May 4.

Roche said farm profitability from increasing milk solids production was determined by the cost of the additional milk solids, not the average cost of all milk solids produced.

Marginal milk is the milk produced from bringing another feed source onto the platform or taking cows off the platform and feeding them with supplemental feed or off-farm grazing.

“The important thing is that as long as that marginal cost is below our milk price we’re making money … profit is maximised at the point our last kilo of milk solids costs us the same as our milk price. That’s where profit is maximised in any production system.”

Farmers did not have to be an economist to know if that if producing milk was costing more than the price of milk it was costing them money.

“In that case you’re paying for the privilege of producing milk”, he said. “On average the marginal cost of milk produced from purchased supplement is approximately 150 per cent of the cost of the business.”

In essence, supplements should only be used when there was a genuine feed deficit, he said.

“The vast majority of farmers have been told for the past 15 years that the way to make money from supplements is that you push up your stocking rate, you bring in supplements.”

However, the marginal cost wa far higher because there was also the cost of the extra stock, he said.

Instead of listening to nutritionists when introducing feed into the farming system, farmers should be listening to their farm systems analysts because they needed to be using all of their pasture as well as the extra feed, he said.

Roche said it was important to account for all costs which changed when supplements were used to increase milk production, either through an increase in stocking rate or increased milk yield per cow.

Intensification is the increase of production from existing farm land. Newman said intensification meant more inputs, meaning more costs.

Cow numbers had increased 6.4 per cent the past 10 years, while stocking rates for the region had remained mostly steady, he said. Total milk solids had grown by seven per cent each year.

“We haven’t actually increased significantly the amount of feed going into cows, or if we have, worst case scenario is that we haven’t been very efficient with it.”

Pasture and their cost of production were the two areas farmers needed to concentrate on to be profitable, he said.

Source: NZ Farmer

Pasture is a very high quality, balanced feed, unless you mismanage it by leaving high post-grazing residuals.

In reviewing old research for a history paper I am writing, I came across two quotes that I thought made for as interesting a discussion today as they did 70-80 years ago when they were first uttered.

The first, from the United States in 1936, states that “if a cow will eat enough immature grass to provide the required digestible nutrients and if this grass has a normal content of minerals, her ration is not likely to be deficient in any of the essential food constituents” – Woodward, 1936 .

In other words, ‘immature’ or vegetative pasture was known to be a well-balanced feed 80 years ago and the factor most limiting milk production on pasture was dry matter intake.

Dr John Roche is principal scientist for animal science at DairyNZ.

Despite this revelation, many did not believe that pasture, growing ‘wild in the field’, could be as good for a dairy cow as the intensively selected cereal grains that fattened pigs and chickens.

This leads me to what Dr Campbell McMeekan, as superintendent of Ruakura at the time, said, when questioning the rationale of feeding anything other than pasture: “From the qualitative angle, it is often assumed and frequently stated that pasture is not capable of supplying the needs of a high producing dairy cow and ideally needs to be supplemented with suitable concentrates” – McMeekan, 1947 .

It’s 70 years since McMeekan’s presentation at the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, but his commentary is as relevant today as it was then.

Many people still believe that pasture is not a wholly balanced feed ingredient for cows, highlighting its lack of sugars (or starch) relative to cereal grains, the excess of protein, relative to a cow’s requirement, and the high milk yields of cows in dairy systems feeding grains relative to those achieved by cows ‘forced’ to live on pasture alone.

Is pasture a good feed for dairy cows?

In a word, YES!

In fact, our perennial ryegrass and white clover-based pasture in New Zealand is, arguably, the most balanced feed a dairy cow could eat.

· It contains the same energy density as wheat or maize, although the energy comes from the fermentation of fibre instead of grain.

· The composition of the protein is ideal to maximize milk production; there are no amino acids deficient, unless the cow is supplemented with a large amount of a low protein grain, palm kernel, or maize silage.

· The vitamin and mineral composition is also pretty well-balanced, although supplementation with calcium straight after calving, and magnesium and some trace elements is advised through calving and early lactation.

Decades of research in New Zealand confirm that cows consuming the same amount of metabolisable energy from pasture, or pasture plus a supplement (eg sugars, grains or silages) produce the same amount of milksolids (Carruthers et al., 1997; Roche et al., 2010) .

In fact, at a system level, the amount of milksolids produced from 100MJ pasture, 100MJ of maize grain, or 100MJ of maize silage is the same (Roche et al., 2010; Macdonald et al., 2017) . This is because in a grazing system, intake of metabolisable energy is the factor that limits milk production. So, it stands to reason that 100MJ from any feed would result in the same production response.

Considering the historical introduction to this article, it is important to point out that this is, also, not new.

Gustav Kuhn and his co-workers in Germany proved this in the 1880s – 130 years ago.

Yet, even in 2017, some people still refuse to accept that the microorganisms fermenting feed in the cow’s rumen do not care if they eat Brussels sprouts or chocolate; they merely care about the metabolisable energy the feed contains.

It is this fact and nearly 13 decades of research work that leads us to point out that milk production, body condition score and reproduction responses to supplements are very small when cows are reasonably well fed on pasture.

As a result, supplementary feeds should only be used when cows do not have enough pasture (ie grazing residuals are less than 3.5cm – 7 clicks on the plate meter).

But, what about the excess of protein – doesn’t this cost energy and reduce fertility?

As with most of the mythology I hear regarding feeding dairy cows, there is a degree of truth in this, and a whole pile of nonsense.

When cows consume protein in excess of their requirements, it is converted to urea in the liver and either returned to the rumen or excreted in urine. As the process of creating urea requires energy, it was once believed (and obviously still is by many) that there is a significant energy and protein cost to excreting excess protein.

However, more recent research has highlighted that this depends on the type of protein and is largely untrue for the type of protein in pasture. There isn’t a large cost to excreting surplus protein that is degraded in the rumen and this is the main type of protein in pasture.

Therefore, in most day to day situations, dealing with excess protein is an insignificant detail to the grazing dairy cow.

When milk companies began presenting milk urea results on the milk docket, many farmers began asking what this meant. There was plenty of advice from ‘nutritionists’ that the levels in grazing cows were very high. Pasture was labelled as ‘poison’ and needed to be supplemented with a low protein feed, like cereal grains or maize silage. If you didn’t do this, your cows wouldn’t get pregnant.

This is utter nonsense. Although there was limited evidence in the US that high protein diets reduce the chances that a cow will get pregnant (Canfield et al., 1990; Butler, 1998) , the only information available for grazing dairy cows suggests that fertility improves with increasing blood and milk urea nitrogen (Roche et al., 2011) . This evidence comes both from experiments and from testing bulk milk from real farms.

If pasture is such a good feed, why do New Zealand cows produce less milk than cows in the US?

The difference in milk yield between cows grazing pasture or fed a ration in a barn is primarily due to a difference in dry matter intake (Kolver and Muller, 1998) . Simply put, grazing cows have to work for their feed, while cows fed indoors can consume their daily feed requirement with little or no effort.

However, not many cows are fed rations in barns in New Zealand. Instead, when they are offered supplementary feeds, they still have to graze pasture and ‘work for their supper’.

In this situation, when cows are fed a supplement they refuse to work hard. They reduce both their time spent grazing and their bite rate, so their intake of pasture declines. This is referred to as substitution – cows refuse pasture when offered a supplementary feed.

Substitution is as much a biological fact as the apple falling from the tree was a physical fact in Isaac Newton’s story about gravity.

As humans, we’re the same; if someone fed you cake before dinner, you are less likely to eat all your vegetables. This isn’t because your stomach is full. It is because your stomach and intestines produce hormones that tell your brain that you have eaten a calorie-loaded meal. We have measured these hormones in dairy cows and have found that cows are less hungry after eating supplementary feeds (Roche et al., 2007, 2008) . It doesn’t matter if they’re fed in the shed, the feed-pad or in the paddock, or if they’re fed grains, silage or complex rations.

It’s quite simple, if cows are fed a supplement they refuse pasture.

The main factor that influences how much pasture a cow refuses when she eats a supplement is her pasture intake before she was offered the supplement (Stockdale, 2000) ; the more pasture a cow is eating, the more pasture she will waste when she is fed a supplementary feed. Because of this, we recommend that cows should not be supplemented unless the post-grazing residual is less than 3.5 cm (7 clicks on the rising plate meter).

