Dairy Production News

How One Mississippi Farmer Turned Data Into $330K in Fertilizer Savings

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 20:40:20 GMT

As the planter rolls across a Mississippi Delta field, row by row, it’s making split-second decisions on how much fertilizer to apply, where to apply it and where to apply nothing at all — a task that’s doesn’t require any second-guessing.

The decisions aren’t happening by instinct nor by habit. The planting and fertilizer decisions on this farm are all driven by data.

For Adron Belk, who farms in the Delta’s rich soils of Sunflower County, that shift — from gut feel to data-driven execution — isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about survival in a tight-margin environment, and ultimately, about profitability.

“This whole field, see how it’s calling for 8 gallons right there? It tells it the target. We’re looking for 8 gallons of fertilizer, and it’s putting out real close to 8 gallons,” Belk says as he’s making a planting pass through the field. “There’s areas in the field where it calls for none. So where it calls for none, it actually cuts it off on its own.”

On this farm, data doesn’t sit in a spreadsheet. It moves. It acts. It makes decisions in real time as equipment moves across the field.
That level of precision means decisions aren’t just guided by data, but automated with every pass.

“Where our phosphorus and zinc levels are low, the starter system turns on and it applies it. And where the phosphorus and zinc levels are adequate, it cuts it all and don’t put anything,” he says.

A Farm That Functions Like a Test Plot

Every acre Belk farms doubles as a testing ground. Every pass is an experiment. Every season is another opportunity to learn something new.

That mindset even extends to what he plants.

“I have never planted cotton on my own. My dad was a cotton farmer until 2007, when he quit growing cotton. We’re going to plant just a little bit this year though, about 130 acres. We’re going to get it custom picked. We’re just really planting the cotton to get a little bit of experience with it on a very, very small amount of acres. I believe it’s the tool I need to have in my toolbox for the future. And right now, I don’t have that tool,” he says.

At a time when many farmers are moving away from cotton, Belk is moving toward it.

“Some would say I’m just a glutton for punishment, I guess,” Belk says as he laughs.

A First Generation Farmer

Belk’s approach to farming didn’t come from following a playbook. In fact, it started with the opposite.

“I’m a first generation/second generation farmer,” he says. “My dad does farm, but we do not farm together.”

That decision for Belk to farm on his own was intentional from the start.

“My dad came through the 1980s. He just had a passion for it — worked really hard, started off with with almost nothing,” Belk explains. “And he did really well, and he knew all the lessons that he had to learn from being on his own, and mainly from messing stuff up on his own and learning. He knew how valuable that was. And he just really wanted us to always enjoy each other’s company and never have work come in between us or our family.”

So when Belk wanted to farm, his father gave him guidance — but not a safety net.

“He said, ‘I’ll give you all the advice you want,’ but he said it’s going to be beneficial if you do it on your own,” Belk remembers.

Belk took that to heart, starting his own farming operation by renting a few hundred acres while still in college. And like many young farmers, he learned by trial and error.

“I have made a lot of mistakes, and if I would have been farming with my dad, I probably wouldn’t have learned from those mistakes. I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to make them to learn on my own,” Belk says. “The mistakes I’ve made have taught me more than the things that I’ve done right, for sure.”

No Silver Bullet — Just Small Gains

While Belk admits he’s learned the hard way and made plenty of mistakes, in an industry often searching for big breakthroughs, Belk focuses on incremental wins.

“I think in farming, we’re all looking for that silver bullet that is going to get you 15, 20 bushels more per acre. But most of those big yield gains like that have already been discovered or have already been done, and so it’s very hard to find those silver bullets,” Belk says. “So, we are really tailoring our farm to finding the 2-, the 3-, the 5-bushel [per acre] differences,” he says.

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That mindset is what led him deeper into data.

“We started really trying to look at data. And when we first started, I thought we were doing it right. I thought were interpreting things the right way. And then realized that we really needed to be going a little deeper,” he says.

Data Into Decisions

That realization led Belk to work with Chad Swindoll, founder of J19 Agriculture, to bring a more advanced level of analysis to the farm.

“He is very honed in on how to analyze data. And working with him has really brought a whole new perspective to ‘Not only now that we have this data, how do we analyze it? And then once we analyze, what do we do with it?’” he says.

For Swindoll, that last question — What do you do with it? — is where many farms fall short.

“There’s lack of implementation on the farm,” Swindoll explains. “There’s a lot of technology that’s available. I mean, we’re with the United States. We’re a very sophisticated production agriculture, but the execution and implementation piece on taking the information that the technology will provide — and then using it to really make a decision beyond just something that looks cool or sounds cool — but really driving change on the farm, that’s very lacking,” he says.

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When Swindoll started working with Belk, he quickly realized Belk is different in not only the way he farms, but how he thinks about farming. What sets Belk apart, Swindoll says, is his willingness to act.

“He does a very good job of collecting the things that we need to make those decisions, and then if if the information is telling us we need this or that, he does,” Swindoll says.

Swindoll says Belk is a good executive, and that ability to not only know what needs to be done, but then implement it, is something that’s fueling Belk’s success.

“That’s something that I try to emphasize and talk about a lot in our industry and with my customers and non-customers. The farmer is the CEO, and an executive’s job is to make decisions,” Swindoll says. “And so we can get hung on a fence and make no progress. At some point, you have to move. And to be a good executive, it goes back to having the right pieces of information and the willingness to act.”

Swindoll says it also takes courage to do something different than what everybody else is doing.

“It’s not easy, because some of the things that we’ve found over the years are contrary to what we have been taught or told,” he says.

A $330,000 Turning Point

That willingness to trust the data — and act on it — led to one of the biggest financial shifts on the farm.

“About three or four years ago, we started really letting the data, we started analyzing the data and looking at it. And what we started seeing is, we were spending a lot of this money on fertilizer, and we didn’t really know if we’re getting a return out of it,” Belk says.

The result was a major change in how fertilizer was applied and how much was used.

“Three years ago, we cut about $330,000 out of our fertilizer budget that I would not have done without good sound data that we trusted,” Belk says. “Now, it took me a little while to get to that, to understand it. Then having J19 really run statistical data and showing us what was real and what was not. When you realize you cut $330,000 out of a fertilizer budget, and you still made the equivalent yields, that’s pretty eye-opening,” he says.

Finding Yield in the Details

While something like fertilizer savings have added major cost-savings to their farm, sometimes, the biggest gains come from the smallest adjustments. That includes what the data told them about tire pressure.

“Because we grow everything in the Delta on a raised bed, in between the tires it really pinches that row. We started noticing where we would run 20 lb. of air where the tire would kind of squat, it was pinching the row more, and we were getting more compaction under the tractor,” Belk says. “In some cases, it was costing anywhere from 10 to 17 bushels of yield on the rows just up under the tractor,” he says.

That prompted Belk to boost tire pressure to 30 lb. or air.

Rethinking the Playbook

On Belk’s farm, the field itself has become the ultimate teacher.

“That field is our textbook,” Swindoll says. “That’s kind of how we do this. If you read something in a book and it doesn’t line up, I think it was William Albrecht who said, ‘If you observe nature, and the textbook doesn’t agree, then you throw the textbook away.’ And we’ve had to do that in some cases.”

That philosophy carries through every decision Belk makes.

“Actually, my dad always told me, ‘Never tell somebody who asks you why you’re doing something, to tell them because your daddy did it.’ You know times change. I mean, we’re in a whole different world right now than we were even 5 years ago, especially 10 years ago. And so I feel like agriculture is changing very fast. I feel like we’ve got to learn to adapt and adopt really fast. Doing all this stuff has allowed us to stay kind of current with the changes in agriculture. It’s allowed us stay current with new products, with new things,” he says.

The New Equation for Farming

Farming has always involved risk. Whether it’s weather, markets or input costs, none of it is guaranteed.

But on this Mississippi Delta farm, the approach to risk is changing. It’s no longer just about taking chances. It’s about measuring them. Testing them. Understanding them. And ultimately, deciding which ones are worth it.

Because in today’s agriculture, that difference between guessing and knowing, may be what separates farmers who keep up from those who get ahead.

Wisconsin Dairy Farm Faces Rare Milk Dump During Brutal March Blizzard

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:32:06 GMT

A powerful March blizzard brought parts of Wisconsin to a standstill, blanketing roads, cutting off access, and forcing one dairy farm into an extraordinary decision.

Even as the storm shut down everything around one dairy farmer, it couldn’t stop the work, or the heart, of this farm family in Manawa, Wisconsin.

Whiteout conditions made travel impossible across the region, and for Chris Henschel, a dairy farmer in Manawa, the storm quickly turned from difficult to unprecedented. The March blizzard forced a decision he says he never expected to make.

“I would say this is probably one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen,” Henschel says.

Snow drifts reached five to fifteen feet high, and roads were impassable for roughly 36 hours. Milk trucks couldn’t get through, and employees couldn’t reach the farm, leaving the Henschel family to run everything on their own.

“The wind was huge because anytime you would plow anything, it would drift right back closed. So actually it basically wasn’t safe for drivers to be out… just my family trying to run everything by ourselves,” Henschel says.

With no way to move milk off the farm, the family was forced to make a decision no dairy farmer wants to face.

“Yes, we ended up dumping basically almost a day’s worth worth of milk because nobody could get here And have you ever had to dump milk before? We personally have no, we’ve never had, we’ve heard of other farmers having to do it, but we have never had to do,” Henschel says.

Even as the milk was lost, the cows were still cared for through the storm. Thanks to robotic milkers, the herd remained on schedule, but the human effort behind the operation became the biggest challenge.

“We milked with robots. So we did not have, our cows did not, it was more impact on our, the people, you know, just trying to get to the barn to take care of the cows and get the cows fed, you know, they did get fed a little late yesterday, but yeah, more, more so on the people than the cows. We made sure that cows were taken care of,” Henschel says.

While the financial impact remains uncertain, the storm tested the limits of the entire family and revealed just how far they were willing to go.

Ten-year-old Jack and six-year-old Elliot joined their parents in braving the blizzard, helping feed the cows and keep the farm running.

“Just getting around, getting the cows fed, you know, trying to open things up. So we could get the cows fed and get, you know, everybody taken care of and trying to keep everybody dry and clean. And yeah, that was a big truck, big struggle,” Henschel says.

Chris Henschel, Dairy Farmer, Manawa, Wisconsin

(The blizzard earlier this week created blinding conditions. With roads closed and employees unable to make it in, Henschels two sons stepped in to help. )

Through the wind, drifting snow, and near-impossible conditions, the family pushed forward—ensuring the cows were fed and cared for even when simply reaching the barn was a challenge.

“Dad’s still plowing some snow, but just kind of cleaning some things up, but yeah, everything’s pretty much back to normal,” Henschel says.

It was a storm Henschel says was worse than the blizzard of 2018, and one he hopes never to see again. But it also became a powerful reminder of the resilience of farm families—where grit, teamwork, and family come together when it matters most.

The Top Three Biggest Mistakes When Using Crowd Gates

Tue, 11 Mar 2025 13:00:00 GMT

Crowd gates are often one of the most used tools on a dairy. Not only do they save significant time for employees, but they also help reduce the stress associated with moving cows.

However, just like any tool, crowd gates can be used incorrectly and can sometimes negatively impact cow comfort and welfare. Carolina Pinzon, a Dairy Outreach Specialist with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, highlights the three most common mistakes she sees in crowd gate usage and provides practical strategies to avoid them.

Overcrowding the Holding Area

Occasionally, overcrowding the holding area happens, but Pinzon warns that prolonged overcrowding can negatively impact cow health, production, and welfare. This is especially concerning during summer when cows generate extra body heat and require sufficient airflow.

“Signs of an overcrowded holding pen include cows with their heads up, unable to plant their four feet on the ground, and looking restless and uncomfortable,” Pinzon says. “Short-term overcrowding can also result from misuse of the crowd gate, by employees pushing it too far forward and smashing the cows.”

To prevent overcrowding, Pinzon recommends balancing parlor and pen sizes, so cows spend no more than one hour away from their pens during each milking. Holding areas should allow at least 20 square feet per cow.

“If needed, a large pen can be divided into smaller groups,” Pinzon suggests. “While this means more trips to the parlor for workers, it significantly reduces the time cows spend in the holding pen. Additionally, short-term overcrowding can be alleviated by moving the crowd gate backward to provide more space for the cows.”

Being Careless

While dairy cows are typically gentle giants, they can be stubborn and slow to move. This, however, doesn’t justify using force. Moving crowd gates too quickly or applying electricity can cause unnecessary stress and fear for the animals.
Instead, Pinzon emphasizes the importance of calm and gentle handling. She advises guiding cows to the parlor without pressure or haste.

“Once the cows on one side of the parlor have exited, the crowd gate can be moved forward,” Pinzon says. “This regular adjustment is crucial to accommodate the changing number of animals and available space in the holding area. Automating crowd gates to move forward every time exit gates are open/lift can help reduce misuse.”

Pinzon recommends keeping crowd gates at least three feet from the cows to avoid pressing against their backs. She suggests using sound cues, like bells or ringing, to train cows to move forward, rather than relying solely on gate movement. If the gate gets too close, pull it back to give the cows more space before resuming forward movement. These practices promote a stress-free and productive environment for both cows and workers.

Workers Entering the Holding Area

Crowd gates are valuable tools for safely and efficiently moving cows toward the parlor entrance. However, when employees enter the holding pen to push cows, it can create unnecessary stress for the animals and put workers at risk of injury.

Pinzon highlights the importance of regularly training employees on proper cow handling and the correct use of crowd gates. She stresses avoiding the practice of entering the holding area to chase cows and instead maintaining a calm and consistent environment for the animals.

