Kansas Dairy Development provides temporary housing for up to 80,000 head of cattle — from a few days old to springers nearly ready to calve. Their formula for success is all in the details.
A massive question dairy producers often ask themselves is who should be raising replacement heifers. Should they be raised by the producer, contracted out and customed raised, or should they be purchased?
Heat stress undoubtedly causes setbacks for cows. But a growing body of research shows it also impacts the calves they are carrying, and possibly even the generation after that.
Raising too many heifers can be costly for producers, which is why David Erf with Zoetis recommends producers to check their cattle inventory numbers as much as they do milk prices.
As producers continue to dial in on productivity and profitability, they also leaned into technology to help them achieve these goals. Three producers talk tech on a Farm Journal Milk Business webinar.
Every farmer has that one cow who just doesn’t want to get pregnant. But if she doesn’t get pregnant soon, her time left to stay in the herd is limited.
Getting cows pregnant is vital to keeping the pipeline full. According to Jeremey Natzke of Wayside Dairy, a 35% plus pregnancy rate equates to an outstanding repro program and a number his dairy worked hard to achieve.
Young and exuberant, Katelyn Packard would say that everything kind of fell into place with her role and responsibilities as a sixth-generation dairy farmer in Manchester, Mich.
Always looking for the next opportunity, Kutz Dairy is positioned for growth. With the technologies currently in place on the Wisconsin dairy, Allan Kutz believes the next steps of growth will be easier.
Dairy farms are routine. Milk cows 365-days a year. This is the life that Kelly and Christy Cunningham with Milk Unlimited near Atlantic, Iowa, have grown accustomed to. Although in 2017, that nearly came to a halt.
Simon Vander Woude has grown his herd in various ways to improve quality and efficiency. With the help of a dialed-in, strategic game plan over the last decade, his herd of Holsteins have seen tremendous growth.
The Neuenschwander brothers have thrived during a tough dairy economy because of their ability to maximize cow comfort and produce excellent genetics on their Indiana dairy.
The benefits of dry-period cooling for cows have been documented for several years. But what about first-calf heifers, who don’t technically have a “dry” period?
John Schouten endless devotion to global bovine genetics helped earn him the honors of the 2022 Dairy Shrine Guest of Honor award. The World Wide Sires global traveler played a vital role in U.S. dairy semen exports.
With the cost of inflation impacting every corner of a dairy, the producer’s breeding strategy has been forced to become finetuned. More and more producers are keeping just enough replacements to fill the pipeline,.
The milk price outlook has been a welcomed change. Increasing the number of cows in the herd may be a way to capture the benefit of high milk prices. However, feed prices and animal behavior should also be considered.
With the dairy at maximum capacity, the Larson’s use genomics as part of a comprehensive herd strategy on narrowing down not only which females they want to keep, but addressing what resources those females need.
Consumers are asking more than “Where’s the beef,” the slogan for the fast-food chain, Wendy’s, that debuted in the 1980s. Consumers now want to know where a piece of beef came from and the story behind it.
Select Sires, Semex, URUS, and STgenetics, all major stakeholders in the cattle genetics industry, joined together to petition the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel two patents owned by ABS Global.
Sit down to watch a football game and you’ll likely see players sporting wristband playbooks, allowing coaches to improve communication between players. The same kind of concept is being used on dairy farms.
Feed costs, labor costs and material increases all have increased the cost of production, resulting in a steep year-over-year decline in milk production that was illustrated in the recent USDA Milk Production Report.
“The more we understand about how specific nutrition components influence health and performance responses, the more we can support cows in their production cycles.”
Held in Las Vegas Nov. 30 - Dec. 2, the 18th Annual MILK Business Conference has a great line-up of speakers and sessions to help dairy producers capitalize on and further develop their strengths to work for them.
High producing dairy cows are in heat for a shorter period of time, thus increasing the challenges in the timely insemination of cows visually detected in heat.
Over-conditioned cows that lose weight after calving subsequently have lower fertility, produce fewer quality embryos and face higher rates of health problems.
With more than a million people attending the Great New York State Fair annually, one of the must-see exhibits that the fair offers is the Dairy Cow Birthing Center.
Moving to 100% polled genetics is an air-tight method of dispelling consumer concerns about dehorning pain. But the wheels of genetic progress turn relatively slowly in cattle.
Cargill announces a collaboration with producers to advance the practices of beef-on-dairy, with programs to advance research and support beef and dairy producers in finding the opportunities of beef-on-dairy.
As dairy caregivers, we see “Poor Doer Syndrome.” These are cows that struggle for unknown reasons until they subsequently develop an infectious disease, a surgically correctable condition or are culled.
Initiative Petition 13 (IP13), a draft ballot titled the Abuse, Neglect and Assault Exemption Modification and Improvement, was filed in November by David Michelson, a Portland animal rights activist.
A highly fatal intestinal disease of adult cows, Hemorrhagic Bowel Syndrome (HBS), draws concerns from dairy producers, veterinarians and nutritionists, as it is also known as the sudden death disease of dairy cattle.
John Schouten's dairy upbringing not only further generated his interest in the dairy industry, but also propelled the CEO to travel the globe and be remembered for his vital role in U.S. dairy semen exports.
Reproduction clicks along like a well-oiled machine at Schanbacher Acres near Atkins, Iowa, thanks in part to the farm’s routine use of blood pregnancy tests for the past 17 years.
The cow of today may not be the cow you want to milk in the future. As standards change and technology improves, your ideal cow could look very different overtime.
There’s no bull about it, artificial insemination has come a long way since its first use in dairy cattle during the late 1930s. While the technology has vastly changed, the basic principles still remain.
Unfortunately, ovarian cysts are one of the most common ovarian dysfunctions in dairy cattle. In fact, approximately one in 10 cows will become cystic at some point in her life.
When it comes to life on the farm, the knowledge and efficiencies gained from technology are hard to pass up. That’s certainly true when it comes to herd reproduction.