By following this simple rule, the cow will be well-fed, substitution rate will be low (i.e., very little pasture is wasted), and the milk production response to the supplementary feed will be greater.

But can’t we just get that pasture next time?

No you can’t. As a farmer mentor of mine says, “use it or lose it”. In fact, the effect is much worse than just wasting pasture. If supplements are offered when cows are not hungry, substitution will be high and post-grazing residuals will rise. This will result in poor quality pasture in the following grazing and a drop in milk production because of this.

People sometimes associate this drop in production with removing supplements when, in fact, it is because supplements were offered earlier and when they weren’t needed.

Conclusions and implications

Pasture is a very high quality, balanced feed, unless you mismanage it by leaving high post-grazing residuals. It is energy dense and has very high protein quality; but, because cows have to work to eat their fill, they are limited by dry matter intake. This limitation is overcome by making sure that the stocking rate for the farm is correct and that the dry matter intake/ha optimises pasture utilisation.

If someone tells you that pasture is not a good feed and needs another feed to complement it or ‘balance it’ for some deficiency, my suggestion is that you should probably stop listening at that point; the next piece of information is likely to cost you money.

Take the myths out of feeding cows. The marginal cost and benefit from offering supplements in a feed deficit situation and under different milk prices can be predicted using DairyNZ’s Supplement Price Calculator: https://www.dairynz.co.nz/feed/supplements/supplement-price-calculator/).

Source: Stuff

Dairy farmers and vets should aim to stop using critically important antibiotics (CIAs) in herds by 2020 in order to prevent the increase in antimicrobial resistance, according to a leading vet.

David Barrett, Professor of bovine medicine, production and reproduction at the University of Bristol, says it is possible to stop the use of CIAs in herds, without having an impact on production.

A study at Bristol University’s farm animal vet practice found that by implementing a health plan and using it to continually refine and improve cow health and medicine use, they were able to rapidly phase out the use of CIAs on dairy farms.

CIAs include fluoroquinolones and third and fourth generation cephalosporins.

See also: Doctors call for ban on farm antibiotics 

Cephalosporins are often used in dairy herds for treatment of mastitis and other diseases, due to zero milk withdrawal. However, they are categorised as CIAs by the World Health Organisation as they are most important to human health.

At Bristol University, they were able to reduce lameness and clinical mastitis and increase milk yield and improve fertility, while at the same time removing the need for CIAs, explained Prof Barrett at the British Society of Animal Science Conference last week.

Health planning

“At the university veterinary practice, colleagues worked towards phasing out CIAs by really engaging with health planning and monitoring the herds closely,” said Prof Barrett.

“We were able to phase them out across the practice in 3-4 years and animal health and productivity has improved.

“This does not mean we are calling for a ban on the use of these medicines, they should be available to use in exceptional circumstances if laboratory tests show that no other suitable medicine is available, however, there are very few examples where this would be the case,” he said.

Prof Barrett warned that if this wasn’t achieved then we could see legislation implemented to restrict their use. “We currently have a carrot approach, but if we don’t react we will see legislation. Politicians have this in their sight,” he warned.

Prof Barrett stressed the need for dairy farms to remain profitable and there were three things that farmers should focus on:

1. Employ optimised husbandry systems
2. Don’t rely on prophylactic use of antimicrobials i.e. in footbaths
3. Do not use CIAs

“Just understanding basic things such as the weight of an animal to make sure you are treating animals with the right dose is important,” Prof Barrett said.

He highlighted trials where in many cases farmers and vets underestimated the weight of larger animals and overestimated the weight of smaller animals, such as calves. “This means you could be under or over dosing,” he said.

He also drew attention to inappropriate practices often seen on farms such as the feeding of waste milk to calves.

“Every effort should be made to reduce overall antibiotic use and phase out altogether the use of CIAs. Farmers must work closely with their vets to achieve this, not only is it the right thing to do, but herd health and productivity can be improved,” he said.

Source: Farmers Weekly

Will your 2016 production cost impact your 2017 crop rotation or are you still in the dark of what your breakeven may be?

By now, farms are have processed and submitted 2016 financial information to a tax professional and submitted a tax return. But sadly, only a very few farms took the time to use this financial information to calculate their farms actual breakeven values for the commodities that they produced in 2016. It’s not that doing these calculations will change anything you did in 2016. However, knowing your 2016 costs may be useful information to aid in making decisions for this year’s corn or soybean planting intention.

Many farms take the time to build models and often estimate what their projected breakeven or net returns for this year’s crop may be. In fact, many lenders have asked farms to submit a cash-flow projection for 2017 to encourage producers to take a harder look at how their current crop mix works.

In 2016 it would appear that some farms in the Thumb area had the good fortune to have production breakeven costs fall into the profitable range. Other farms may have shown shortfalls for some crops where the price and yield did not generate the desired income to cover all of the costs.

Building you own farms crop enterprise budgets from 2016 give you a foundation to generate some 2017 estimated budgets to help identify needed prices and yields to cover breakeven costs.

You can find some crop budget templates and cash flow templates that have been developed for use with Excel that can be downloaded from the Michigan State University Extension Farm Information Resource Management page or the Farm Management web page.

If a farm follows up calculation of their 2016 breakeven with a farm business financial analysis, that is a strong foundation. From this foundation you should be able to move into 2017 crop production season with a positive outlook and a basic plan that can be monitored during the year to meet your farm’s goals. 

Source: MSU Extension

Enrique Correal knows the anxiety that foreign workers go through when they hear about deportation and new immigration policies coming out of Washington, D.C.

Correal is from Colombia, but he has been working in the U.S. for eight years. He currently is based in Sioux Falls with Alta Genetics, working as a reproduction specialist who consults with dairies across the Midwest. He travels to dairies in four states and hears the same concerns about labor shortages and deportation at every stop.

“The panic in these people is unbelievable,” he said.

Immigration policies from President Donald Trump’s administration have foreign workers in agriculture on edge, but Midwestern groups are working on ways to help the dairy industry secure the labor it needs.

Correal said foreign workers are critical to the dairy industry. “We’re doing the jobs that no one else wants to do,” he said. “They’re hard-working people.”

Though Trump’s early policy hasn’t been friendly to the foreign worker, the American Dairy Coalition is optimistic about creating an avenue for farmers to get the labor they need. Coalition founder and CEO Laura Fischer is aiming for a guest worker program, and she thinks it will go over well in Washington. She said they want workers who are documented. They want to know who they are, their correct name and where their working.

Her Wisconsin-based organization is working on federal legislation that would provide workers with legal status without giving them U.S. citizenship. One bill would allow temporary workers to work in the country for three years as long as they work within the state that sponsored them. The federal government would oversee the program, but each state would run it. The bill also calls for about 600,000 visas for all types of industries looking for both highly skilled and entry-level workers.

A similar bill would allow temporary workers to come to the U.S. for 18 months. A portion of their pay would be withheld during that time, and they could access it when they return to their home country.

The American Dairy Coalition is working in Washington to drum up support. Fischer said some legislators need an education on the dairy industry and the labor situation.

“They believe if farmers paid more money, they would be able to find the workforce here,” she said.

Dorothy Elliott, owner of Drumgoon Dairy in Lake Norden, S.D., knows that’s not the case. She spoke on a panel with coalition experts and others at the Central Plains Dairy Expo in Sioux Falls last month.

Drumgoon is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week operation, but domestic laborers don’t want to work nights, weekends or holidays, Elliott said, and other employees are always covering for them. “You end up having to let them go,” she said.

Drumgoon has hired some Puerto Rican workers, sidestepping the need for a visa. Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, and a new program through South Dakota State University Extension is looking to the island territory as an answer for dairy’s labor shortage. Unemployment in Puerto Rico is high, and so is the cost of living.

“Rural Puerto Ricans want to follow the American dream. They want a job,” said Maristela Rovai, dairy specialist with SDSU Extension who is helping coordinate the program.

Puerto Rico is an associated state, but it has its own constitution and its own government, so there is a special process for recruiting workers. The SDSU program is set up to help dairy farmers though that process. SDSU Extension associates are working to promote the program to dairies in South Dakota.

The state’s labor laws add another challenging component to recruiting Puerto Ricans. South Dakota doesn’t require farm employers to carry workers’ compensation on their employees. The Puerto Rican government, however, requires some sort of insurance to cover work-related injuries.

Rovai encourages producers to consider providing workers’ compensation coverage. For a dairy with 27 employees, it would cost roughly $50,000 per year, or 54 cents per hour per employee, she estimated.