“Except for when loading the last cows of a pen and fresh cows, the door from the parlor pit to the holding area should remain closed during most of the milking process,” she adds. “This physical reminder is to discourage workers from entering the holding area. In addition, regular maintenance of crowd gates, prompt reporting of issues, and swift resolution of problems by management are crucial for proper gate function.”

Spotting these three common mistakes in crowd gate use and taking proactive steps to address them can significantly improve cow welfare, employee safety, and your herd’s operational efficiency. Regular maintenance, clear protocols, and proper training go a long way in preventing overcrowding and keeping things calm and stress-free for both cows and workers.

The Identity Trap: What You Do is Not Who You Are

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:56:50 GMT

I will never forget how helpless I felt on Jan. 24 when I watched my son stumble across the wrestling mat. He took two major blows to the head during a match – a sound I could hear from the top of the gym bleachers. As he struggled to orient himself, I felt like I was going to throw up.

In a matter of seconds, he was on his back convulsing with trainers at his side trying to take off his shoulder brace so he could breathe. Sweat poured off his body in a way no workout ever could have done.

I held my hand over my mouth and wailed, watching nearly 13 years of hard work, sacrifice and commitment get carried off the mat on a stretcher. I knew in my heart that this was not a “shake it off” moment as they raced him to the emergency room by ambulance.

By God’s grace, the X-ray of his neck was clear. He never lost consciousness. He answered his questions correctly. Minus the uncomfortable neck brace, within an hour, our son seemed a little drowsy, but normal. We were able to leave Loyola Hospital in Chicago later that day and made it home through the snow that night. With time and rest, he was expected to make a full recovery, but it just wasn’t enough time for his brain to heal to allow him to wrestle in his senior year state series starting a couple of days later.

As a parent, this was a pretty excruciating moment because for thousands of days, I watched this kid commit his whole heart to this sport – a three-time state qualifier who overcame a hip avulsion fracture suffered during his sophomore year during the state tournament, a car accident at the end of his junior season and a torn labrum in his shoulder just weeks after his senior season began. It seemed like all of that was enough. And yet the disappointment was not over.

If I can be honest, I’m angry. Not at anyone in particular, but I’m just angry at the way it played out for him. There is nothing worse than watching your kid hurt and not be able to fix it.

The following weekend of regionals was hard to sit through, though we absolutely wanted the best for his teammates. At church the next day, some friends we hadn’t seen in a while came up and talked to our son. I overheard him say, “Wrestling is something I do, it’s not who I am.”

Parallel Paths: From the Mat to the Ranch

Fast forward a few days to the Top Producer Summit where I listened to a powerful panel. Leaders of top companies in agriculture weighed in on a variety of thought-provoking topics, but one message stood out to me.

“All too often, we confuse what we do with who we are,” said Lamar Steiger with The 808 Ranch. “As farmers and ranchers, we are our job. It’s our identity. That was my problem as a young man.”

Steiger grew up on a dairy. High interest rates in the late 1970s made farming particularly challenging. When he was in his 20s, their family lost the dairy. After working so hard to make that operation work, Steiger took this as a deep personal failure.

“There was nothing I could do to save the dairy because outside forces were at hand. But it’s so hard for farmers and ranchers to separate that,” he said. “Looking back, I had depression for quite a while after that, but we didn’t talk about that then.”

When he was in his mid-30s, Steiger attempted suicide.

“I had to be removed totally from my working life and start completely over,” he shared. “I learned the hard way how to separate my identity from my role.”

Steiger said it wasn’t pretty, but he is grateful for how this time of his life changed him.

“When you come to the end of yourself, you look for something bigger and better. That’s worked out really good for me,” he said. “Being a rancher is cool to me, but it’s not who I am. I’m Lamar. I try my best and I fail. We have great successes and then we have some things that just don’t work out. But it’s not all my responsibility.”

There’s something so humbling about another person vulnerably sharing their story. We can learn so much from each other. All it takes is a willingness to share your story. Left unshared, our stories may only change us. But by sharing, we can help each other find our way through the very real burdens of life.

A Truth Worth Holding Onto

It’s easy to confuse your identity with what you do because it becomes such a big part of our lives. As another Shike kid closes one chapter and gets ready to start the next, I find myself confusing who I am with my role as a mom. I’m not sure what life looks like without Saturday wrestling tournaments and late nights posting photos of our wrestlers.

As I sat there at Top Producer Summit, I kept hearing my son’s voice in my head saying, “Wrestling is something I do, it’s not who I am.”

He’s only 17 and has a lot of life to live, but I’m grateful he recognizes this truth. I know there will be times when he will be tempted to measure his worth by his performance. But I believe when we get honest and share these stories, we can help one another avoid the mistake of confusing what we do with who we are.

A Closer Look at Delayed Cow-Calf Separation

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:50:52 GMT

Delayed cow-calf separation is a topic that usually gets people talking — whether they are focusing on animal welfare, public perception or personal experience. However, we rarely see the conversation anchored in controlled data. New, yet-to-be-published research from Dr. Adam Beard and his team at Cornell University is changing that, providing a clearer picture of how short-term contact and transition milk feeding affect a calf’s early life.

The study focused on the perinatal period: the final two months of pregnancy through the first two months after birth. This is a time of developmental plasticity, meaning management decisions can have a long-term impact on growth and future performance.

“We were interested in the physiologic impacts of transition milk feeding, as well as the societal components of cow-calf contact — if it’s something that’s feasible, could be implemented and what challenges might there be,” Beard explains.

While we know how much prenatal care matters, the big question remains: Does staying with the mother after birth continue to have a meaningful biological effect?

To find out, researchers set up a controlled study where delayed separation was defined as unrestricted contact for the first five days of life. Calves in this group stayed with their dams, had full social contact and nursed freely.

They were compared to two other groups that were separated immediately: one fed the dam’s transition milk and another fed bulk tank whole milk. To ensure the results weren’t skewed by a poor start, every calf in the study met strict criteria for high-quality colostrum intake and birth vigor.

Does Delayed Separation Affect Passive Transfer of Immunity?

A common worry is that delayed separation might interfere with a calf’s immune system. In this study, it didn’t. All calves received high-quality colostrum (>22% Brix) shortly after birth, and their antibody levels (serum IgG) were the same regardless of whether they stayed with the cow or were moved. This reinforces that the timing and quality of colostrum are the real drivers of immunity, not the housing method.

Impact of Nursing on Calf Growth and Health Risks

For those first five days, nursing calves did appear heavier. However, the researchers found this difference disappeared quickly after separation. The early weight gain was likely just gut fill — a result of nursing frequency — rather than actual tissue growth. By day seven, after all calves had transitioned to a standard feeding schedule, the weights converged and no lasting differences remained.

Health risks are often seen as a major barrier to keeping cows and calves together. However, this data showed no link between delayed separation and a higher frequency of fever or diarrhea.

“Some people might suspect that this would make calves more vulnerable to health challenges,” Beard says. “We just don’t see that here.”

While scours occurred across all groups, the patterns were consistent with what is typically seen in newborns, regardless of the feeding system.

The team followed replacement heifers through nine weeks of age. Across the board, there were no differences in:

Average daily gain
Final body weight
Hip and withers height
Solid feed intake before weaning

How Suckling Affects Cow Milk Yield and Udder Health

While the calves were nursing, there was a predictable drop in salable milk yield. However, production rebounded within 24 hours of separation, and there were no lasting penalties in early lactation.

Interestingly, preliminary findings suggested cows being suckled had higher cure rates for intramammary infections, though that analysis is ongoing. Notably, the study reported no calf injuries or human safety incidents during the contact period.

Is Short-Term Cow-Calf Contact Practical?

“We don’t have any results that are remarkably different between the transition milk, whole milk or transition milk with cow-calf contact, but the outcomes also weren’t any worse for having the calf in the environment with the cow,” Beard says.

This research doesn’t suggest that delayed cow-calf separation is a performance-enhancing tool. When calves already receive great colostrum and consistent management, the growth and health outcomes are largely neutral.

The real takeaway is short-term contact can be implemented without negative effects under controlled conditions. Proving this practice isn’t inherently risky will allow the industry to move past anecdotal fears and look deeper into the biology of transition milk and long-term development.

Why We Need Technology and Human Expertise to Close The Mastitis Detection Gap

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:51:55 GMT

Mastitis detection remains constrained by parlor realities. Modern dairies are designed to maximize throughput, leaving little margin for detailed milk inspection on every cow at every milking. Even highly trained milkers can overlook subtle milk changes or early signs of disease when operating under fatigue, time pressure and competing demands.

“With how fast parlors are being pushed, workers are asked to milk more cows in shorter amounts of time. To look at and examine milk thoroughly for 8- or 12-hour shifts, it doesn’t always happen on every single cow,” says Dr. Justin Hess of Clinton Veterinary Services. “You’d be amazed at how much you can actually miss.”

Subclinical mastitis is particularly vulnerable to underdetection because it requires intentional testing that is accompanied by labor, cost and workflow implications.

Improving mastitis outcomes depends less on detection itself and more on what happens afterward. Farms today are generating more information than ever, but that information does not automatically translate into better decisions. Sound mastitis protocols need to be in place and understood by all on a dairy.

“If you try to develop a protocol, and the management team isn’t on board and you don’t have the right people in place, you’re going to struggle and probably make things more difficult,” Hess explains. “We like to keep things simple but effective.”

These protocols largely include management choices surrounding animal density, mastitis detection methods and even the choice of bedding in the stalls.

Concerning mastitis detection methods, on-farm culturing demonstrates the tension between simple and complex protocols well.

(Rose Memories Photography LLC)

“Culturing on-farm can be a struggle because of the increase in labor and having a dedicated person to do it. You also need the knowledge and desire to do it and do it correctly,” Hess says.

When farms have dedicated personnel, clear interpretation guidelines and confidence in how results will be used, culturing can reduce unnecessary antibiotic use and improve outcomes. When those conditions are absent, culturing may delay treatment without changing behavior, prompting farms to revert to broad-spectrum approaches for the sake of speed.

The challenge isn’t just the size of the farm, but the speed at which data must be converted into a treatment decision.

As the limitations of manual culturing and visual inspection become more apparent, the industry is shifting toward passive detection — systems that monitor the cow without requiring extra labor hours.

To address the complexity of dairy systems, Dr. Alon Arazi, chief veterinarian at Afimilk, hopes consolidating data generated by monitoring animals in existing protocols will help refine management and improve animal health.

“All this data is being gathered into one piece of software in which we do the analysis to detect mastitis,” Arazi says.

Sensor systems can also be used to detect mastitis based on deviations from the norm at a cow level. This baseline varies for each cow, meaning you need historical data for comparison.

“The main way to detect mastitis is based on what’s normal [for that animal]. Increased conductivity of a cow or dropped lactose to a lower level than is expected. This is mainly happening with clinical mastitis,” Arazi says. “One of the problems with subclinical mastitis is that the changes sometimes are very, very low and very hard to detect. In that case, we are looking for more and more sophisticated modeling algorithms that combine more and more things together to see things that are just starting to change.”

Mastitis Indicators Used in Automated Monitoring Systems

Automated monitoring systems identify cows suspected of mastitis by analyzing multiple milk and cow-level parameters simultaneously, rather than relying on a single signal. Key indicators include:

Milk conductivity
- Increased electrical conductivity associated with changes in ion flow during mastitis
- One of the primary and earliest milk signals used
Milk yield
- Sudden or unexpected drops in production relative to the cow’s baseline
Lactose concentration
- Decreases in lactose production when udder function is impaired
- Possible lactose leakage from milk or utilization by bacteria
Milk flow / milking dynamics
- Changes in milk flow rate that may reflect udder discomfort or inflammation
Rumination patterns
- Decreases in rumination associated with illness or discomfort
Eating behavior / dry matter intake
- Reduced intake relative to expected performance
Activity and behavior changes
- Deviations from individual cow behavioral baselines

This collected data is then compared and put into context on the individual, group and herd levels. Mastitis alerts are generated by combining multiple indicators, rather than any single threshold.

These disparate data points, along with the sheer volume of data, are where machine learning thrives.

“AI or machine learning will allow you to detect things that, even for us, are hard to see now. This for sure will improve subclinical detection,” Arazi predicts.

These systems aim to provide directional insight that shortens the time between detection and action by reducing the workload and finding changes in cow performance before they would be noticed by a worker. Catching a case 24 hours earlier could be the difference between a quick recovery and a culled cow.

“You don’t have to check every cow because the system has checked every cow two or three times in a day depending on how many milkings there are,” Arazi says. “You get the information, and you get the option to catch things earlier than people can see with their eyes.”

The Human Filter: Why Detection Requires Interpretation

Alerts without context quickly become noise. High alert frequency, poor specificity or unclear next steps can erode trust in the system. This is where veterinary intervention can help a dairy understand what they’re seeing and how best to act.

Hess stressed the questions he poses to dairies implementing updated mastitis detection protocols: “When you have that information, what are you going to do with that information? Are you going to actually change your protocols?”

Having more data is only useful for improving animal management if accompanied by a plan to act on what that data is telling you.

(Afimilk)

Technologies offering continuous observation and reduced reliance on human detection can introduce risks related to accuracy, workflow fit and trust. There is also the worry of false alerts.

“We can still improve accuracy, reduce false alerts and get more sensitivity,” Arazi says, speaking on the Afimilk system for mastitis detection.

These systems are, of course, not infallible. As with all hardware, there are uncontrollable hiccups that need to be considered when looking at the data generated.

“There are some critical parts of measuring conductivity,” Hess says. “If milk is moving or if air gets into the system, it can affect the sensitivity or the reading on it.”

At their core, these tools are designed to flag abnormal patterns, not to dictate diagnoses or management decisions. Alerts of deviations are only meaningful after interpretation by people who understand the cows, the parlor and the operation of the farm. Without the human layer, accurate detection risks becoming background noise.