Before U.S. employers can recruit workers living in Puerto Rico, they need to sign up with Puerto Rico’s Department of Labor. The process starts with a recruitment letter to the Puerto Rican secretary of labor. From there, they’ll develop a contract with details about the job and employment package and create a job order form, stating the minimum qualifications for employees. Dairies here need to have a certificate of good standing from their state’s department of labor.

Program aims to ease immigrant workers’ transition
Angel Feliciano came from Puerto Rico to milk cows at Drumgoon Dairy in Lake Norden, S.D.

The initial paperwork takes a week to 10 days for approval. Then recruiters in Puerto Rico advertise for the job and screen potential workers. Producers using the SDSU program can require that potential hires go through an orientation program in Puerto Rico. This is meant to teach applicants what sort of work dairying involves and what they might expect after a move to the Midwest. The idea is that if the workers know what to expect, they’ll be less likely to leave the job.

Rovai hosted one of these orientations last winter when she traveled to Puerto Rico to talk with government officials and prospective employees. Visiting a rural area, she explained to the prospective workers what the job involves, what the community is like and what kind of weather to expect. She said they were surprised to learn the reasonable price for food and car insurance.

“More than just a paycheck, they are looking to find security,” Rovai said.

Three people left the room when she showed them a video of a milking parlor, where they would be working. “That’s OK; that’s the idea of an orientation,” she said, “so they don’t leave when they travel all the way to the U.S.”

The SDSU program also conducts personal interviews of the applicants and sets up a visit to a commercial dairy in Puerto Rico. Rovai said the goal is to find the most suitable candidates.

Producers can take on the application process with the Puerto Rican government on their own. Getting guidance through the SDSU program costs producers $500 per hired employee.

SDSU and other groups in Brookings have created programs to ease the transition for foreign workers once they move here. Feeling welcome in a community is a big part of keeping workers here, too, Rovai said.

Source: Tri-State Neighbor

Summer’s heat seems far away. But it will be here soon and so will pesky flies. Don’t wait for flies to emerge to start your fly control program. For maximum effectiveness, now is the time to evaluate and start your fly control strategy.

“Starting a program before flies appear goes a long way in prevention for calves, heifers and cows,” says Gary Geisler, calf and heifer specialist with Purina Animal Nutrition. “A well-planned, holistic fly control program can keep calves healthier, maintain intakes and growth for heifers, and keep cows milking.”

So, how can you beat the buzz and protect performance?

Consider a feed-through larvicide

A simple and effective way to control fly populations is to use a feed-through larvicide. This form of fly control:

• Does not require additional labor as compared to other fly control options with multiple steps (i.e. pour-ons, ear tags, walk-throughs, etc.).
• Is easily combined with an Integrated Pest Management Program (IPM) – a multi-faceted approach to pest management to make the most of your fly control program.
• Has an Insect Growth Regulator in the manure where flies lay their eggs. This stops the fly life cycle by preventing fly larvae from molting into pupae and, eventually, adult flies.

To be most effective, feed-through larvicides should be fed from 30 days before flies appear through to 30 days after the first killing frost.

“Implementing a feed-through larvicide before flies hatch will help keep fly populations in check. This type of control can help by reducing the first swarm of adult flies’ ability to reproduce,” says Geisler. “The earlier you break the life cycle, the fewer flies you’ll have buzzing around later.”

Look at the big picture

While a feed-through larvicide can help curb fly populations, it’s only one piece of the bigger IPM puzzle.

In addition to using a feed-through larvicide, these management practices can help keep fly populations to a minimum:

1. Identify the type of flies present and locate where maggots might be. Identifying these will help eliminate additional fly breeding locations and determine how to make these areas less of an attractant for flies.
2. Determine if there are any other forms of fly control that could help reduce populations in the areas identified.
3. Clean all pens on a regular basis to help eliminate fly breeding sites and store manure and soiled bedding away from calf and heifer housing.
4. Keep feed fresh and dry as molasses can be an attractant for flies.
5. Avoid accumulation of feed, manure and water, which will attract flies.
6. Use scatter baits for adult flies as needed.

“Taking a look at the whole fly control picture and getting an early start on your program can help calves stay healthy, heifers growing, and cows producing during fly season,” concludes Geisler.

Contact your local Purina representative to learn more, or visit purinamills.com/dairy-feed to learn more about Purina® HEIFERSMART® Booster Tub + ClariFly.

For additional information on dairy nutrition and management, sign-up to receive the monthly Purina®HERDSMART® E-Newsletter; a free online tool to improve operational efficiency by visiting purinaherdsmart.com.

Purina Animal Nutrition (www.purinamills.com) is a national organization serving producers, animal owners and their families through more than 4,700 local cooperatives, independent dealers and other large retailers throughout the United States. Driven to unlock the greatest potential in every animal, the company is an industry-leading innovator offering a valued portfolio of complete feeds, supplements, premixes, ingredients and specialty technologies for the livestock and lifestyle animal markets. Purina Animal Nutrition is headquartered in Shoreview, Minn., and a wholly owned subsidiary of Land O’Lakes, Inc.

If producers don’t see clinical milk fever and clinical ketosis, they often think all is well with the transition cows. But that is far from the truth.

“We miss the big picture when we only focus on clinical disease,” explains Thomas R. Overton, professor of dairy management at Cornell University. “When metabolism is off during the transition period the problem may or may not show up as clinical disease. But it does show up as lower milk production and reduced reproductive performance.”

Recent research has connected the dots between subclinical disease during the transition period and reduced milk production and lower reproductive performance. Thanks to several large datasets of commercial dairy herds we now know that subclinical ketosis and subclinical hypocalcemia lead to lower milk and reproductive performance.

“We need to shift our mindset from the transition cow as a disease opportunity to the transition cow as a production and reproduction opportunity,” says Overton.

Producers who have made this shift in mindset routinely see more milk production—about 2 to 4 lbs/cow/day—and one to two units increase in 21 day pregnancy rate and less incidence of clinical disease. These production improvements are economically meaningful and they are achievable.

WHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS

In the last 10 to 15 years the industry has learned and implemented a lot of changes for transition cows, such as dietary cation anion diets (DCAD), controlled energy diets, and changes in groupings to name a few. But the large datasets collected and analyzed from commercial dairy herds have revealed even more opportunity exists to improve transition cow health and performance.

For example, a study by Chapinal et al, 2012, focused on calcium status, ketone levels and non-esterified fatty acids (NEFA). Herds with greater numbers of cows with low blood calcium at one week after calving had twice the rate of displaced abomasums, produced 6 to 8 lbs/cow/day of less milk on first test day and had a 30% decrease in first AI conception rates.

Another study by Ospina et al, 2010, looked at elevated NEFA and beta hydroxy butyric acid (BHBA) levels in transition cows. The researchers found that when more than 15% of cows in a herd had prepartum NEFA levels of ≥ 0.3 mEq/L that clinical disease incidence increased by 3.6%, pregnancy rate declined by 1.2%, and milk yield dropped by 529 lbs on a 305ME basis for both cows and heifers.

In herds where more than 15% of cows had postpartum NEFA levels of ≥ 0.6-0.7 mEq/L clinical disease incidence increased by 1.7%, pregnancy rate decreased by 0.9% and 305ME milk production declined by 640 lbs for heifers and 1,272 lbs for cows.

When looking at postpartum BHBA in those same herds, the researchers found that when more than 15% of cows in a herd had a BHBA ≥ 10-12 mg/dL clinical disease incidence increased by 1.8%, pregnancy rate declined by 0.8% and 305ME milk production dropped by 1,179 lbs for heifers and 732 lbs for cows.

In the Ospina research, a herd incidence rate of 15% was the alarm level. (This was the cut point most predictive of herd level opportunities.) In the study 75% of herds were above the alarm level for prepartum NEFAs and 40% of herds were above the alarm level for BHBA.

Another study by Lawton et al., 2015 JAM looked at the prevalence of hyperketonemia between three and 14 days in milk on 71 commercial dairies. They found that 50% of herds had more than 15% of cows with a BHBA above 1.2mmol/L.

As researchers have been doing more epidemiological studies of the data from commercial dairy herds the link between subclinical hypocalcemia and subclinical ketosis with reduced milk production and reproductive performance has become clear. Subclinical hypocalcemia and ketosis carry long-term economic consequences.