“The only thing worse than no data is having wrong or misleading data,” Hess says.

The limitation is not simply technological, but decisional. This becomes most apparent when detection systems skew too far toward sensitivity at the expense of specificity. Highly sensitive tools identify earlier or more subtle changes, but they also generate more false positives. Each unnecessary alert pulls time and attention away from other priorities.

At the other end of the spectrum, overly specific systems may miss early disease signals, limiting their preventative value. Effective mastitis detection depends on deliberate trade-offs, favoring actionable accuracy over alert volume. The future of the dairy isn’t just in the data collecting sensors, but in how the person in the office uses that data to provide better care for the cow.

How Technology is Changing the Game in Mastitis Prevention and Detection

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 22:24:02 GMT

Mastitis is commonly described as an infectious disease, but in real-world dairy systems, it behaves far more like a systems problem. Case rates and economic impact are shaped by the barn environment, milking routines, labor capacity and cow flow long before a pathogen is identified. Mastitis persists not because veterinarians and producers lack knowledge, but because it emerges from the interaction of multiple, interconnected management decisions.

From a practice perspective, mastitis is never truly absent on a dairy.

The Ever-Present Risk of Mastitis

“Mastitis is always something you’re managing. It’s ever-present on a dairy and something you try to manage, control, keep in check and improve upon,” says Dr. Justin Hess, veterinarian at Clinton Veterinary Services in Michigan. “It’s always at the forefront to some degree. You hope to have control measures in place and treatment protocols well developed to make it easy and fairly straightforward for a dairy, but it’s ever-present.”

(Rose Memories Photography LLC)

Even well-managed herds maintain a baseline level of mastitis that fluctuates with the season, staffing changes and parlor consistency. Therefore, the practical objective is control rather than eradication. Success is measured by manageable case rates, quick identification of infection, limited impact on bulk tank somatic cell counts and culling pressure.

“Management choices such as bedding type used in stalls, overcrowding and detection methods for mastitis can all influence the case rate,” Hess says.

This reality contrasts with the tendency to treat mastitis as an isolated event. In practice, spikes in mastitis often follow subtle changes in the environment or management system. Instead of just identifying a pathogen, the vet’s value lies in identifying the systemic failure that allowed the pathogen to thrive.

(Afimilk)

Integrating Data Into Clinical Insight

Dr. Alon Arazi, chief veterinarian at Afimilk, shares the perspective that mastitis is not just one thing, but one signal inside a much bigger system of animal health, welfare and performance. That’s where technology comes in, specifically animal health monitoring systems where signals from multiple biological inputs are combined to paint a bigger picture of cow health leading to diagnosis. Technology, such as the Afimilk system, allows for the collection of large data sets from both activity and milk monitoring hardware to help with mastitis prevention and detection. Patterns, or deviations from these patterns, can signal when a cow needs a closer look.

“Twenty years ago, a very small percentage of farms used this technology. Now they are using it much more; more farms on a larger scale,” Arazi says. “In the past it was only milk matter and milk production. Now we have much more information. Information about the behavior of the cow and also more information about the milk, such as components … which led us to improving the accuracy of [mastitis] detection.”

(Photo: Rose Memories Photography LLC)

These ideas converge on a critical point: There is not one single component of herd health management that dictates mastitis prevalence; it is the sum of the whole. New technologies improve our monitoring capabilities, but they must be applied with strong fundamentals, management and prevention practices.

Solving the Root Cause of Mastitis

“If you cull the top 5% or the top few highest cows as far as somatic cell count, you’ll remove those cows and that’s easy, right? But it doesn’t actually tell you what’s causing those cows to get to that place,” Hess says. “If you’re not changing something upstream, you’re always going to deal with an issue downstream.”

Ultimately, the shift from reactive treatment to proactive system management is what defines a modern, resilient dairy. As Dr. Hess and Dr. Arazi highlight, data and technology are powerful allies, but they function best when they empower the people on the ground to make better “upstream” decisions. By treating mastitis as a symptom of the system rather than a standalone event, dairies can move away from constant firefighting to a more predictable, profitable future.

Having spent their careers at the intersection of veterinary medicine and dairy technology, Dr. Hess and Dr. Arazi share a common passion for evolving how we look at herd health. On the first episode of The Bovine Vet Podcast , they join host Andrea Bedford to discuss why mastitis is much more than a simple infection. Together, they explore the “systems” approach to dairy management and share insights on how veterinarians and producers can use data and environment to stay ahead of the curve.

Managing Vitamins and Minerals to Increase Calf Survival

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 21:31:03 GMT

Stillbirths and weak newborn calves are among the most frustrating outcomes in both beef and dairy systems. Calving difficulty, infectious disease and congenital defects are often investigated first, yet many cases end with no clear explanation. Even when calving appears normal, losses still occur leaving veterinarians and producers searching for answers after the fact.

Dr. Bob Van Saun, professor and Extension veterinarian at Penn State University, spoke on the importance of maternal nutrition and the placental transfer of vitamins and minerals on a recent episode of AABP’s “Have You Herd?” podcast.

What often goes unnoticed is the gestational environment that shaped the fetus long before calving began. Nutritional decisions made months earlier, particularly around vitamins and trace minerals, can quietly determine whether a calf is born resilient, compromised or nonviable. Rather than being isolated calving failures, some stillbirths might represent the final outcome of inadequate fetal preparation.

“If we don’t do what we need to do nutritionally for that pregnant animal, we could have very long-term effects not only on the reproductive success of the female, but also on the offspring,” Van Saun says.

Newborn Calves Enter the World Nutritionally Limited

Newborn calves, whether beef or dairy, arrive with a biological disadvantage: milk alone cannot meet their trace mineral and vitamin needs.

“We often tout milk as nature’s perfect food, and it certainly plays a very important role in the macro minerals and in energy and protein, but one of the things that’s been well known is milk does not have significant quantities of most of the trace elements. Particularly iron, copper, selenium and even some of the vitamins aren’t in high quantities within the milk,” Van Saun says.

Trace minerals and vitamins are essential for enzyme function, immune development and antioxidant defense, yet the neonatal diet provides very little of them. As a result, the calf’s ability to survive early life depends heavily on what accumulated before birth, particularly in the fetal liver.

“With some of the work that’s been done, we’re starting to recognize that the mineral status of that newborn calf is very dependent upon how we feed mom,” Van Saun says.

In addition to gestational nutrient transfer, colostrum is an important way to get calves off on the right foot, especially with fat soluble vitamins, so long as the mother has been appropriately supplemented.

Placental Transfer of Minerals and Vitamins

Minerals and vitamins reach the fetus through the placenta, but not all nutrients behave the same way. Trace minerals appear to move primarily by facilitated diffusion, rather than active transport. Van Saun explains that as a result, fetal blood concentrations are typically much lower than maternal blood concentrations.

Once those nutrients enter fetal circulation, the liver becomes the key storage site. However, the complete mechanism by which these nutrients are stored in the liver is not well understood.

“If you remember the anatomy, the umbilical vein goes directly to the liver. It’s my thinking that the fetal liver somehow captures these minerals and stores them,” Van Saun says. “The fetal liver can concentrate these trace elements to a level that’s nearly twice what we typically see in the dam. We need to find out what influences this.”

In contrast, fat-soluble vitamins cross the placenta inefficiently, particularly later in gestation, leaving newborn calves relatively depleted at birth and heavily reliant on colostrum to establish antioxidant protection.

Maternal Mineral Deficiencies and Fetal Loss

At the Penn State diagnostics lab, mineral and vitamin analyses of fetal and stillborn calf livers have revealed a surprising number of incidences of deficiency. Despite expectations of a linear relationship between maternal mineral status and fetal mineral status, there appears to be very little direct relationship.

“When I plot maternal versus fetal concentrations, I generally see a shotgun scattergram,” Van Saun explains. “That makes me think there’s got to be some other regulatory process there.”

Across the data, several nutrients appear repeatedly in association with fetal loss and stillbirth. Van Saun highlights the following:

Copper: Essential for enzyme systems and antioxidant defense
Selenium: Critical for glutathione peroxidase activity
Zinc: Involved in cellular and immune development
Magnesium: Supports energy metabolism and neuromuscular stability
Vitamin A: Needed for epithelial development and antioxidant defense

Oxidative Stress at Birth

As umbilical blood flow is compromised during delivery, particularly during prolonged or difficult births, the fetus experiences hypoxia.

“That’s going to produce large quantities of reactive oxygen species,” Van Saun explains. “And if those aren’t squelched by the antioxidant system, that could cause the demise of the animal.”

Trace minerals and fat-soluble vitamins play central roles in the defense against reactive oxygen species. When fetal reserves are marginal, oxidative stress during calving might push a compromised fetus past a survivable threshold. This could help explain why some stillborn calves show no obvious infectious, genetic or mechanical cause at necropsy.

Why Overfeeding Isn’t Usually the Problem

A common concern is whether aggressive mineral supplementation could harm the fetus. However, even in dams with liver mineral levels that would be considered toxicosis, fetal levels remain within a narrow range.

“When maternal concentrations of liver minerals are very low, the fetal maternal ratio is quite high. In other words, the fetus is capable of extracting more mineral from a deficient mom,” Van Saun says. “But as mom’s mineral status increases to very high levels, the ratio is quite low. Suggesting that there is some mechanism in place where the fetus doesn’t over accumulate.”

Van Suan observed this most profoundly with copper, but has also seen the same pattern with zinc, iron, selenium and manganese.

“Somehow, Mother Nature has built in a protective mechanism on both ends of the spectrum ensuring even when mom is on the low side, the fetus can try to accumulate,” he says. “And then if mom is on the high side, the fetus doesn’t over-accumulate.”

Stillborn Calves as Nutritional Sentinels

Stillborn calves represent an underused opportunity to evaluate herd nutrition. Liver mineral and vitamin analysis from stillborn calves can uncover deficiencies that were not clinically apparent in the dam.

“We really need to emphasize how to make a good situation out of a bad situation,” Van Saun says. “I think if you’re having a string of stillborns, I would be wanting to take a liver sample.”

Repeated measures of low selenium, copper, or vitamin A in stillborn calves, especially in the absence of other pathology, can point back to gestational nutrition as the root cause.

What Can You Do to Get Ahead of the Problem?

Effective investigation of stillbirths and weak calves should begin with diet evaluation, but meaningful assessment of gestational nutrition requires a broader, more deliberate strategy. A clearer understanding can be gained by using multiple diagnostic entry points across the herd and across time.

Van Saun highlights several practical diagnostic opportunities:

Submitting liver samples from stillborn calves when infectious and congenital causes are not identified
Using cull cow or abattoir liver samples to establish baseline mineral status
Sampling healthy animals within defined physiologic groups, rather than sick cows in inflammatory states
Building longitudinal data rather than interpreting isolated results

Taken together, these approaches allow the shift from reactive troubleshooting to proactive risk management.

Stillbirths and weak calves are often the final expression of biological constraints established months earlier not failures limited to the calving event.

Circadian Biology in Dry Cows: The Impact of Light Wavelengths

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 19:58:51 GMT

When a Parkview Dairy in Delhi, Calif., completed a new dry cow and close-up facility in 2025, one design choice stood out: the barn is illuminated with red light at night. While unusual, the decision reflects a growing interest in how nighttime environments can influence cow physiology, particularly in the dry period when endocrine, immune and metabolic systems are under heavy transition stress.

The idea did not originate from a single study or trend. According to Dr. Vladimir Tadic, veterinarian with Azores Veterinary Practice who is familiar with the facility, the concept emerged from a broader awareness of circadian biology and a recognition that traditional barn lighting often overlooks how cows perceive light at night.

“You go to all these dairies, and it’s just regular white light, incandescent or LED,” Tadic explains. “We know about circadian rhythms, and just like with humans, cows are going to have a certain circadian rhythm. But we rarely talk about the influence that different wavelengths, creating different colors, could have on an animal, their healing and recovery processes, and their longevity.”

So the question stands: Why red light?

Circadian Rhythms, Melatonin and the Biological Night

Light exposure regulates circadian rhythm through the pineal gland. In darkness, cows produce melatonin, a hormone involved in signaling rest and regulating downstream processes such as stress response, immune function and metabolic balance. White and blue wavelengths can suppress melatonin production, even at relatively low intensities, potentially blunting the biological “night.”

“They’re trialing how red light impacts their dry cows and following them from dry all the way to close up, then into their next lactation,” Tadic says.

In this facility, red lighting (625 nm to 740 nm) is only used in the dry cow and close-up pens, not in the lactating barns. The red light is not meant to stimulate cows or increase production but as a way to avoid unnecessary circadian disruption during a critical recovery window.

“If the light exposure isn’t the right length of time or the right wavelength, it could be throwing things off reproductivewise or productionwise,” Tadic says. “If animals are less likely to rest, their milk yield is going to be lower.”

While this dairy is still collecting data on their lighting system, the biological rationale behind red lighting is consistent with known physiology. Potential advantages include:

Preservation of melatonin secretion during nighttime, supporting normal circadian signaling
Reduced stress hormone activation, as melatonin plays a role in moderating cortisol release
Improved endocrine stability ahead of calving, which could support insulin sensitivity and calcium metabolism
Immune system support, particularly important as cows prepare for the inflammatory demands of calving
Enhanced rest and tissue recovery, including mammary tissue remodeling and rumen epithelial repair during the dry period

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A post shared by Azores Veterinary Practice (@azoresveterinarypractice)

Recent work published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science adds some more context to the cattle lighting conversation. Researchers evaluated how different light spectra affected melatonin and physiological markers in lactating cows. Longer-wavelength light, particularly yellow (565 nm to 590 nm), was associated with higher melatonin levels and changes in immune and inflammatory indicators.

This work supports the idea that longer wavelength light might be beneficial for cattle at night.