MAKE A DIFFERENCE

“We tend to focus on the challenges in our face when they occur,” says Overton. But clinical cases are just the tip of the iceberg. The good news is that subclinical hypocalcemia and subclinical ketosis, as well as many of the common transition cow problems, are preventable.

Overton says when DCAD diets were first introduced he was skeptical of the value because low potassium forages are readily available in the Northeast and many herds already have a very low incidence of clinical milk fever without feeding anions. But since this new research has shown the economic losses from subclinical disease he has become a believer.

“I’ve become much more aggressive in using DCAD diets to combat subclinical problems and the results have been good.”

Producers tend to look for that one big nutritional tweak that will make a difference. But from what we have seen it can be a lot of little things that make the difference. Implementing DCAD diets, small changes in feeding management such as getting particle size right, grouping and stocking density, and heat stress all affect the transition cow’s ability to thrive.

It doesn’t take a lot to throw things out of balance. It may be a slug of cows freshening at once that changes the pen dynamics and increases competition at the bunk. It could be a change in forage quality that no one noticed. Sometimes the solution is found in ration formulation, but more often than not it is the other little things that make the difference.

“Whenever I ask producers if it is worth it to go after the extra milk and better reproductive performance the answer is yes,” says Overton. It takes an intensity of management, but many who have sought to minimize subclinical disease in transition cows have been successful. In fact, a review of Cornell data from 72 New York and Vermont herds shows that many herds do succeed:

Clinical milk fever is a thing of the past on many farms. Today the opportunity lies in minimizing subclinical disease, stresses Overton. Producers who have changed their mindset in order to pursue the additional milk and reproductive performance that comes with minimizing subclinical disease are glad they did.

Take for example, a 1,000-cow dairy from northern New York. They were seeing 30+% of cows with subclinical ketosis as determined by weekly blood BHBA monitoring in the fresh pen. Those rates dropped to less than 15% and milk production increased by 3 to 4 lbs/cow/day over time. It wasn’t a big overhaul of the nutritional program; rather we identified that the particle size of the straw and hay in the dry cow rations was too long. Maintenance on the mixer and knives and getting feeding management right every day made a big difference in overall fresh cow health and performance.

Changing your mindset about transition cows can make an economic impact on your dairy, too.

To learn more about what is achievable on farm, check out the New York State Cattle Health Assurance Program Transition Cow Guidelines at: https://ahdc.vet.cornell.edu/programs/NYSCHAP/docs/TransitionCowBenchmarks.pdf

Source: Landus Cooperative

For many farms, across all of agriculture, the returns are poor relative to the cost of production. The result is great stress among many farm families. During times like this, it is easy to lose perspective, have difficulty making decisions and to be discouraged. Here are 10 things that may be of help to any family in that situation.

• Take responsibility: It can be easy in times like this to blame big producers, the co-op or others for low prices. While that may make you feel better for the moment, it keeps you from doing what is more important – taking responsibility for your operation. So get over the fault of others, accept the pricing structure and focus on your operation.
• Focus: Discipline yourself to examine specific areas of your business to determine how they can be made better. Set aside time for this and reduce the chance of interruptions.
• Involve employees: Employees are often left in the dark about financial concerns and the need for economizing. That not only opens them up to believe rumors that may have no basis in truth, but it passes up on their ability to help you identify potential opportunities. Talk to them, invite their ideas, answer their questions, and enlist their help.
• Communicate with venders and lenders: Don’t just run up unpaid balances and not talk with them about it. They may be able to help you, and you need to come up with a plan to pay what you owe. These may be difficult conversations, but don’t avoid them.
• Pencil-out the consequences of changes: Saving money doesn’t get you any farther ahead if it reduces your income (short-term or long-term). Consider what the consequences will be of cutting back on this or that and monitor the results. Run your ideas past someone you trust to give you honest feedback.
• Invest where your returns will be highest: Even in the toughest times, investing in some things can be the best option. For example, liming a field to be planted to alfalfa, purchasing a pasteurizer for calf milk, or putting fans in the dry cow pen. These investments, and others, have a high likelihood of reducing problems or improving returns. That is where you need to invest.
• Take a hard look at where you are losing money: Losing value is losing money. Does haylage harvest take two weeks? Is the average age of first calving more than 24 months? Is the death loss of calves more than 5 percent? In each of these cases, and many more, ask yourself how much money are you losing and look for alternatives. It is time to critically examine the weaknesses of the operation and search for alternatives that preserve value for your farm.
• Use your records: Sometimes we keep records but don’t put them to full use. Yet, through them you may be able to control your operation more efficiently, find problem areas and identify what could work better. Start with financial records and calculate your cost of production, compare to benchmarks and look for where you can make changes.
• Seek advice: Consider starting management team meetings. Invite in people who can apply their knowledge in looking at your operation with you: feed consultant, veterinarian, lender, key employees and your Extension Educator. Open your records to them and have them help you to identify opportunities and changes. Others, who aren’t invested in the operation, can provide objective feedback.
• Keep things in perspective: This is about your business only, not about your life or what should be most important to you. Your business may lose money or you may even lose your business, but that is not your life or your identity. Be thankful for family and friends. Consider others who may have less, and do what you can to help them. Take your eyes off of yourself and your own problems and see what you can do to help others with needs around you.

These tips may not turn the operation around tomorrow, but they may help turn you around, and that will benefit your operation.

For more resources, visit Michigan State University Extension’s Managing Farm Stress page.

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension.

Farmers in the UK and Austria could be among first to experiment with an automated robotic animal feed-growing machine, which its makers claim can revolutionise the way animal feed is made.

California agricultural tech company FodderWorks, part of the US agricultural company Simply Country, is pioneering the machine, which grows animal fodder, such as barley, for cows and other food production animals indoors without the use of fertiliser, soil, sunlight and human labor. 

Kyle Chittock, general manager at FodderWorks, told FeedNavigator that educating famers to the benefits of the feed-growing machine and a new approach to feeding livestock was a significant challenge. 

He said: “The real challenge is that it’s not just a robot that is being created. This is a new and different type of feed. 

“We are changing how people feed livestock. They are not sure what to do with it.”

The machine, housed inside a building, works by a conveyer belt moving the robot so it arms spread the seeds on trays, which are stacked on shelves and exposed to water and light from overhead sprayers and lamps. 

After six days, the robot transfers the trays to a washing station after which they are ready to be eaten by dairy cows.

Advantages of machine

The machine offers multiple advantages to feed crop cultivation, said Chittock, chiefly that it saves on labor, land and water costs as well as being more productive. 

A typical California dairy farm has around 1,000 cows and Chittock says farmers “don’t want to have to hire lots of people to spend time growing feed because that’s not what they do”.

“They need to be much more focused on producing the milk which makes them the money.”

The machine can produce two tons of feed a day, compared to half a ton harvested by a human, says Chittock, who says any type of cereal grain can be grown in the machine, but from a “nutrition standpoint” barley works well. 

Asked whether the lack of human involvement in the machine could prove problematic, such as in light of a malfunction, Chittock said: 

“The robot should be very reliable, so it’s not really a major concern. The robot is very simple.”

Automation is the future

While the introduction of such machines could be a concern for the farm labour market, it is indicative of the direction of travel, says Chittock.

He said: “This is the direction things are going. Automated milkers are becoming very, very common in the dairy industry. Instead of having a big crew of people to handle the milking process they have a few robots to handle that. They have proven to be more reliable than people. And get better results.” 

The cost of the equipment, which was showcased for the first time at the World Ag Expo in California this year, starts at $233,000 for a machine producing one ton of feed a day. 

The more a machine produces, however, the cheaper the machine will be, because of the greater efficiency. For a 12-ton-a-day system, the robot would cost under $83,000 per ton, said the developer. 

While FodderWorks has yet to sell any of the machines, Chittock is expecting this to change soon, with interest coming not only from the US but Europe too, in the UK and Austria. 

He sees no reason why the machines can’t be a success in Europe. 

“Such a new thing, it’s really hard to estimate what is going to happen. Once we get one installed, show success, things will take off,” said Chittock.

Source: Feed Navigator

Four years ago, the Rosy-Lane Holsteins dairy near Watertown, Wisconsin, stopped using antibiotics to treat its 870 milking females.

Last year, it had no cases of either ketosis or milk fever, and the farm’s veterinary bills have dropped by two-thirds.