A Management Tool, Not a Magic Fix

Cost, infrastructure and labor realities mean most dairies are unlikely to retrofit existing barns solely for light spectrum management. In the case of this dairy, the lighting choice was made during new construction, making implementation more feasible. Even then, they view it as one environmental component, not a replacement for sound nutrition, stocking density management or transition protocols.

“When you look at a dairy, different colored lighting isn’t really something that a lot of people consider, but I think it’s an important input that can change a lot of things for an operation,” Tadic says.

As research continues to evolve, lighting could prove to be one of the more overlooked variables in dry cow management.

Neonatal Calf Distress: Managing the First 24 Hours

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 18:11:17 GMT

The first 24 hours of life represent the most vulnerable period a calf will ever experience, where oxygen deprivation, metabolic acidosis, trauma and pain can quickly overwhelm an already compromised neonate. Managing neonatal distress involves early detection, rapid assessment and decisive intervention.

Many distressed calves arrive compromised. Prolonged calving, excessive traction or repeated premature intervention increase the likelihood of hypoxia, trauma and delayed physiologic recovery. A live calf is not necessarily a stable calf. Distress is often subtle in the first minutes and can be missed if assessment relies solely on heart rate or movement.

Dr. Ryan Breuer of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine outlined the following early indicators of neonatal distress:

Delayed head lifting or failure to achieve sternal recumbency
Irregular, shallow or gasping respiration
Blue or pale mucous membranes
Meconium staining
Swollen head or tongue

“If calves are not trying to get up or won’t stay in sternal recumbency after 15 minutes, these calves have a very poor prognosis,” Breuer says. These calves need immediate veterinary care and are often experiencing combined hypoxia and metabolic acidosis.

“Acid is toxic to the brain and can cause scarring and neurologic death to the brain tissue,” adds Breuer, listing blindness as a neurologic sign to look out for. “These animals can’t see, or they’ll start stargazing, tipping their nose to the sky.”

Respiratory Distress: The Primary Emergency

Respiratory compromise is the most immediate life-threatening component of neonatal distress. Newborn lungs have never expanded, and even mild impairment can prevent adequate oxygen exchange.

“Open mouth and flaring nostrils are signs of respiratory distress,” explains Breuer, adding that blue tinged or cyanotic mucous membranes are also indicators that the calf is not getting enough oxygen. “If the heart rate is less than 50 beats per minute and falling, intervention is going to be needed to save them.”

Calves in respiratory distress should be placed in sternal recumbency to maximize lung expansion. Physical stimulation including vigorous rubbing, nasal septum stimulation or pressure on the nasal philtrum can trigger inspiratory reflexes and help initiate more effective breathing.

Other Distress Indicators in Calves

Meconium staining is a visible indicator that the calf experienced distress before delivery. Passage of the meconium into the uterus typically reflects prolonged time in the birth canal or delayed delivery.

“Now that the amniotic sac has ruptured, there’s mixing of the waste and what the calf is submerged in,” Breuer says. “This can cause issues down the road because it can cause difficulties in cleaning that airway.”

Calves born with meconium staining are more likely to experience respiratory compromise, difficulty clearing airways and delayed stabilization after birth.

Trauma from dystocia can contribute to pain, reduced movement, impaired breathing mechanics and delayed recovery. Swelling of the head, tongue and soft tissues can further compromise airways and oxygen delivery.

Ongoing Monitoring Through the First 24 Hours

Calves that survive an initial distress event remain at elevated risk through the first 24 hours of life. Ongoing monitoring for declining vigor, abnormal respiration or changes in responsiveness is essential as early compromise often evolves rather than resolves.

Many calves that survive neonatal distress reappear later as poor performers, respiratory cases or unexplained losses. Effective neonatal distress management is not about saving every calf but about recognizing when intervention can still alter the outcome and preventing avoidable compromise. The first 24 hours determine which calves stabilize and recover and which never fully catch up.

To learn more about the first 24 hours of neonatal calf care among other topics, check out the Dairy Cattle Welfare Council webinar series .

Timing of La Niña Exit, El Niño Entrance is Unclear, Raising Questions About Dryness for Spring and Summer

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 13:04:57 GMT

Farmers across the U.S. are watching the Pacific closely this year as NOAA predicts La Niña could exit faster than expected, potentially giving way to an El Niño later in 2026. While this transition could bring shifts in rainfall patterns, experts caution the change will likely be gradual, meaning parts of the country could remain dry well into spring.

NOAA is now forecasting La Niña to exit by spring and El Niño to possibly enter the picture this year, but not all meteorologists agree on the timing of that. Drew Lerner, agricultural meteorologist and founder of World Weather , says the key is when this transition takes place, and when warming ocean temperatures occur, as to how it could change weather conditions for not just planting but also the growing season ahead.

Two Weather Patterns Driving Dryness

What’s scary for farmers today is just how dry it is across parts of the West, Southwest, Southeast and Midwest. Similar to last winter, a dry fall was only exasperated by a fairly dry winter, with drought a growing threat heading into spring.

The map that shows percent of normal precipitation shows the areas of the country desperately in need of more moisture heading into spring for both crops and pasture conditions.

(World Weather )

Farmers have a reason to be concerned. According to the latest U.S. Drought Monitor drought and dry conditions remain widespread across the country:

About 35.7% of the U.S. (including Puerto Rico) is in drought (D1–D4)
More than 42.5% of the Lower 48 is also in drought conditions
Moderate to severe drought levels have worsened in parts of south-central Texas into Arkansas/Missouri and from Florida to Virginia over the past week

Meanwhile, California, long a drought focal point, has recently been reported as drought-free for the first time in about 25 years after significant winter storms.

Over the next five to seven days, much of the western half of the U.S. is anticipated to be dry from the West into the Plains. The wettest areas are anticipated to be over the Great Lakes region and into the Northeast.

(U.S. Drought Monitor )

What’s driving the dryness across the rest of the country? Lerner says it’s two-fold.

“We’ve actually got two major patterns at work right now,” Lerner says. “One is La Niña, which is definitely influencing the drier tendencies across the central U.S., and the other is an upper wind flow pattern tied to the lunar cycle. Together, they’re keeping cold surges coming into eastern North America and limiting rainfall across much of the Plains.”

Subsoil moisture maps also paint the picture of how dry it is across portions of the U.S.

(World Weather )

Current soil moisture charts also show large swaths of dryness in the west-central and southwestern Plains, amplifying concerns heading into spring.

“These areas aren’t likely to get another good drink of water anytime soon; we had a little break last week, but it’s temporary,” Lerner says. “Even though the Midwest doesn’t look too bad for this time of year, much of Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and northwestern Ohio should already have saturated soil. Still, we’re in a droughty environment.”

The Big Debate: How Quickly Will La Niña Exit?

According to NOAA models, Lerner explains, La Niña is in place but expected to exit rapidly, with a possible shift to El Niño by May.

“You can see the ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are still cooler than normal,” Lerner says “To qualify for La Niña, you need roughly half a degree Celsius below normal, and that’s exactly what we have right now.”

World Weather’s Drew Lerner says if history is any indication, NOAA’s forecast model for ocean warming temperatures may be too aggressive.

(World Weather )

However, he warns that the NOAA model predicting a quick exit has historically been overly aggressive, and last year was a perfect example of that.

“If you look back at the last two years, the model forecast La Niña would develop by May or June, but it didn’t actually arrive until the fourth quarter,” Lerner says. “I think the model is too warm for a rapid exit this year as well. My expectation is that El Niño won’t really show up until the latter part of the third quarter or into the fourth quarter.”

Earlier this month, NOAA issued its latest La Niña forecast, saying La Niña is likely to persist for now, but that’s followed by a 75% chance of a transition to ENSO neutral during January to March. ENSO Neutral, according to NOAA, is likely to develop in at least the northern hemisphere through late spring 2026.

“Here’s what I take away from this, and I’ve been chatting about this and other meteorologists have been chatting about this for a while,” says Brian Bledsoe of Brian Bledsoe Weather . “I have great respect for NOAA and the National Weather Service, but to be honest with you, I think they’re a little late to the party with how this transition is going to unfold because what’s going on in the Pacific Ocean right now is a pretty significant transition away from the La Niña. So I think we have seen this event peak, and I think it is going to exit more quickly than maybe what NOAA’s forecast is currently suggesting.”

Bledsoe says not only does he think NOAA is late to the party in forecasting La Niña’s departure, but he also thinks the U.S. will see a transition to El Niño faster than what NOAA currently shows.

“Initially what that can do, and what that can mean, is that transition period, it can still have some dryness produce across the Plains and across the Corn Belt, at least early on in that transition,” Bledsoe says. “History suggests that after that early transition is gone, that a lot of us will have wetter than average conditions try to show up during the heart of the growing season.”

Bledsoe says that is several months away and difficult to forecast, but he says there are different models that indicate this scenario and a quick transition can also bring wild weather.

Brett Walz Sees a Neutral Spring, Possible El Niño Summer

Brett Walz, meteorologist with Bam WX , also thinks we could be saying good-bye to La Niña in the next couple of weeks.

“I’m starting to see the shifts and getting away from La Niña probably in the next couple of weeks,” he tells “AgriTalk’s” Chip Flory. “We’ll warm the waters up and get into what we call ENSO Neutral as we work into spring. I really think that by summer we can get into an El Niño.”

Walz also notes ENSO-neutral springs often bring a mix of dry and volatile conditions.

“The back half of the season tends to see some dryness, especially in the Upper Midwest,” he says. “May 2023 was a very dry month leading into planting and the start of the growing season, and I see some similarities here. Before that, March and early April could be a little volatile, with some ups and downs and even early-season severe weather.”

Implications for Spring Planting

For U.S. farmers, the combination of lingering La Niña effects and a transitional ENSO-neutral spring could mean dryness persists in critical growing regions through spring.

“Parts of the central U.S., especially the western Corn Belt and hard red winter wheat areas, are going to see below-normal precipitation during spring,” Lerner says. “The Delta and lower Midwest may do a little better, but overall, we’re looking at a spring that won’t dramatically relieve the dryness farmers have been dealing with.”

He points out analogs from past ENSO years support this outlook, but then the forecast flips to more moisture in summer for more northern states, with dryness parked in the South.

“Three of the four years I’ve analyzed moved from La Niña into neutral conditions through early summer, then transitioned to a weak El Niño later,” Lerner says. “We generally see a wetter bias in the northern Plains and parts of the Midwest in summer, while the Southeast may fall back into drier conditions after a brief spring break.”

“If we were to suddenly shift into El Niño, we’d see more rainfall in the Plains and western Corn Belt during spring,” he adds. “But given the history of these forecast models, it’s unlikely we’ll see a dramatic shift until later this year.”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Summer Outlook: A Mixed Picture

Looking ahead, both Lerner and Walz see the potential for wetter conditions later in the growing season:

Northern Plains and parts of the Midwest could see above-average precipitation in summer
Southeastern U.S. could experience drier conditions after a brief spring respite
The western Corn Belt and hard red winter wheat regions will likely remain dry through spring

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Impacts on South America’s Weather

Walz says these ENSO shifts have global implications, particularly for South America.

“There’s a lag in how La Niña affects South America, because their growing season is opposite ours,” he says. “Currently, we’re still seeing dryness across Argentina and Southeast Brazil, but as La Niña weakens, we may start getting rains back into Brazil, especially by the back half of February.”

But up until this point, Lerner says La Niña isn’t having much of an impact on South America’s weather, which he says is a byproduct of the very weak status of the current La Niña event.

“And if you look at the soil assessment there in Brazil and Argentina, you can see the moisture profile is really not too bad,” Lerner says. “Now we are starting to dry out portions of Buenos Aires and some of the neighboring areas there in Entre Rios and southern Santa Fe, even southern Cordova, and we do to see some significant moisture in these areas.”

Subsoil moisture maps in South America show a couple areas of dryness, but Brazil looks to have adequate moisture for now.

(World Weather )

He points out just last week some of the computer forecast models were trying to generate a La Niña-like ridge of high pressure over Argentina through these next 10 days.

“And if that happens, we will continue to dry down Argentina, but more so in the east rather than the south, and it will go ahead and spread a little bit into southern Brazil,” Lerner says. “But, as far as La Niña events is concerned, this one has not brought much dryness to South America, and most of the South America crops, up until now, have been doing very well.”

He says if La Niña does dissipate in February, then it’s going to probably start raining again in these drier biased areas.

“I think that this short-term bout of ridge development and drier bias conditions in Argentina, Brazil, will not likely last long enough to have a big impact on the bottom line,” he adds.

What U.S. Farmers Need to Know Going Forward

Spring 2026 could bring a mix of dryness, volatility and early-season severe weather in key U.S. crop areas. Irrigation management and soil moisture monitoring will be critical. Farmers should also keep an eye on South American conditions, which influence global markets, especially for soybeans and corn.

“Farmers shouldn’t rely on a sudden shift to El Niño to solve moisture deficits,” Lerner emphasizes. “Prepare for continued dry spells in spring, and be ready to take advantage of wetter periods later in the year if they arrive.”

Walz adds: “This spring will be ENSO-neutral, a transitional period, but summer could bring a true El Niño — something that isn’t common but could have significant implications for rainfall patterns and planting decisions.”

Inside a Simulated HPAI Outbreak in a Dairy Herd

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 19:28:32 GMT

In spring 2020, U.S. dairy producers were forced to dump millions of pounds of milk when the system around them failed. Schools closed, institutional buyers disappeared, processing plants couldn’t pivot and the disconnect between production and demand became painfully clear. That experience raised a critical question: Could similar system-wide disruptions happen again, driven not by markets but by disease?

That question helped drive a new proof-of-concept project from the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security (WIFSS) at UC Davis: a simulation model designed to examine what happens when H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) enters a dairy herd.

“This was more a proof of concept,” says David Goldenberg, food safety and security training coordinator for WIFSS at UC Davis. “Can we develop a model that would mimic a dairy farm and the resulting impacts [HPAI] would have not only on the farm but also elsewhere and down the road?”

Rather than attempting to predict the next outbreak, their goal was to understand what an outbreak would look like on a single dairy and how its impacts unfold over time.

What the Model Simulated

The team based their simulation on a small dairy herd of roughly 260 cows with the following assumptions:

No animals were purchased from outside sources; replacements were born into the herd
Labor, equipment and milking infrastructure functioned normally
Cows were assumed healthy apart from H5N1 infection
Milk from infected cows was discarded

Further, reinfections were not modeled, and the analysis focused on acute infection rather than chronic disease.

Speed of Spread Mattered More than Severity

One of the clearest lessons from the simulation was how fast H5N1 spreads through a herd might matter more than how sick individual cows appear.

The model evaluated low, medium and high infectivity scenarios. In high-infectivity cases, nearly the entire herd became sick within about 30 days. That rapid clustering overwhelmed treatment capacity, increasing the risk of dehydration, delayed care and mortality. This wasn’t because the disease was more severe but because too many animals required attention at once.

“That’s a tremendous effort to simultaneously try to treat every cow in your herd at the same exact time due to limited resources,” says Nelson Alfaro Rivas, simulation consultant with MOSIMTEC. “Unfortunately, some of the cows might succumb just because of dehydration from the disease just because you don’t have an unlimited number of veterinarians to try and hydrate the cows as they’re sick.”

In lower-infectivity scenarios, illness spread more slowly, peaking later and involving fewer animals simultaneously. The contrast underscored why early isolation, movement control and disease recognition can fundamentally change outcomes.

Milk Loss Didn’t End When Cows Recovered

Even when cows clinically recovered, milk production did not bounce back quickly.

The simulation assumed infected cows experienced either a 15% or 30% reduction in milk yield for the remainder of their lactation, figures drawn from field observations. In high-infectivity, worst-case scenarios, total milk production across the herd fell sharply within the first month.

Over time, those losses accumulated. In the most severe scenarios, the herd produced approximately 25% less milk over the modeled period compared with an uninfected baseline. Perhaps more striking, herd-level production did not return to baseline for almost a year, long after the active outbreak had resolved.

“How long does it take to recover from something like this?” Rivas asks. “All the cows were recovered by day 26, but what you don’t really see is that the herd that got infected doesn’t really recover and produce the same amount of milk as the non-infected herd until almost 300 days later.”

This gap matters not only for producers but also reframes recovery as an extended process rather than a clinical endpoint.

Recovery Didn’t Mean Economic Recovery

Because dairies run on thin margins, sustained milk loss drove decisions beyond treatment and recovery. Cows producing well below expectation after infection were more likely to be removed from the herd, even if they survived the disease itself.

“At the end of the day, farms are businesses, and you can’t keep an underproducing and therefore unprofitable cow,” Rivas says.

The model reinforced a familiar reality: Profitability, not survival alone, determines herd composition after disease events.

Where Biosecurity Fits

Biosecurity practices were not explicitly modeled as individual actions. Instead, their effects were represented indirectly through changes in infectivity. Lower infectivity scenarios approximated the benefit of practices such as isolating sick cows, cleaning equipment and controlling farm access.

Those measures come with costs — labor, time and disruption — but the simulation showed even modest reductions in spread speed dramatically altered outcomes. The model did not attempt to assign dollar values to biosecurity steps, but it made clear why reducing infectivity yields outsized returns.

Why This Matters Now

What this model ultimately provides is a clearer sense of risk timing, not new disease facts. By compressing complex outbreak dynamics into a single on-farm view, it shows how quickly routine management assumptions can be tested once disease pressure rises, particularly when multiple animals require attention at the same time. The practical consequence is that delays in recognition or response can carry operational costs that aren’t immediately visible.

The take away is not alarm but foresight. Decisions around monitoring, separation and communication that are made early shape how manageable an outbreak remains and how disruptive its aftermath becomes. By visualizing those downstream effects in advance, the model offers a way to stress-test response strategies before they’re needed, helping dairies prepare for uncertainty rather than react to it.

Have You Considered Acupuncture for Your Cows?

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 14:55:21 GMT

With limited tools available for pain and restoring function in food animals, acupuncture, long viewed by many as alternative or fringe, may deserve a second look as a practical, low-risk adjunct for cattle veterinarians.

“It’s another option, but there’s no reason to throw all the Western [medicine] out,” says Dr. Anne Murphy, speaking on Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM). “You don’t use it instead of Western veterinary medicine, you use it in addition to.”

One argument for acupuncture in food animals is practicality. It requires no DEA license, carries no residue concerns and does not introduce withdrawal times. Getting trained in acupuncture could arm you with an additional tool to offer your clients for cattle health care.

How Acupuncture Works

Although acupuncture originates from TCVM, Murphy points out that it is directly related to physiology. Acupuncture points are associated with:

high densities of free nerve endings
blood vessels
lymphatics
mast cells

These sites, located along energy pathways termed “meridians” in TCVM, typically demonstrate altered electrical conductivity. Acupuncture procedures along these pathways have had measurable neurologic and analgesic responses.

“Stimulation of acupuncture points can result in pain relief due to the release of beta-endorphins,” Murphy says. “Also, stimulating these points can increase endogenous opioids in the cerebrospinal fluid.”

Beyond this, stimulating acupuncture points can influence both immune and reproductive system regulation.

Practical Entry Point for Acupuncture in Cattle

Murphy advises taking a simplified approach based on determining the clinical problem then finding the acupuncture back-shu points associated with that problem, rather than a full TCVM diagnosis. These points can be manually palpated using the ribs as guidance.

This approach is particularly well suited to cattle practice where ease of access is important. Points along the topline and hindquarters are reachable and generally well tolerated.

“On dairy cows, it’s great because they’re so skinny,” Murphy says. “There’s usually a depression, sometimes a prominence, and you use the anatomical landmarks described to figure it out.”

Acupuncture Techniques and Safety

There are a variety of acupuncture techniques that may fit the situation:

Dry needling — Likely the most commonly thought of acupuncture technique, it involves simply inserting a needle.
Electroacupuncture — This couples needle insertion with a TENS unit to pass an electric current between pairs of needles.
Aquapuncture — This involves injecting a liquid, commonly vitamin B12, into acupuncture points for longer-lasting stimulation.
Hemo-acupuncture — This involves releasing blood from injecting the patient’s own blood into acupuncture points.

Murphy also points out a number of cautions when considering acupuncture.

“[Acupuncture point] bladder 60 is between the lateral malleolus of the tibia and the calcaneian tuber,” Murphy explains. “It’s known as the aspirin point, but it also promotes parturition. So, don’t use it in pregnant cows unless you want to induce parturition.”

She also cautioned against needling near tumors due to increased blood flow and being conscious of animal tolerance to avoid needle breakage or loss.

Why Acupuncture May Be Worth Considering

Murphy acknowledges that acupuncture might not always be the answer.

“Sometimes, acupuncture is like magic, which is super exciting. It’s not always like magic, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but it’s definitely worth trying in certain situations,” Murphy says.

However, the same could be said for Western medicine.

When analgesic tools are scarce and animal comfort matters, acupuncture may offer a meaningful benefit at relatively low risk.

“Acupuncture is a great tool for pain management and treatment of nerve damage in food animals,” Murphy says in closing. “But hopefully, success with a few acupuncture points will inspire you to investigate TCVM further.”

5 Considerations for Calf Care

Mon, 12 Jan 2026 20:14:39 GMT

Calves that struggle rarely do so because a single decision was wrong. More often, they falter because their daily environment, feeding or handling is unpredictable. Inconsistent inputs can quietly undermine digestion, immunity and growth, creating calves that never quite thrive and are repeatedly flagged for treatment.

“How do we improve consistency?” asks Ohio State University Extension specialist Jason Hartschuh when speaking on the proper care of calves . “Consistency is critical.”

Consistency is not a management buzzword but a biological requirement. Hartschuh emphasizes the importance of decreasing variability in practice for better animal health. Below are five areas where variability shows up most often and where producers and their veterinarians can have a meaningful impact.

1. Milk Replacer Mixing

Milk replacer programs often look correct on paper but fall apart in execution. Studies show wide swings in total solids and feeding temperature when caretakers are given identical instructions.

“Forty-one batches of milk replacer were mixed,” says Hartschuh, describing a recent project. “The same directions were given on how to mix that milk replacer, but the solids content of [the resulting batches] ranged from 6% to 14.5%. The temperature ranged from 80°F to 115°F.”

Of these batches, less than half of them reached the ideal solid content of 10% to 15%, two hit the precise goal of 13% and two hit the final temperature goal of 110°F to 115°F.

Day-to-day variation in concentration or delivery temperature forces repeated digestive adjustment, which can manifest as loose manure, reduced intake or inconsistent growth. Over time, this physiological stress can weaken immune responses and complicate disease diagnosis.

When it comes to mixing milk replacer:

Are milk replacer amounts weighed or scooped?
How often are solids checked?
What temperature does milk reach the calf, not just the mixing bucket?

2. Water Quality and Delivery

Water is often treated as background input, yet its composition can vary widely. Elevated sodium from softened water, high total dissolved solids, sulfates or microbial contamination can all influence intake, digestion and health, even in well-managed milk programs.

Research has shown differences in calf performance, fever incidence and diarrhea days tied solely to water source and water access. Hartschuh describes work where they varied how water was offered to calves.

“At five months of age, the calf that we provided water to every feeding from birth versus waiting until the calf was 17 days old gained about 28 more pounds,” Hartschuh says.

They found this was linked to rumen development being positively correlated with water intake, therefore these calves had increased digestion and absorption leading to growth.

To be mindful of water quality and delivery, consider:

Routine water testing, including sodium and bacteria.
Rechecking water quality seasonally.
Offering water to calves from birth.

3. Feeding Equipment Hygiene

Many sanitation programs fail because they are incomplete. Rinsing equipment with water that is too hot can bake fat into plastic surfaces, encouraging biofilm formation. Inadequate drying or cracked nipples further compounds the issue, allowing bacteria to persist between feedings.

“It comes down to talking more about the sanitation of equipment to make sure that we’re not transferring disease from one calf to the next or that there’s nothing growing in that biofilm that milk can develop,” Hartschuh says.

Hygiene considerations for feeding equipment should involve:

Initial rinse water temperature.
Whether equipment is fully dry before reuse.
Nipple condition and replacement frequency.

4. Feeding Timing and Delivery Technique

Calves adapt to routine. Variations in feeding time, volume or delivery method disrupt that adaptation.

“We have that milk mixed up consistently, now we have to feed it every day consistently at the same time,” Hartschuh advises.

Even bottle height matters: Poor positioning can interfere with esophageal groove closure, altering milk flow and digestion. Hartschuh recommends holding the bottle at 24" to 27" high so the calf isn’t gulping air and the milk flows down nicely, bypassing the rumen to the abomasum.

On your farm, ask the following:

Are feeding times consistent from day to day?
Is delivery technique the same across caretakers?
Is water offered in a way that encourages intake?

5. Temperature and Ventilation

“Trying to figure out how to ventilate those barns as we go from potentially 60°F tomorrow down to 16°F in a few days, with those temperature swings, how do we keep calves comfortable and healthy?” Hartschuh asks.

Repeated environmental adjustments driven by weather changes can increase physiological stress. This is especially important to consider with big temperature swings. Attempts to protect calves by closing barns often trade cold stress for poor air quality, increasing respiratory risk instead. Hartschuh advises that consistency in ventilation is often more protective than short-term temperature control.

On your operation, emphasize:

Air quality at the calf level.
Adjusting jackets and bedding proactively during weather shifts.
Using calf behaviors (posture, rest patterns) as indicators for needed changes.

Diagnosing Systems, Not Just Calves

When calves cycle through low-grade illness, repeated treatments or uneven growth, inconsistency is often the underlying driver. Stepping back to evaluate systems, rather than symptoms might help identify patterns that need adjusting. Improving consistency doesn’t require new products or protocols but rather a tightening of execution. This could pay dividends across health, performance and labor efficiency.

Fewer Heifers Mean Higher Stakes for Reproduction

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:55:07 GMT

Over the last 20 years, reproduction in dairy herds has changed in ways that were hard to imagine two decades ago. Pregnancy rates that once sat in the low teens are now climbing to levels that have reshaped how farms manage breeding decisions.

“We’ve seen average preg rates go from 13% to 14% to herds that now push 40%,” says Paul Fricke, professor and Extension specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, on a recent Dairy Health Blackbelt podcast. “That’s why we’re using sexed semen and beef semen. It’s changed everything.”

However, that progress comes with a tradeoff. As sexed semen is used more strategically and beef semen fills in elsewhere, farms are raising fewer replacement heifers. According to Fricke, that makes it harder to absorb mistakes.

“My argument has been we’ve got to be better with those fewer heifers from a reproductive standpoint,” he says.

With fewer heifers in the pipeline, every breeding decision carries more weight. Missed heats, mistimed inseminations or extended days open can quickly add cost and delay animals entering the milking herd. Fricke says heifer reproduction can’t be treated as a low-priority task. Getting heifers pregnant at the right time, he says, matters more when fewer replacements are available.

Rethink Timed AI in Heifers

As farms work to manage heifer breeding more consistently with fewer replacements, many have turned to synchronization programs to simplify decisions and reduce reliance on heat detection. Timed-AI protocols are now common on many farms because they’re easier to manage with limited labor, but Fricke says they aren’t without limitations. He points to the 5-day CIDR-Synch protocol as a common starting point for heifers, noting that its biggest challenge comes down to timing.