Lloyd Holterman, who owns the dairy with his wife, Daphne, and partners Tim Strobel and Jordan Matthews, said the achievement was made possible by a focus on animal health and a desire to reduce antibiotic use in light of attention on antimicrobial resistant bacteria in animal and human health.

“Healthier cows make more money, and reducing vet costs and foot trimming costs and overall herd health costs leads to better feed efficiency, leads to environmental and food safety improvements for the consumer,” Holterman told those at the recent Western Canadian Dairy Seminar in Red Deer.

Healthy cows are crucial to the dairy’s milk production goal relative to feed intake.

“The over-arching goal and the reason that we’re so bent on getting these cows really healthy, (is) if we can produce 1.7 pounds (of milk) … for every one lb. of dry matter intake, we’re going to be extremely practical.”

Rosy-Lane has achieved this goal only once, in 2015, when high quality feed was readily available, said Holterman. Usually the dairy is slightly short of that goal.

However, it also aims for $800 in profit per cow per year, on a three-year average, and last year it achieved $921.

Technology and capable staff allow the dairy to move 870 cows through the double-12 milking parlour three times a day. Milk makes up 92 percent of the farm’s income with five percent coming from cull cows and bulls and the rest from sales of genetics and from government programs, said Holterman.

He described the quest for cow health and high production as a “puzzle in progress” that would have different pieces depending on the operation.

For Rosy-Lane, those pieces include technology, genetics, people, housing, nutrition, herd health, milk harvest and calves.

Antibiotics are no longer used on cows, but the same is not true for calves, although the goal is for minimal use.

“On the baby calves, that’s a little trickier deal,” he said.

Calf boxes have blankets rather than straw, and each navel is dipped at least three times to prevent infection. Calves are given colostrum within 30 minutes of birth.

The calving area is steam cleaned once a week in winter and twice in summer and treated with a strong disinfectant.

Holterman said all cows are housed together after calving, kept in clean alleys with a place to lie down and given access to fresh feed around the clock.

“Let the cow be a cow,” advised Holterman, and once they’ve calved, provide energy-rich feed to improve milk production and don’t overcrowd.

Rosy-Lane doesn’t use hormones to stimulate ovulation. Holterman said he is hoping to improve reproduction rates through genetics and breeding, although he acknowledged that is a longer-term process.

As for rations, Holterman said Rosy-Lane gives what some might consider “a suicide diet” of 51 percent grain and 49 percent forage. However, in his area of the U.S. Midwest, corn and soybeans are plentiful and cheap while forages are expensive.

Sand in the free-stall barns is freshened twice a week. The farm does its own foot trimming and reduces lameness by scraping alleys daily, keeping them dry and having cows go through a copper sulfate footbath once a week and a soap and chlorine footbath twice a week.

Holterman said protocols specifically designed for cow health have paid off for his dairy. The other key, he said, is to have good partners so that he is able to concentrate on the journey toward ever-healthier cows.

Source: The Western Producer

On any sized dairy operation there are a multitude of events occurring from the time a calf is born until she leaves the herd. Software programs are available to help manage this task of recording events. The bottom line is no matter how good someone’s memory is it is no substitute for having historic information on animals of all ages that can be easily accessed. However, the information is only as good as the person entering the data and is useful only if someone is monitoring the events.

Production Perspective

As soon as a calf is born her record begins with her ID and genetics. Information on the amounts, quality, and times colostrum is fed should be recorded as well as any vaccinations or treatments performed. Vaccination protocols require booster shots so keeping track of animals and dates is extremely important. Calves are susceptible to scours and respiratory problems and listing health and treatment events is useful in sorting through potential inadequacies in operating procedures. The more thorough the records are kept the easier it is to spot problems before they become disasters.

After weaning the majority of events involves movement from pen to pen or in some cases another facility. Prior to breeding age many of the events recorded are booster shots and the occasional health problems. Some producers will weigh and measure height of animals to ensure they are growing within the recommended parameters. This can be helpful in deciding when animals are ready to be bred instead of relying solely on age. The next major list of events is related to heat detection and number of times bred.

Once an animal is confirmed pregnant there may be some follow-up vaccinations and possible hoof trimming events. The expected calving date is typically recorded and preparations are made as she is close to entering the lactating herd.

From freshening day forward the volume of events recorded increases substantially. As the lactating animal enters the herd, there will be events related to health (both preventatives and treatments), production, milk quality, reproduction, hoof trimmings, body condition scores, and others depending on the operation. With all the challenges facing the dairy industry why are some operations not keeping good records or implementing basic management protocols?

The two answers are time and money. Those operations keeping good records usually respond by saying they don’t know how they would function without having all the information at their fingertips to evaluate how the herd is doing. For them finding time is a priority and the positive results far outweigh the investment in time. Keeping track of herd events does not equate to having fewer problems compared to the herd keeping minimal records; the advantage of good records is finding the problems faster and making corrections sooner while minimizing production loss or high cull rates.

The Penn State extension dairy business management team has itemized the costs associated with reproduction, vet and medicine. This area on the farm rarely is the cause of poor profitability. The cost per cow per year averages $76 for reproduction and $111 for vet and medicine. These expenses are relatively insignificant compared to the big ticket items of feed and labor costs. The advantages far outweigh any negatives associated with implementing standard operating protocols and using records to monitor animal events.

Action plan for monitoring health events of the dairy operation.

Goals

With the appropriate software program, develop a system for entering information on a daily basis on all animal groups in the herd.

Steps

• Step 1: Develop standard operating procedures for events such as freshenings, vaccinations, breedings, and treatments.
• Step 2: Depending on the herd size, on a daily/weekly basis generate the appropriate reports to check that all animals have received their vaccinations, treatments or other age related events.
• Step 3: On a monthly basis review the number of incidences of health events by age, pen, and/or stage of lactation with the farm’s advisory team.
• Step 4: Based on the findings, implement the necessary adjustments in protocols to correct the problem(s).

Economic perspective

Monitoring must include an economic component to determine if a management strategy is working or not. For the lactating cows income over feed costs is a good way to check that feed costs are in line for the level of milk production. Starting with July’s milk price, income over feed costs was calculated using average intake and production for the last six years from the Penn State dairy herd. The ration contained 63% forage consisting of corn silage, haylage and hay. The concentrate portion included corn grain, candy meal, sugar, canola meal, roasted soybeans, Optigen (Alltech product) and a mineral vitamin mix. All market prices were used.

Also included are the feed costs for dry cows, springing heifers, pregnant heifers and growing heifers. The rations reflect what has been fed to these animal groups at the Penn State dairy herd. All market prices were used.

Income over feed cost using standardized rations and production data from the Penn State dairy herd.

Note: March’s Penn State milk price: $18.49/cwt; feed cost/cow: $5.69; average milk production: 84 lbs.

Feed cost/non-lactating animal/day.

Source: PennState Extension

The dairy sector is calling for more people, particularly school-leavers, to consider a career in dairy given a shortage of skilled staff.

DairyNZ education facilitator Susan Stokes says the number of young people undertaking formal training is nowhere near demand.

“We have a real shortage of young people for both on-farm positions and rural professional roles. Just about every graduate has multiple job offers as demand far exceeds supply,” says Ms Stokes.

To help attract more young talent into the dairy sector, which has an aging demographic, DairyNZ has created a careers booklet outlining the variety of roles available, and answering questions they may have.

“We want to open people’s eyes to the opportunities available to them in the dairy sector. Milking cows is, of course, the foundation, and there are many other roles too, from working on-farm through to agri-business or agri-science positions,” she says.

DairyNZ’s Sally Peel grew up in Auckland and has found her niche in dairy. She works alongside farmers, scientists, rural consultants, agricultural retailers and DairyNZ colleagues developing resources, such as feed budget templates, for use by farmers.

“I have the best of both worlds. Some days I get out onto farms, other days I’m in the office not far from Hamilton city shops and cafes,” Miss Peel says.

Her advice to young people considering a role in the dairy sector? “Give it a go, and try something new. Studying agriculture-related subjects can open a lot of doors, both on and off-farm, and in the other primary industries.”

Source: Business Scoop

Dry cows must be provided with total comfort at all times, so as to ensure a successful calving, according to Co. Antrim vet Brian O’Donnell.

“This includes the provision of adequately-sized cubicles, plus ample feed troughs and water space.

“Great care must be taken when introducing new animals to a dry cow group, so as to minimise stress levels for all the animals involved.

“At calving, cows should be placed in well-bedded pens that are directly adjacent to the dry cow accommodation, again so as to minimise stress,” he said.