“The big problem with these protocols is they’re not 100% timed AI protocols,” Fricke explains. “We’ll see about 27% to 33% of heifers coming to heat a day early.”

That early estrus creates management challenges and opens the door to mistimed inseminations. To address it, Fricke’s team tested a simple change by leaving the progesterone insert in place for an extra 24 hours.

“There were 12% of the heifers that came into heat early on the 5-day treatment, compared with only 1% on the 6-day treatment,” he says. “With conventional semen in Holstein heifers, there was no decline in fertility.”

Does Sexed Semen Need a Different Approach?

That consistency, however, doesn’t always carry over when sexed semen is used. Fricke says many farms manage sexed semen the same way they would conventional semen, which can lead to lower conception rates than expected.

“Sex[ed] semen is quite different,” he says. “What I generally see is low conception rates. I think it’s a timing of insemination issue.”

In a Wisconsin study across three farms using sexed semen, once-daily heat detection with prostaglandin achieved a 45% conception rate. The 5-day CIDR protocol improved conception to 52%. But the 6-day protocol fell back to 45%.

“The worst thing you can do with sex[ed] semen is inseminate too early,” Fricke says. “And that’s what we did. We kind of set them up to get bred too early.”

Look Beyond Upfront Costs

While synchronization protocols often draw scrutiny for their upfront cost, Fricke argues that focusing only on protocol price misses the bigger economic picture. The real driver of profitability in heifer reproduction, he says, is days on feed.

“The big thing about repro in heifers is limiting total days on feed, because total days on feed is determined by when you get the heifers pregnant,” he says. “That feed cost is something that a lot of farmers don’t look at. It’s the classic kind of unfunded cost, right? The hidden cost.”

In his comparison of minimal estrus synchronization versus CIDR-based programs, the upfront numbers favor the simpler approach. Protocol costs averaged $4.05 per pregnancy for the estrus group, compared to $22.29 for the CIDR group. But the CIDR heifers were inseminated 12 days earlier and pregnant eight days sooner.

“The feed costs were $82 for the estrus group versus $50 for the CIDR group,” Fricke says. “So, we’re actually $16.66 more profitable per pregnancy by being more aggressive with the heifers.”

For Fricke, how the numbers are presented is just as important as the results.

“Farmers will look at the upfront cost,” he says. “We need to show them this is an investment, not just a cost.”

Make Every Heifer Count

As herds rely on fewer replacement heifers, the stakes for getting each one pregnant at the right time are higher than ever. Every day a heifer remains open adds feed costs and can delay her entry into the milking herd, making careful management more critical.

“When I look at dairies, the low-hanging fruit now is the heifer side,” Fricke says. “Heifers are kind of out of sight, out of mind, but heifers are important.”

Fricke emphasizes success in heifer reproduction is no longer just about hitting pregnancy targets. It’s about making the most of each heifer and ensuring the herd stays on track. By understanding how protocols, semen type and timing interact, and by viewing upfront breeding costs as an investment rather than an expense, farms can protect their replacement strategy and improve profitability across the herd.

Waste Milk Feeding Alters Calf Immune Development

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 16:05:31 GMT

For many dairies, feeding waste milk — milk that can’t be sold because of antibiotic residues, high somatic cell counts or other quality issues — is an appealing way to save on calf-rearing costs. It’s calorie-rich, familiar to calves and readily available. However, waste milk is one of the least standardized inputs in calf nutrition as it varies in microbial load, drug residues and inflammatory components. While the short-term economics are easy to calculate, the potential biological impact is less clear.

Most evaluations of waste milk stop at visible outcomes like growth rates or scours. What’s harder to see is how early antigen exposure shapes immune development below the surface. New research from the University of São Paulo shows the immune system of a growing Holstein calf responds differently depending on whether it’s fed salable milk (SM), pasteurized waste milk (PWM) or raw waste milk (WM).

In the study, 30 calves were raised on one of these three liquid diets for the first nine weeks of life and regularly sampled for immune markers and cellular responses. Although overall health scores (temperature, diarrhea prevalence, respiratory signs) didn’t differ among groups, the internal immune story was much more revealing.

Immune Cell Counts and Cytokines Shift With Waste Milk Feeding

Calves fed PWM and WM showed consistent differences in systemic immune markers:

Serum total protein and Brix values were higher in WM calves.
Total protein and Brix are composite biomarkers influenced by both innate inflammatory response and adaptive humoral immunity. This observed increase likely represents innate immune responses associated with increased microbial and antigen exposure.

Plasma IgG concentrations did not differ by diet.
Levels followed the expected passive transfer pattern in all groups, with a decline at 21 days as maternal antibodies waned.

PWM and WM calves exhibited increased circulating immune cell numbers.
Lymphocyte and total mononuclear cell counts were higher compared to SM calves, but these did not translate into greater immune function. Immune cell proliferation in response to bacterial challenge was not impacted by liquid diet.

Cytokine profiles differed by diet.
SM and PWM calves produced more IL-10, a regulatory cytokine, while WM calves showed higher IL-17, consistent with a more pro-inflammatory profile.

What These Findings Mean for Calf Health Decisions

Together, these findings suggest waste milk feeding alters immune development in subtle but meaningful ways, even when calves appear outwardly healthy.

Several implications stand out:

Waste milk is not immunologically neutral.
It exposes calves to greater antigenic stimulation, increasing immune cell numbers and inflammatory signaling without improving functional responsiveness.

Higher TP and Brix values should be interpreted cautiously.
In WM calves, these markers likely reflect inflammatory proteins rather than improved humoral immunity.

Pasteurization reduces, but does not eliminate, immune effects.
PWM calves consistently showed intermediate immune profiles between SM and WM, supporting pasteurization as a risk-mitigation step rather than a complete solution.

Early immune skewing might matter most under stress.
An immune system biased toward activation rather than regulation could respond differently during weaning, transport, pathogen exposure or vaccination.

Diet quality is part of immune programming.
Liquid diet decisions influence not just growth and scours but how the calf immune system is shaped during a critical developmental window.

While this study did not directly assess long-term health or vaccine outcomes, it reinforces an important message for calf programs: What calves drink early in life can influence how their immune systems are wired.

How Should Scouring Calves be Treated?

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:41:00 GMT

What ultimately threatens the survival of a scouring calf isn’t the diarrhea itself, but the cascade of dehydration, acid-base imbalance and energy flow that follows. As calving season approaches and temperatures drop, a familiar challenge presents itself: deciding how to intervene quickly and effectively before metabolic collapse sets in.

Neonatal calf scours is fundamentally a metabolic disease. Sodium, chloride and potassium are lost through diarrhea, D-lactate accumulates, blood pH drops, calves become weak, stop drinking milk and rapidly run out of energy reserves. Effective treatment means correcting these problems in a timely manner.

Treatment for a Scouring Calf

In the rush to do something, treatment with an antibiotic might be tempting, but a fluid plan could be the right call.

“Certainly, it seems way easier to give a shot than it is to actually go inside and mix up a bottle of electrolytes,” says Dr. Geoffrey Smith, dairy technical services veterinarian with Zoetis, on an episode of “ Have You Herd .” However, when treating a scouring calf, the goal isn’t simply to stop diarrhea, it’s to correct the metabolic derailment that diarrhea causes. “Your main treatment goals are correcting dehydration, making sure we’re replacing those electrolytes, sodium and potassium in particular, something to give that calf some energy, and ultimately, the goal is to get it back on milk.”

Achieving these goals depends not only on what fluids are used, but how they are delivered. Oral electrolyte therapy and IV fluids are both good options, but choosing the treatment that is best for each calf is important.

Oral Versus IV Fluids: Making the Call

According to Smith, oral electrolytes are appropriate for calves that are:

Still standing
Alert or mildly depressed
Able to swallow safely

IV fluids should be considered for calves that are:

Down or unwilling to stand
Severely depressed
Not responding to oral therapy

It used to be that IV fluids weren’t a part of the consideration, given the expertise or potential vet call required for administration, but with the increased value of calves, they’re being used more commonly.

Choosing an Oral Electrolyte that Works

There are a variety of oral electrolyte products available on the market. Smith says there are four things that should be considered when choosing a treatment.

Sodium concentration

“Sodium is really the backbone of that extracellular fluid,” Smith says. “If we don’t replace sodium, we’re not going to adequately rehydrate that calf.” He recommends somewhere in the 90 to 130 millimolar range to hit the hydration needs.

Glycine

Glycine is needed in the mix to increase sodium absorption across the gut wall. Glycine and sodium absorption in the intestine are closely linked, with glycine significantly enhancing sodium and water uptake via coupled transport mechanisms. It’s important to check your ingredients list as glycine is expensive and often left out of cheaper products.

An alkalizing agent

“Acidosis is critical; that’s probably why the calf is ultimately dying,” Smith says. “We need to make sure that our oral electrolyte has what we would call an alkalizing agent or something in there that will help increase the pH of the blood.” Sodium acetate or sodium bicarbonate are good options.

The strong ion difference

The strong ion difference, or the difference between the concentrations of strong cations and strong anions, is calculated by adding together the sodium and potassium concentrations and subtracting the chloride concentration. Smith advises a strong ion difference of at least 60 millimolar for oral electrolyte solutions for calves.

IV Fluid Options: Selecting for Speed and Effect

Large-volume isotonic fluids, such as lactated Ringer’s, are useful when a farm has the space and time to hold a calf, but to really hydrate the calf, it would need 4 liters to 5 liters.

“If you have a calf that’s flat out and really acidotic, lactated Ringer’s may not be the best because it’s going to take six to eight hours to really start seeing increases in blood pH,” Smith says. “There’s nothing wrong with lactated Ringer’s, but a lot of people have moved on to other fluids they could give in smaller volumes and still have a similar effect.”

Isotonic sodium bicarbonate is another option to correct the blood pH faster than lactated Ringer’s, but calves still need a large volume, about 4 liters.

Hypertonic saline can quickly improve calf hydration by creating an osmotic gradient between the gut and the blood, but it must be combined with oral electrolytes. Further, hypertonic saline is concentrated enough that it can be dosed via syringe instead of a catheter; however, it doesn’t address the acidosis.

“If we have a calf that’s recumbent or laying there on its side, probably that calf has pretty severe acidosis. I’m tempted to give hypertonic saline because I know it’s easy to do,” Smith says. “I may correct the dehydration, but if I don’t also correct the acidosis, the calf may go ahead and die after I leave.”

Hypertonic sodium bicarbonate supports both rehydration and pH correction, making it particularly valuable for recumbent or severely acidotic calves when rapid stabilization is needed. An oral electrolyte must also accompany treatment. Another benefit according to Smith, is that this can be made fairly easily at whatever concentration you’re comfortable with to address the bicarbonate deficit.

“When your calf is recumbent and doesn’t want to stand, your base deficit is at least 20 mEQ/L,” says Smith, recommending something in the ballpark of 500 mEQ of bicarbonate for a calf depending on weight.

Next Steps After Fluid Terapy for Calves with Scours

Recovery doesn’t end with the first fluid intervention. Smith recommends continued daily electrolyte support until the diarrhea resolves, typically three to five days. Calves that relapse after initial improvement frequently reflect incomplete correction of acidosis. Environmental factors matter as well; hypothermic calves respond poorly to fluids alone and should be warmed as part of therapy.

Successful scours management depends on aligning treatment with the calf’s physiological needs. Fluids that restore volume, correct acidosis and support a return to milk consistently outperform approaches that focus elsewhere. As calving season begins, reviewing protocols before calves go down can make the difference between recovery and loss.

New World Screwworm Found in Newborn Calf 197 Miles from U.S.-Mexico Border

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 16:35:05 GMT

On Dec. 27, Mexico’s National Service of Agro-Alimentary Health, Safety, and Quality (SENASICA) reported a new case of New World screwworm (NWS) in a 6-day-old calf with an umbilical lesion in Llera, located in the state of Tamaulipas, approximately 197 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

According to the Texas Animal Health Commission, there have been no other detections in Tamaulipas or any evidence of established fly populations in the area.

To support a swift response if NWS reaches Texas, producers located on the southern border and travelers from NWS-affected areas should closely monitor animals for signs and promptly report suspected cases of NWS.

Read more about how to identify NWS:
The Smell You’ll Never Forget: A Calf Infested with New World Screwworm
Protect Your Livestock: Signs of New World Screwworm

A suspected NWS case requires immediate action, but it all starts with one thing: your call. If you suspect an infestation, report it right away.

The Texas Animal Health Commission recently posted this video explaining the process for producers to take if they suspect a NWS case:

What Are Some Key Concerns if NWS Crosses the Border?

Texas beef producer Donnell Brown says NWS poses a real threat to rural America.

“Fortunately, we made it to winter without a major screwworm infestation in the United States,” he says. However, as temperatures rise this spring and fly season begins again, I am deeply concerned that we could see an outbreak with devastating consequences for livestock and wildlife.”

Read more about NWS and winter:
Winter: The Secret to Slowing the Spread of Screwworm

Brown recalls the previous NWS outbreak in Texas.

“Compared to the last screwworm epidemic I experienced as a child, we now have far more effective parasiticides with extended protection for livestock,” he says. “Unfortunately, we still lack practical ways to treat or protect wildlife. After the screwworms were eradicated in the 1970s, it was 15 years before I remember seeing deer on our ranch. Today, deer are abundant and hunting has become a major economic driver for ranchers and rural communities.”

Read more about NWS treatment and prevention options:

FDA Approves Exzolt Cattle-CA1 for Prevention and Treatment of New World Screwworm
FDA Approves Dectomax-CA1 for Prevention and Treatment of New World Screwworm
New Technology to Combat New World Screwworm

Browns says if NWS cause significant wildlife losses, the ripple effects would be severe.

“Fewer hunters would travel from cities to rural areas, reducing spending on food, fuel, feed, lodging and other local necessities. This would harm rural economies already under pressure,” he explains. “The risk is especially high because fawns and many other wild mammals are born during fly season. Their wet navels become prime targets for screwworm infestation, making the potential impact on wildlife populations both immediate and profound.”

Read more about NWS and wildlife:
The Importance of Wildlife Monitoring for New World Screwworm

Sterile Flies Remain Key to Eradicating New World Screwworm

“The continued detections of New World screwworm near the Texas border are grim reminders of the serious threat this pest poses to our state,” says Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. “Thanks to the efforts of USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and APHIS working in coordination with Mexico, its northward spread has been halted, and this recent case promises to be a one-off, for now. But to fully eradicate this threat, the bottom line remains unchanged: we need sterile flies. I said as much a year ago when I criticized the Biden Administration’s failed efforts to corral this pest — dollars don’t kill screwworms, sterile flies do.”

Under President Trump’s leadership, Secretary Rollins and the USDA have now committed to a historic, targeted response that will deliver real results.

“Earlier this year, I was proud to stand alongside Secretary Rollins in Edinburg, Texas, as she unveiled her comprehensive five-point plan , and again at the Texas Capitol as that plan was expanded ,” Miller says. “I will continue to support and advocate for federal efforts to expand sterile insect fly production and infrastructure, because this proven strategy is key to the long-term eradication of New World screwworm.”

Current information related to NWS is available on the USDA-APHIS website , including a current situation map and table showing cases within 400 miles of the U.S.

Your Next Reads:
The Battle at the Border
Preparing for the Battle Continues: USDA Shares Screwworm Update and Releases NWS Playbook

Managing Feed Efficiency: What You Can Control

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 14:32:51 GMT

Knowing the forces that shape feed efficiency is only half the story; the next step is using them to your advantage. As a part of a series discussing feed efficiency for dairy farms, this article explores strategies related to feeding and management that farms can use to influence it.

In this article, Feed Efficiency specifically refers to energy-corrected milk divided by dry matter intake (ECM/DMI), an on-farm metric to evaluate cows’ conversion of feed into milk.

Feeding Strategies to Influence Feed Efficiency

If you want to improve feed efficiency on your farm, several feeding strategies can help:

Improve feed quality to enhance nutrient digestibility. Harvest forages at optimal maturity, properly process corn silage and grains, and maintain good silage hygiene to avoid losses from spoilage or contamination (1, 2).
Fine-tune rations for efficiency. Avoid overfeeding nutrients, like protein, that may be wasted. Instead, consider precision tools like supplemental amino acids. Balance sources of starch and protein for synchronized rumen fermentation. Ensure rations support both performance and rumen health (2, 3).
Group cows strategically to feed more targeted diets. Avoid underfeeding early-lactation animals or overfeeding those late in lactation. Matching diets to physiological needs helps prevent nutrient waste and improves whole-herd efficiency (4).
Minimize feed waste and shrink. While shrink isn’t reflected in ECM/DMI calculations, it’s still lost energy. Lost feed is lost energy that the cow never had the opportunity to use.

Management Strategies to Influence Feed Efficiency

Improving feed efficiency also requires management that minimizes cows unnecessarily expending energy:

Prevent health challenges that might decrease milk production, increase feed intakes, or divert energy to the immune system. A smooth transition period, proper mastitis prevention, and early lameness treatment all help reduce unnecessary energy loss (5, 6).
Limit environmental stressors. Ensure cows have adequate feed and water access, push up feed regularly, and provide enough bunk and resting space to prevent competition (3, 7).
Promote cow comfort. Provide proper cooling, minimize long walking distances, and avoid extended time away from feed and water (1, 8, 9).
Optimize reproduction. Avoid extended calving intervals which keep cows in late lactation (the least efficient phase) longer than necessary (10).
Ensure proper heifer development. Well-grown heifers are better positioned for efficient lactation. These cows can divert less feed energy to growth than poorly grown heifers.

Genetic Strategies to Influence Feed Efficiency

Genetic selection provides a long-term path to improved efficiency. Residual feed intake (RFI) is a relatively new trait that reflects how much a cow eats relative to what is expected for her size, production, and growth. This trait is included in breeding indexes such as Lifetime Net Merit (NM$) and allows farms to select animals that are more efficient. Genetic selection should align with your broader herd goals, including health, fertility, and production so that efficiency gains don’t come at the cost of other performance areas.

Conclusion

Feed efficiency can be influenced by many different factors from genetics to cow comfort. Recognizing how you can adjust management strategies allows feed efficiency to become a tool to influence decisions, not just a number.

References:

1. Hutjens, M. (2013). Hoard’s Dairyman webinar: Feed efficiency – what’s new? [Webinar]. Hoard’s Dairyman. https://hoards.com/videos-54-hoards-dairyman-webinar-feed-efficiency&mdashwhats-new.html

2. de Ondarza, M.B. & Tricarico, J.M. (2017). Review: Advantages and limitations of dairy efficiency measures and the effects of nutrition and feeding management interventions. The Professional Animal Scientist, 33:393-400. https://doi.org/10.15232/pas.2017-01624

3. Krpalkova, L., O’Mahony, N., Carvalho, A., Campbell, S., Corkery, G., Broderick, E., Riordan, D., & Walsh, J. (2021). Dairy, 2:684-694. https://doi.org/10.3390/dairy2040053

4. VandeHaar, M.J. (n.d.). Feeding and breeding dairy cattle to improve feed efficiency.

5. Huhtanen, P., & Bayat, A.R. (2024). Milk somatic cell count affects feed efficiency through increased heat production of lactating dairy cows. Livestock Science, 284. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2024.105479

6. Guinguina, A, & Danielsson, R. (2025). Milk somatic cell count and its relationship with feed efficiency, and with GreenFeed-estimated methane emission and energy partitioning variables in Nordic Red cows. Livestock Science, 296. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.livsci.2025.105697

7. Llonch, P., Mainau, E., Ipharraguerre, I.R., Bargo, F., Tedo, G., Blanch, M., & Manteca, X. (2018). Chicken or the egg: The reciprocal association between feeding behavior and animal welfare and their impact on productivity in dairy cows. Frontier in Veterinary Science, 5:305. https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2018.00305

8. Holden, L. (2023). Are your cows taking a vacation? Accessed online at https://extension.psu.edu/are-your-cows-taking-a-vacation

9. Neave, H., Edwards, J.P., Thoday, H., Saunders, K., Zobel, G., & Webster, J.R. (2021). Do walking distance and time away from the paddock influence daily behavior patterns and milk yield of grazing dairy cows? Animals, 11:2903. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11102903

10. Linn, J. 2006. Feed efficiency: Its economic impact in lactating dairy cows. WCDS Advances in Dairy Technology, 18:19-28.

Next Year’s Silage Season Starts Now

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:47:24 GMT

As many producers finalize their seed selections for 2026, the foundation for next year’s silage crop is being set well before planting. But how do these early decisions affect yield, quality and feed efficiency?

Hybrid selection plays a major role in forage quality, cow performance and feed costs for the next 12 months. Making seed decisions now allows farms to take advantage of early-order pricing or discounts, review data from last season and coordinate with agronomists, nutritionists or crop managers on the best plan.

Kevin Putnam, northeast dairy specialist with Pioneer, works with producers across the region to help guide hybrid selection and silage management. He offers practical advice on using harvest data and plant performance to make informed decisions for the coming season.

What Can You Learn From Last Year’s Harvest?
Looking back at last year’s harvest is one of the simplest ways to make better silage decisions for the year ahead. Yield, forage quality and what shows up in the bunk all provide clues about which hybrids fit your farm.

“I think it’s a good practice to go back through your records from harvest,” Putnam says. “Look at how the crop performed in each field, check your yields, note any disease pressure and review forage quality results. Understanding what worked and what didn’t helps guide your decisions for the next year.”

That review shouldn’t stop at the field. Putnam also encourages producers to take bunk samples and watch what’s coming through the cows. Regular forage tests help track starch levels, fiber digestibility and fermentation quality, while a quick look at the manure can reveal whether kernels are being processed adequately— or if too many are passing through whole.

“If you’re seeing a lot of intact kernels, that’s a sign to revisit your processing and cut length for next year,” he notes. “You’ve already paid to grow that grain, so you want to be sure the cows can actually use it.”

He recommends using harvest and bunk data to fine-tune seed and hybrid choices rather than making major shifts in hybrid lineups based on a single season.

“Every year is different. Some seasons crops mature faster or slower than expected, but it’s important not to make major changes based on just one year,” he adds. “I recommend reviewing your harvest data and considering your farm’s goals for yield and feed quality to make informed decisions for the next season.”

What to do next: Pull harvest and bunk data together before finalizing seed orders to avoid overreacting to one season.

Can Plant Health and Stability Help Reduce Risk?
In some regions, 2025 brought record-breaking silage yields. In others, farmers wrestled with a roller coaster of early rains followed by drought stress. That kind of year-to-year and even field-to-field variability underscores the need for hybrids that can stand up to a wide range of environments, not just shine in a “perfect” season.

For Putnam, the conversation for hybrid selection in 2026 should quickly turn to plant health and standability. Leaf diseases like tar spot, northern corn leaf blight and gray leaf spot are now common in many areas and can reduce both yield and quality if they appear too early.

“Late-season plant health is huge,” Putnam says. “We want the ear maturing and drying down while the plant stays alive and healthy. We don’t want the plant to die early and drag the silage too dry before the ear is ready.”

When plants dry prematurely, fields can look “ready” from the road, but the ear may lag behind in maturity and starch accumulation. That mismatch can leave producers with silage that’s either too wet for ideal fermentation or too dry and hard to pack. In both cases, they sacrifice quality and feed-out stability.

Instead of stopping at top-line yield numbers, Putnam encourages producers to dig into the agronomic profile of each hybrid, paying particular attention to how it performs under pressure. That means looking closely at disease ratings for the leaf diseases most common in their area, evaluating each hybrid’s drought tolerance and stress response, and understanding its late-season plant integrity.

“I’m a big fan of the ‘Steady Eddies,’” he notes. “Some hybrids may not always top the plot, but they’re consistently near the top, year after year, across a lot of different environments. Those are the ones that help you sleep at night.”

That consistency matters because most farms can’t risk a hybrid that’s spectacular one year and below average the next. By prioritizing stability and resilience, producers can better protect themselves against the kind of weather and disease swings that defined 2025.

What to do next: Note last year’s disease pressure and prioritize hybrids with strong late-season plant health ratings.

How Many Hybrids Should You Plant?
The next practical question is how many hybrids to work into the plan. Too many can complicate management; too few can leave a farm exposed.

Diversity, Putnam says, is one of the simplest tools producers have to protect against weather swings, variable field conditions and maturity challenges. Different maturities and hybrid types respond differently to stress, so spreading acres out can soften the blow if one hybrid or one field has a tough year.

“Four to five different hybrids might be a good spot to start depending on how many acres you’re actually working,” he says.

Farm size, whether silage is the primary use or part of a dual-purpose strategy and whether you work with one or multiple seed companies will all influence that number.

Just as important as how many hybrids is how they are spread out by maturity. Staggered maturities help widen both pollination timing and harvest windows, which can be critical when a hot, dry spell or prolonged wet period hits at the wrong time.

“One hybrid means one pollination window. We want to spread our risk,” Putnam notes. “By planting hybrids with slightly different maturities, you give yourself a buffer if one week of weather doesn’t cooperate.”

That mix of hybrids and maturities gives farms more flexibility — not only to manage risk, but also to line up harvest timing, packing capacity and labor with the realities of a busy fall.

What to do next: Aim for a manageable mix of maturities to spread risk without overcomplicating harvest.

Who Should Be Part of the Discussion?
Hybrid selection shouldn’t fall solely on one person. Nutritionists, agronomists and on-farm managers each bring valuable insight that connects genetics to feed value, crop health and cow performance.

“Ideally, all of the above would be there or at least at different times be part of the discussion,” Putnam says.

Nutritionists link hybrids to ration goals and bunk outcomes, while agronomists provide insight on field performance and disease resistance. On-farm managers add practical knowledge about harvest and operations.

“Get a lot of people at the table. It’d be good to have everybody there, or at least part of the conversation at some point,” he says.

Including multiple viewpoints helps farms make informed decisions that balance agronomic performance with feed quality and efficiency.

What to do next: Bring key advisers into the seed discussion early so hybrid choices align with both field performance and feed goals.

Planning for a Strong Silage Season
As producers look toward 2026, the most successful silage programs will be the ones built on good records, the right hybrids, and a strong advisory team. Using last year’s data to refine seed choices, spreading risk across maturities and agronomics and checking that what goes into the bunk matches what the ration calls for all add up to more consistent feed.

By leaning on good data, tapping the expertise of nutritionists and agronomists, and favoring steady, resilient hybrids, producers can turn an unpredictable growing season into a more predictable feed supply.

Managing Heifer Mastitis: Targeting Risk Before Freshening

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 20:44:54 GMT

Heifer mastitis is often underestimated because it occurs before an animal has even entered the milking string, but the impacts are long-lasting. Subclinical infections at calving are linked to reduced production across the entire first lactation and often throughout the cow’s lifetime. For a class of animals that has yet to return any of their rearing investment, those losses are magnified.

“It’s been identified that an animal with an increased somatic cell count in the early parts of their first lactation, those animals produce less milk throughout that first lactation and many times have decreased milk production throughout their lifetime,” says Dr. Pamela Adkins of the University of Missouri. “So we are starting out of the gate not performing as well as we could, which obviously can be quite expensive.”

Based on data presented by Adkins, what’s becoming increasingly clear from recent research is heifer mastitis is not simply early-lactation mastitis in small cows. The timing, pathogen profile and management leverage points are all distinct. Because most new infections occur before the heifer ever enters the parlor, this disease demands a prevention strategy tailored to prepartum animals.