O’Donnell is a member of the professional team with the Caddy veterinary practice in Randalstown. He said that eight weeks is the optimal dry cow dry period for a dairy cow.

“Cows should be scanned during mid-pregnancy to ascertain their exact calving date. Simply going by an insemination date is not accurate enough. Increasing numbers of farms are now using heat detection technology to facilitate their breeding programmes.

“This is additional information that can be used to ascertain calving dates, should cows be running with a bull,” the vet added.

Breeding Season Management Priorities

In preparation for the upcoming breeding season, O’Donnell cited a number of management priorities.

“Cows should be achieving high dry matter intakes. Good udder and hoof health are also important. If a cow is off her feet, she won’t feed and she won’t breed,” he explained.

O’Donnell pointed out that cows that had experienced milk fever after calving will, inevitably, prove difficult to get back in calf.

“Bull selection is also an important factor in determining cow fertility,” he said.

Sires with any form of calving difficulty associated with them should be avoided at all costs. Problems of this nature will only set the cows back and delay them significantly when it comes to conceiving again.

O’Donnell said that dry cow management has an impact on all of the factors that come into play, where fertility is concerned.

“Body Condition Score (BCS) is the key driver in this regard. Cows should have a score of 3.0 at calving. In fact, dairy farmers should make it a priority to have their cows at this level of condition the year round,” he said.

Source: AgriLand

During lactation the udder is under pressure to continue producing milk after which there is a dry period during which the udder has an opportunity to recover.

Impact

Control of mastitis in the dry cow

Responsible use of antibiotics

For information regarding the responsible use of antibiotics click here.

Source: Boehringer

Hear from Dr. Heather Dann on the importance of transition cow management, and how feeding lower-energy transition diets could benefit a herd. From monitoring intake to coordinating various diets, Dr. Dann offers insights into setting cows up for success in their next lactation.

Mitch Bruenig has been around dairy cows long enough — all his life, to be exact – to suspect something was amiss with two of his Holsteins.

He’s been around UW–Madison dairy science department long enough – he graduated in 1998 and his 450-cow farm in Roxbury is practically a field research station for the department – to suspect ketosis.

This “silent killer” is caused by excessive toxic particles released by the liver, usually when a cow starts to produce milk after giving birth.

And so it was fortuitous that Heather White, an assistant professor of dairy science at UW–Madison and one of the world’s experts on detecting ketosis, was visiting Bruenig’s Mystic Valley Dairy, within sight of the St. Norbert’s church steeple in Northwest Dane County, on that day in March.

The start of lactation is the moment of maximum metabolic stress for a dairy cow, when her over-worked liver can crank out molecules called ketones that provide energy to other tissues in the body but, if excessive, can reduce milk output, set the stage for disease, and even cause the cow to be culled from the herd.

Milk output from the cows in question had dropped, which could have many causes. Ketosis, however, appears in 40 percent to 60 percent of lactating American dairy cows.

Even though ketosis costs an average of $290 per cow, it’s often undiagnosed, as the blood tests are laborious and expensive. Far better would be a test for tell-tale molecules in the milk, which is exactly what White has been working on, in collaboration with department chair Kent Weigel, and Gary Oetzel, a professor of veterinary medicine.

The result of their labor, called KetoMonitor, is now incorporated in the AgSource system used by dairy farmers across the state to track their herds and milk output in an average of 100,307 cows over the last 12 months, predominantly in Wisconsin. AgSource relies on a sophisticated spectrometer to look for two milk-borne compounds that signal ketosis, and then uses sophisticated computer analysis to refine the prediction.

When Ryan Pralle and Rafael Caputo Oliveira, both graduate students with White, sampled blood from the two cows, Bruenig’s hunch proved correct. The cows had a silent, or “sub-clinical,” ketosis. Armed with that knowledge, Bruenig began corrective measures that usually tame ketosis, such dietary supplements.

Blood tests are the old-fashioned way – but still the gold standard –for detecting ketosis. But ketomonitor’s milk tests and computation have become the first line of defense.

By testing milk from “fresh” cows every week or so, Ketomonitor first estimates the prevalence of ketosis in the fresh cows. Then, by analyzing the data on milk production, reproductive history and other matters, on each fresh cow, it identifies cows that might need a blood test for ketosis.

Ketomonitor already catches 85 percent of cows with the condition, which is almost enough to avoid blood tests entirely. Once they reach 90 percent accuracy, blood tests for every fresh cow would no longer make economic sense, White says.

To reach that magic number, Pralle is using computational tactic called “machine learning” (think digital self-help class). When the software makes a mistake, it combs through the data, looking to do better next time around. The accuracy is improving, he says. “When we compare it to some other non-blood tests, I think our tools are very competitive.”

When White and her collaborators began tackling the problem about 10 years ago, “We recognized there is a lot of money lost in sub-clinical ketosis,” she says. “A cow is having negative outcomes — she’s making less milk and is not going to re-breed as easily, but she can’t walk up and tell you she’s sick.”

Due to the efforts of White and others at UW–Madison and beyond, that has changed. “Ketosis has become something that producers really want to manage because they recognize the cost of the disorder,” says Pralle.

None of this is lost on Bruenig, who sees a future with more constraints as a prime reason to focus on efficiency. “We will be in a position where we will need to grow more food on less land with fewer cows.”

Ketomonitor can help in unexpected ways, Bruenig says. “When we adapted to the market by eliminating BST [the hormone bovine somatotropin], we had to change nutrition and management, and we used Ketomonitor to assess the impact of those changes.”

“Advances like KetoMonitor help us keep the herd healthy, and allow us to stay competitive,” he says. “That’s the kind of help we really need.”

Source: News

CRV Ambreed has made a genetic discovery that it anticipates will result in a more sustainable dairy industry and potentially reduce nitrogen leaching on New Zealand farms by 20% within 20 years.

In what’s thought to be an international first, the dairy herd improvement company has announced it will market bulls that are desirable for traditional traits as well as being genetically superior for a new trait that is related to urea nitrogen in milk.

CRV Ambreed is now selling semen from bulls whose daughters will have reduced concentration of Milk Urea Nitrogen (MUN) under a LowN Sires™ brand. MUN is a measure of the amount of nitrogen contained as milk urea, and CRV Ambreed R&D Manager Phil Beatson says there’s overwhelming international evidence of a direct connection between MUN and the amount of nitrogen excreted in urine when fed different diets.

“If this connection carries over, cows bred for lower levels of MUN are expected to excrete less nitrogen in their urine which will, in turn, reduce the amount of nitrogen leached from grazed pasture,” Mr Beatson says. “Daughters of CRV Ambreed’s 2017 LowN Sires™ could potentially save New Zealand 10 million kilograms in nitrogen leaching a year, based on a national herd number of 6.5 million dairy cattle.” He says CRV Ambreed’s projections indicate that it’s possible to breed cattle that will reduce nitrogen leaching by 20% within 20 years.

CRV Ambreed Managing Director Angus Haslett says the firm has been researching the connection between MUN and nitrogen in urine for five years. “The link between MUN and lower nitrogen output has been acknowledged before in international research, but this is the first time in the world that genetics for low MUN is being marketed with the aim being to reduce nitrogen leaching.”

Hundreds of thousands of straws of semen from a team of more than 20 existing top-performing bulls with desirable genetic makeup for low levels of MUN, known as LowN Sires™, are already available for use in 2017.

Mr Haslett says this is a continuation of CRV Ambreed’s ongoing work to breed for particular traits that improve New Zealand’s dairy herds for health and environmental reasons. “The future is about using genetics for better breeding and CRV Ambreed has been operating in the future for some time. Farmers are already using genetics to breed cows that are more tolerant to Facial Eczema and for breeding polled calves that will not need costly and time-consuming de-budding.”

He says while there is a vast amount of research being conducted and proposed in New Zealand to mitigate nitrogen leaching, it makes sense to look at breeding cows that produce less nitrogen from economic and environmental viewpoints. CRV Ambreed will be the first organisation in New Zealand and possibly the world to provide a long-term genetic solution to nitrogen leaching by identifying and selecting bulls for low MUN genes.

“Genetics can produce great gains for farmers,” he says. “Farmers already choose CRV Ambreed bulls to breed certain traits in their cows, so this is another step on that journey of finding solutions in genetics.”

Mr Haslett says there is still research to be done to further test and confirm the genetic development and CRV is working with DairyNZ, AgResearch and Lincoln University on this. CRV Ambreed is very positive about the potential benefits the discovery will deliver for farmers and the nation.

The genetic announcement has been welcomed by major industry players such as DairyNZ. DairyNZ Strategy and Investment Leader for Productivity, Dr Bruce Thorrold, says the potential for farmers to reduce nitrogen leaching by breeding cows with lower urinary nitrogen output is exciting.

“If the planned science proves the link between breeding for MUN and urinary nitrogen output, this would give farmers in nitrogen-limited regions such as Canterbury more options to reduce nitrogen leaching without going away from a pasture-based system. Animal breeding would potentially add to gains from DairyNZ investment in research on managing nitrogen inputs, using stand-off and finding plants with lower nitrogen content.”

CRV Ambreed has already briefed some of New Zealand’s regional councils about the discovery as many regional councils are working with farmers to minimise nitrogen leaching.

Source: Business Scoop

The microbiological revolution is improving forage quality and cow health. Chloe Palmer attends an event hosted by EnviroSystems to hear how soil biology is the essential ingredient.

Ensuring the soil can support a strong biological component is key to high quality forage and a healthy cow, farmers heard at an event in Staffordshire.

“You are what you eat and it is the same for a cow,” says David Lievesley, who along with James and Jonathan Pickford, runs Picston Holsteins at Spot Acre Farm, near Stone, Staffordshire.

Mr Lievesley was joined by David Law, managing director of the New Zealand-based Forward Farming Biological Consultancy, and both explained how they believe many of the disease problems seen in the modern dairy cow are linked to deficiencies in the soil, passing through to forage.

“All cows are built on calcium and we send a tank of calcium off the farm each day. What are we doing to put it back?” Mr Lievesley asked.

Mr Leivesley pointed to cows giving more than 10,000 litres each year and whenever they are stressed, they will take calcium from their metabolism.

A farm expansion planner says it takes time to properly go from concept to completion. Emily Schmidt of Miller Engineers & Scientists in Sheboygan, Wisconsin helps farmers with the expansion process and says there are two time-consuming steps. “If you take the 90-days in just for the permitting process plus the time to design, I mean we usually look into a month to six months in advance before we want to break ground.”

Schmidt says planners like to meet with farmers to look beyond their present expansion plans. “Do kind of like a 1,000-foot view of your farm and like a really big picture on how big you are really going to expand so that you don’t get backed into a corner geographically later.”

Schmidt says sometimes engineers have to deal with problems during the design process, because when one part of the farm operation changes, it impacts everything else from feed storage to manure management.

She says farmers who are considering expansion should discuss their ideas with experts at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), the local land and water conservation department, or an engineering firm for guidance.

Source: Brownfield

If you think your heifer reproduction program is on track, you may want to look again. Conception rate and percentage of heifers pregnant within three services are metrics commonly used to track performance of heifer reproduction.

Unfortunately, time is the missing component from both of these heifer reproductive measurements. And time wasted is money wasted. There is a sizable financial advantage for a heifer that calves for the first time at 23 months of age versus one that freshens at 25 or 26 months.

Measuring how quickly open heifers are converted to pregnant heifers or the pregnancy rate is a much better indicator. Getting heifers inseminated soon after the end of the voluntary waiting period will have an enormous impact on pregnancy rate because heifers have higher fertility than lactating cows. And it will get them to the milking string sooner.

Follow these five steps to improve management of your heifer reproduction program and save money: 

Step 1: Move heifers to the breeding pen.

Timely pen movement is often overlooked. First, heifers should be moved into the artificial insemination (AI) pen based on age. Then, evaluate if they are ready for breeding by ensuring height and weight targets have been met. On most dairies, heifers should be moved at least every two weeks, but weekly is better.

Step 2: Use prostaglandin on the date of the move.

Depending on your veterinarian’s advice and what works best for your operation, administer LUTALYSE^® Injection (dinoprost tromethamine injection) or LUTALYSE^® HighCon Injection (dinoprost tromethamine injection) on the day of movement and again 10 to 12 days later for heifers not yet inseminated. Research has found that administering a prostaglandin in this protocol can improve breeding success.¹

Step 3: Make sure all heifers are inseminated.

EAZI-BREED^™ CIDR^® Cattle Insert should be used for timed breeding on heifers not inseminated during their first 28 days in the breeding pen. This will ensure all heifers are inseminated within 36 days of arrival into the AI pen.

Step 4: Do routine pregnancy checks.

Conduct pregnancy diagnosis routinely as heifers are moved to the breeding pen to identify pregnant females and move them out, making room for new heifers. All pregnancies should be reconfirmed at 70 to 90 days carried calf.

Step 5: Re-enroll open heifers.

At each pregnancy check, any heifers that aren’t bred should be immediately submitted to a breeding program with LUTALYSE or LUTALYSE HighCon and/or EAZI-BREED CIDR.

Simple steps can help accelerate performance and profitability. Your veterinarian is your best resource to help evaluate and manage your breeding program.

Source: Zoetis

Over the past few years, there have been dramatic improvements in dairy reproductive performance.

Research is revealing and the industry is embracing aspects of management, genetics and physiology that are propelling repro rates, Dr. Milo Wiltbank, University of Wisconsin Madison dairy scientist, said during the March DAIReXNET webinar.

Cow comfort, compliance and AI skills are essential for productive management, he noted. Genomics now allow selection of cows that are higher for DPR (daughter pregnancy rate) and cow conception rate, and reproductive management programs are available that drive service rate and improve fertility.

But when it comes to high-efficiency dairy cattle and reproduction, Wiltbank said, nutrition is a particularly big player.

The role of nutrition

Recent research has illuminated the important time periods to focus on and the effect of Vitamin E on reproductive performance, as well as the importance of dry period nutrition and postpartum body condition score.

Wiltbank splits a cow’s timeline into several critical segments: the dry period of the last three weeks before she calves, the early post-partum of three weeks following calving, and the pre-AI period of one week before breeding.

Vitamin E

Vitamin E plays a critical role in cow health. It decreases as calving approaches due to accumulation in colostrum, which poses problems since cows with lower levels are more likely to retain fetal membranes.

Wiltbank reported that research geared toward improving retained placenta rates was conducted on three dairy farms in Brazil. There were nearly 900 cows in the study that injected 1,000 IU of vitamin E at three weeks, two weeks and one week before expected calving.

While the amount of vitamin E injected was not enough to change concentrations, it was enough to have an impact on outcomes. Retained placenta rates dropped significantly, from 20 percent in the control group to 13.5 percent in the Vitamin E group.

Interestingly, stillbirths were dramatically reduced by supplementing Vitamin E, dropping from nearly 15 percent to under 9 percent. “This suggests that stillbirth is also related, probably to the placenta, and probably to the Vitamin E and immune status of the animal,” Wiltbank said. “This was an intriguing result.”

There was no effect on milk production, but reproductive performance also improved. Pregnancy losses for first postpartum AI dropped significantly with Vitamin E , while the percentage of cows pregnant from all AIs was significantly higher with the vitamin.

“That was a key result”, Wiltbank observed. “Somehow, by supplementing Vitamin E before calving, we can reduce retained placentas, stillbirths and pregnancy losses, and also somewhat improved fertility.”

Nutrition

Another study focused on how prepartum nutritional strategy affects reproductive performance by evaluating seven previous studies. The effort involved over 400 cows fed controlled energy or high energy diets during the far-off or close-up dry period.

Nutrition had no effect on the far-off dry period, but it did close-up. With the controlled energy diet, the period from calving to pregnancy were reduced by 10 days and body condition score (BCS) losses were reduced.

“There was better reproductive performance when we had a more controlled energy, a higher fiber, diet during the dry period,” Wiltbank pointed out.

The studies make the argument that reproductive performance can be improved by optimizing nutrition during the dry period. “Dry period nutrition can alter calving and early postpartum physiology and subsequent fertility,” he summarized.

BCS impacts

In recent years, researchers have tested whether nutrition in early postpartum has an effect on embryo quality. Wiltbank referenced a study on the relationships between fertility and postpartum changes in body condition and body weight in lactating dairy cows, showing a cow’s body condition score at the time of AI does, indeed, impact her fertility.

In one experiment involving double-Ovsynch for first service and over 1,880 cows in Wisconsin, researchers evaluated BCS at calving and 21 days later. About 42 percent of the cows lost BCS, 36 percent maintained BCS and over 22 percent actually gained BCS.

“The effect on fertility was just incredible,” Wiltbank said. “The animals that gained weight had amazing fertility, and it dropped down from there.”

At 40 days, cows that lost BCS had 25 percent fertility, while cows that maintained BCS had 38 percent and cows that gained BCS hit 84 percent fertility. Subsequent studies echo the results, Wiltbank noted.

Research on embryo quality was also conducted by weighing the animals weekly after calving, superovulating them and then evaluating the embryos to determine the effects of body weight changes.

The study of 460 embryos found big differences. Almost 50 percent of the low BCS animals had degenerate embryos, compared to 20 percent in other weight groups. “There was quite a dramatic difference, and it was mostly for the animals that lost a lot of body weight (about 8 percent) in the early post-partum period,” Wiltbank said.

He noted that lower BCS near the time of AI reduces fertility, but this effect might be addressed by Double-Ovsynch protocol.

Considering the last week before AI is a very sensitive period, researchers tried to evaluate how dietary components are associated with fertility traits. Complete diets were obtained on 50 dairy farms with Dairy Comp 305 backups for fertility and other traits.

The resulting data showed the higher the non-detergent fiber in the diet, the better the pregnancy rate at first AI, but the higher the non-fiber carbohydrate, the lower the pregnancy rate per AI at first service. “The high carbohydrate seems to be very much a negative. The same is true for starch,” Wiltbank observed.

Too high of carbohydrates in diets reduces pregnancies per AI, possibly due to elevated insulin in the blood, he summarized, while fat, particularly polyunsaturated fatty acids, can improve pregnancies per AI.

Methionine in the diet has been shown to improve reproductive efficiency by stopping abnormal gene expression. “It seems to have a effect on pregnancy loss with multiparous cows,” Wiltbank said, noting pertinent research is ongoing.

Wrapping it up

Considering the critical periods for nutritional effects on reproduction, Wiltbank offered four keys. Improve nutrition in the dry period, particularly in terms of sufficient Vitamin E and energy.

In early post-partum, reduce BCS loss to positively impact the embryo.

One week before AI, Improve nutrition by lowering the NFC and increasing PUFA to impact fertility and, during pregnancy, optimize amino acids to reduce pregnancy losses.

Source: Wisconsin State Farmer

Oregon has 228 family dairy farms, ranging from fewer than 100 cows being milked each day to more than 30,000. Regardless of the size of the farm, there are certain values, standards and management practices that every Oregon dairy farmer has in common.

Farm size does not determine farm quality. It’s a misperception that larger farms are somehow not as good for the animals, environment, employees or community. Here are seven things you should know about large dairy farms:

1 They are good stewards of the air, land and water. No matter how many cows they milk, farmers care for their land and their natural resources. It’s important to them to do the right thing and be good neighbors and members of the community and they take the initiative to do so by voluntarily implementing best management practices on their own.

2 Their cows are well cared for. Dairy farmers’ commitment to providing high quality milk begins with taking good care of their cows. On farms of all sizes, farmers work with nutritionists and veterinarians to provide a nutritious diet, great medical care and healthy living conditions. Cow comfort is key to a farmer’s livelihood.

3 They follow the rules. Large farms must meet state and federal standards, and they face the same kinds of regulations and oversight as smaller farms. They have regular inspections of their operations to check for and ensure compliance. Dairy is one of the most highly regulated industries in the U.S.

4 Sustainability is not just a buzzword. Farmers are innovating and working toward a sustainable future. They are increasingly working smarter with robotics, automated feeders, methane digesters, precision agriculture, solar panels and beneficial use of waste to increase efficiency and reduce impacts. Large scale farms allow optimal use of scarce resources such as water, energy and land.

5 Food safety starts at the farm. Milk is one of the most tested and regulated food products, and all farmers employ rigorous standards, practices and procedures to ensure that it is kept pure, cold and safe. Farmers are held personally responsible for the quality of the milk that comes from their farms.

6 Oregon dairies are family owned. Even the largest Oregon dairies are family owned. Dairy farmers take great pride in their work, and they want to continue working on the same land so they can continue providing the nutritious food that we enjoy and depend on. It is their legacy.

7They coexist alongside smaller farms. Large farms support smaller farmers and vice versa. Not all farms produce milk for the same processors or the same dairy products or the same consumer markets. There is room for farms of all sizes and types – organic and conventional – to thrive.

Source: Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council

What is the best way to go about choosing genetics for your grazing herd?
“No single ideal pasture-based cow exists,” says Ted Probert, regional dairy specialist with the University of Missouri Extension.

Probert says a discussion on what genetics to use for a grazing herd really needs to start with a look at what type of system the farm uses. For example, a seasonal dairy’s top priority should be fertility.

Probert says another very important thing to take into consideration is how your milk is marketed. Are you getting a premium for components, or is your primary goal high production of fluid milk?

Body size is another important trait to consider for many pasture-based dairies. “Many pasture-based producers prefer smaller cows that tend to do less damage to grass paddocks, especially during wetter weather,” Probert says. He says many graziers also believe smaller animals have an easier time dealing with heat stress and are typically more mobile than their larger counterparts.

Many traits, such as good udder health, longevity and feet and legs are, of course, important – no matter if the cows are housed in a conventional dairy barn or out on pasture.

Bradley Heins, associate professor of organic dairy production with the University of Minnesota, says when choosing genetics for a grazing herd, producers should focus on profitability more than production. “It’s best to think about it in terms of the amount of milk per acre rather than just production numbers,” he says.

Although there is no type of cow that works best in all pasture-based systems, the cow genetically designed to most efficiently convert forages into milk will usually bring the highest profits.

According to Heins, the top traits to breed for in grazing cows are fertility and longevity, followed by feet and legs. He notes that although fertility is a top priority on seasonal dairies, some grazing operations add a second calving season to reduce the number of cows culled for not being bred on the first try. Heins says this choice simply depends on what works best on an individual farm.

Although many graziers choose crossbreds for their increased fertility, disease resistance and calving ease, some still prefer purebred Holsteins for their milk volume. Heins notes that producers who want to stick with Holsteins on grass-based diets may want to explore New Zealand Friesians, which have been bred over generations for being a smaller animal, efficient on grass and low-input operations, having good body condition and high fertility.

Probert adds that before exploring New Zealand genetics of any breed, producers should be aware that much of the milk in that country is produced into powdered milk, which has led to genetic selection for milk solids content and selection against fluid volume. Farmers who get a premium for components may do well with New Zealand genetics.

Many dairy producers who switch a Holstein herd to a grass-based system have great results crossing to Jerseys, resulting in cows with increased hybrid vigor.

“Traits with low heritability tend to be the traits that can be most easily and quickly improved by heterosis through crossbreeding. Fertility is one of these traits,” says Probert. Moderation of size and increased milk solids content are also usually benefits of this cross.

Heins notes Holstein-Jersey crossbreds tend to have hardier calves, fewer calving problems and increased disease resistance in addition to the increased fertility.

Some graziers use a two-breed system with good results; some incorporate another breed for a three-breed system, often using another breed to improve specific traits in the herd.

“All breeds and their different traits can have their place,” Heins says. Montbeliarde cows tend to have high fat and protein, and good feet and legs. Viking Reds are known for fertility, overall health, low somatic cell count and longevity. Normandy cows carry traits for high fat and protein, compact size, good body conditioning and high fertility.

Operations that do not feed any grain at all may want to consider genetics from New Zealand or France, as dairy cows’ diets tend to be all grass in those countries, Heins says.

Probert says that no matter which crossbreeding system is used, record-keeping is essential. He says, “Good animal identification is important to maintain the proper breed rotation.” He adds, “I do think it is a mistake if producers go wild and mix too many breeds.”

Both Heins and Probert note that there are graziers who successfully use purebred cows as well. “Sometimes it just comes down to personal preference,” Probert says.

Both Probert and Heins recommend the use of A.I. over use of a bull. Heins advises to select bulls of merit that have traits for good fertility, then start narrowing down the selection to what traits are best for your herd.

Probert notes crossbreeding programs are much easier with A.I. because, at any time, the herd will have animals that should be bred to different breeds.

Some dairy producers believe it is more cost-effective to have a bull rather than using A.I. But Probert says, “When the value realized from the use of A.I. (increased genetic gain, improved profitability, increased replacement value, etc.) is properly assessed, cost concerns are seen differently.”

Source: UMN.EDU