How is mastitis in heifers different from mastitis in older cows?

Across multiple studies, higher incidences of clinical mastitis have been observed in heifers during the first few days of lactation compared to older cows.

“It’s likely that those heifers acquire those infections prior to the onset of lactation,” Adkins explains. “Therefore, a lot of our focus potentially needs to be before lactation.”

This represents a shift from how we think about lactating cows.

Culture studies of heifers reinforce this: 29% to 75% of quarters can be culture-positive before calving and over 80% may be positive at first calving and in early lactation. In older cows, early lactation infection rates tend to be around 30%.

What kinds of bacteria are causing heifer mastitis?

The types of pathogens causing infection in heifers differs from those of adult cows. Heifers show a high prevalence of infection with non-aureus staphylococci (NAS), a lower prevalence of Staphylococcus aureus, and a higher prevalence of Streptococcus spp. compared to multiparous cows.

NAS are the most common isolates in heifers, especially Staphylococcus chromogenes. These are generally considered minor mastitis pathogens as they cause only a minor inflammatory response, but Adkins advises not ignoring these bacteria because they are highly prevalent.

Interestingly, NAS infection has been linked with lower incidence of clinical mastitis, and NAS inhibit the growth of pathogen bacteria in lab settings. These results suggest NAS could have a protective effect, but Adkins acknowledges there is a lot more in vitro and in vivo work to be done on this topic.

While not the largest contributor to heifer mastitis, S. aureus infection is still common. However, without the usual parlor-based transmission pathways, the question becomes how these heifers are becoming infected.

“In older cows, we consider the parlor the major concern of where the pathogen is coming from. We know [S. aureus] can be contagious, spread from cow to cow, and we think about that happening during milking time,” Adkins says. “Obviously that’s not happening yet in heifers. Therefore, we need to think of other factors that are important in heifers.”

Some older work looked into where S. aureus was found across seven dairies. Looking beyond milk and colostrum, isolates were found on the udder skin, muzzle, rectum and vagina. Adkins proposes these body sites were an important source of S. aureus infection for heifers. These infections also vary with geography and environment. The risk factors associated with an individual farm’s management and location need to be taken into consideration.

When are heifers most at risk of getting intramammary infections?

“In order to be able to prevent it, we need to know where we should focus so that we can implement prevention strategies at the right time points to help reduce infections,” Adkins says.

Work from her own lab sampled 304 quarters from 152 Holstein heifers. In comparing primigravid and nulligravid heifers, they found pregnant heifers had a higher incidence of positive quarters than non-pregnant heifers.

“Gestation and development of the [mammary] gland associated with pregnancy seem to be risk factors for increased prevalence of intramammary infections,” Adkins says.

These infections, in both pregnant and non-pregnant heifers, are significant because that animal is still growing and developing. Any infection could interrupt that process.

How do we diagnose heifer mastitis?

Without the usual diagnostic pathway of milk culture available, defining an intramammary infection in a heifer can be a bit tricky. In most young and early gestation heifers, there isn’t enough secretion present in the mammary gland to collect a meaningful sample. Collecting swabs from the teat or teat canal might be the best option at the moment, but it might not tell the whole story either.

“A lot of bacteria hang out just in the teat canal or the teat sphincter. They don’t necessarily go up into the gland,” Adkins explains. “If we just culture the end of the teat we can find bacteria that maybe aren’t causing a problem, which complicates our definitions [of infection].”

In research, needle based methods are used to bypass the teat end and go directly to the glandular tissue. However, these methods have not been validated in the field, and Adkins heavily advises against their use on farms.

Herd level factors you should review during your visit:

Overall herd udder health: Herds with lower overall somatic cell counts tend to have less heifer mastitis. Good management practices for lactating cows influence heifer health.
Early-life management: Heifers from farms with strong colostrum SOPs show lower mastitis rates, likely due to both enhanced immunity and overall better heifer oversight. Cross-suckling remains a concern due to teat end damage.
Fly control: It has been well documented that flies can carry mastitis pathogens and move directly between teat ends.
Contact with mature cows: Some research has linked prepartum commingling with increased mastitis risk, possibly due to both pathogen exposure and stress.
Time in calving area: Longer stays in heavily contaminated maternity environments significantly increase exposure risk.

Luckily, a lot of these factors come down to management decisions.

“Heifer mastitis is a major concern in many herds. Management is always a consideration for mastitis and a major consideration in heifers as well,” Adkins says. “Mammary health is related to herd level mammary health. So taking care of mastitis at all fronts is important, and considering environmental management strategies for your heifers is vital to try to reduce infections in these animals.”

Clinical Takeaways for Vets: Managing Heifer Mastitis

Think prepartum, not parlor. Most intramammary infections in heifers are acquired before calving; prevention efforts must target the rearing and prefresh periods.

Expect a different pathogen profile. NAS (especially S. chromogenes) and Streptococci dominate. S. aureus is present but less tied to parlors and more to skin, mucosal and environmental sources.

Use herd somatic cell count as a proxy. Herds with low bulk-tank and lactating-cow SCC typically have fewer heifer infections; poor overall udder health is a red flag to investigate replacements.

Audit early-life management. Verify colostrum SOPs, prevent cross-suckling, evaluate fly burden and assess cleanliness/turnover of prefresh and calving areas. These are high-yield levers.

Beware diagnostic pitfalls. Teat-end swabs overcall “infection”; needle sampling is research-only and not appropriate on-farm. Focus on first-test-day SCC and targeted cultures from clinical quarters postcalving.

Targeted protocols over blanket therapy. Emphasize environmental and management changes first. Use selective culture-based treatment strategies in fresh heifers rather than routine prepartum intramammary therapy.

Walmart Opens New Milk Processing Plant in Georgia

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 22:37:26 GMT

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, officially began operations this week at its new milk processing facility in Valdosta, Ga. The 300,000-sq.-ft. plant is Walmart’s second owned-and-operated milk facility in the U.S., representing a $350-million investment and creating more than 400 jobs in the region.

The Valdosta facility will source milk from local dairy farmers and process a full range of options, from whole and 2% milk to skim and 1% chocolate milk, under Walmart’s Great Value and Sam’s Club Member’s Mark brands, according to the retailer. The plant will supply these dairy products to more than 650 stores across the Southeast.

“This facility has innovation at its core,” says Bruce Heckman, Walmart U.S. vice president of manufacturing. “It will make our supply chain more resilient, build greater transparency around sourcing and benefit customers, regional farmers and the Valdosta community.”

In the past, Walmart has purchased its Great-Value branded milk from other dairy cooperatives. However, over the past decade, the retail giant has built a series of milk processing plants to control production of one of the most price-sensitive grocery commodities. Walmart opened its first fluid milk processing facility in 2018 in Fort Wayne, Ind. The opening also follows Walmart’s recent investments in case-ready beef plants in Thomasville, Ga., and Olathe, Kan.

According to the Associated Press, the retail giant is following the lead of other large grocers such as Kroger, which has long run its own dairy processing facilities. But some critics have warned Walmart buys milk from only a handful of large farms, putting smaller farms under further pressure.

According to the company, the Valdosta plant represents another potential market for local dairy producers’ milk. It also reflects Walmart’s effort to manage its milk supply and maintain consistent product availability across the Southeast.

The facility is part of Walmart’s broader investments in U.S. manufacturing, supporting the company’s pledge to invest $350 billion in American-made products by 2031, with more than two-thirds of its annual spend already going toward products made, grown or assembled in the U.S.

Insider Strategy Tips for Top Performing Producers

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 20:39:52 GMT

Progress on the farm rarely comes from a single breakthrough. It comes from the everyday decisions that make a dairy run smoother, smarter and more sustainably than it did the year before. For three dairymen speaking at this year’s MILK Business Conference, Greg Bethard, TJ Tuls and Hank Hafliger, success isn’t accidental, it’s intentional.

These producers offer practical, hard-earned tips for other producers, sharing the strategies that have helped their dairies stay competitive, efficient and resilient in a fast-changing industry.

Invest In Technology That Pays Its Way
Technology continues to transform how dairies operate by offering tools that streamline processes and boost efficiency. For Tuls, the principle remains clear that every investment must deliver value.

“We’re always looking for ways to make our dairies run better,” Tuls says. “Right now, we’re testing three or four different systems to see what works best.”

Some tools use cameras to monitor cow movement and employee performance. Others combine data with DairyComp to spot trends and guide better decisions. But Tuls reminds farmers technology only works if you use the data.

“At the end of the day, it’s feeding your data back into your operation and doing something with that information. And it takes good people and managers to interpret it and really apply it on your farm,” he says.

For Bethard in Kansas, his perspective comes with decades of hindsight.

“I remember 30 years ago when I started out, a 1,000-cow dairy was huge. Back then, DairyComp and headlocks were your tools to manage that many cows,” Bethard says.

Today, his list of non-negotiables to manage a larger herd has grown. Sort gates, activity collars and meters in the parlor are all essential. The philosophy behind adopting new technology, though, hasn’t changed.

“I can barely use my cell phone, so I’m not really a technology guy,” he jokes. “I’m looking for anything that’s easy to use and lowers my cost to produce milk. The key is evaluating it and embracing what makes sense for us.”

For Bethard, every piece of technology has to prove its worth. When he evaluated activity collars on his dairy, the numbers spoke for themselves. Looking ahead, he plans to follow the same approach by avoiding flashy trends and focusing on tools that truly improve efficiency and animal care.

Measuring What Matters
Across all three dairies, success is powered by key performance indicators.

Tuls’ team in Nebraska leans heavily on people-focused metrics.

“One of the biggest KPIs we track is employee turnover,” he says. “When you have a strong, experienced team, it directly improves profitability, production and cow longevity.”

Feed efficiency is another cornerstone metric for Tuls.

“You can feed a lot of different products and make a lot of milk, but if you’re spending a ton of money doing it, it doesn’t help your bottom line,” he adds. “How cows convert feed into milk, that’s a huge deal.”

Bethard’s dairy approaches metrics through the lens of business sustainability. Their guiding number is their break-even cost with no milk price factored in.

“If we achieve that, really nothing else matters much,” Bethard says.

Operationally, they track a daily static variable margin: income over feed cost minus variable expenses.

“That margin is what pays for all the other fixed costs,” Bethard says.

It’s the heartbeat of the business, and the number he relies on to maintain a healthy, resilient operation.

Winning With People
For all three dairymen, success starts with people. Hafliger says that means creating a family atmosphere on his operation.

“These guys come to work in the middle of the night when it’s snowing outside,” he says. “They’re pulling calves and caring for cows in the toughest conditions. It’s important to treat them like family.”

Tuls agrees. Watching employees grow has become one of his greatest rewards.

“Three of our managers started as cow pushers, and now they’re running dairies,” he says. “That’s fun to watch. They really are family.”

Tuls says leadership means being present, listening, checking in and making sure people know their work matters.

“They’re working at your farm by choice,” he says. “You’ve got to convince them it’s a good place to be,” he adds.

Bethard sees culture as the cornerstone for his operation.

“Culture is what keeps the wheels turning,” Bethard says. “You can have the best systems in the world, but if your team doesn’t feel respected and connected, nothing works.

The Blueprint for Success
Across three states and three management styles, one message is clear. Great dairies do not achieve success by chance. They build it through careful adoption of technology, disciplined measurement and workplaces where people feel valued and motivated.

New Research Exposes Stagnant Biosecurity Efforts in the U.S. Dairy Industry

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 19:20:34 GMT

When it comes to biosecurity, U.S. dairy farmers are more reactive than proactive and some neglect the basics, making operations vulnerable to evolving disease threats, according to new research released Tuesday at MILK Business Conference .

The study found farm hygiene and herd health aren’t top of mind on all farms and one-third of farms don’t proactively review their biosecurity plans indicating a potential lack of ongoing commitment or adaptation.

There is a silver lining: More than 70% of large dairies say they are already working on improvements, meaning some in the industry are prioritizing biosecurity.

The recent research conducted by Farm Journal, which surveyed more than 300 dairy producers, looks at trends and potential vulnerabilities that might be affecting dairy farms nationwide. As disease challenges such as highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), New World screwworm (NWS) and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) continue to mount, biosecurity remains a critical concern for the industry.

“We need biosecurity efforts to be more impactful at the ground level. Not only to prevent major outbreaks, but to even protect employees and families from the things being taken home every day,” says Kirk Ramsey, Neogen’s professional services veterinarian who reviewed the biosecurity survey results.

Biosecurity Plans Lag Behind Threats

The survey reveals even among farms with established biosecurity strategies, commitment to reviewing and adapting these plans is lacking. While 68% of farmers with at least 250 dairy cows report having a biosecurity plan, 34% admit they do not review their plans regularly.

(Farm Journal)

On a positive note, 72% of dairy operators with 250-plus cows report they are currently making improvements to their biosecurity versus 58% of smaller dairy operators. Those producers are making improvements for a host of reasons, including recent on-farm or neighboring farm disease outbreaks, veterinarian recommendation and government or regulatory authority guidelines.

One respondent shares because their farm is a “closed herd” they’re not making any improvements to their biosecurity plan. All of this hints at a broader problem: Ongoing biosecurity practices might not be keeping pace with evolving threats.

Back to the Basics With Farm Security

The survey also uncovers significant gaps in fundamental farm security. More than 20% of surveyed dairies neglect to secure access to barns and animal housing. Monitoring or restricting visitor access is also a blind spot for 16% of producers, and only 33% of producers use camera surveillance to oversee their facilities. Additionally, 38% fail to control or limit access to areas where feed is stored or provided.

(Farm Journal)

Gaps in Hygiene and Herd Health

When it comes to farm hygiene and animal health practices, 72% of larger dairy operations have hand-washing stations included in their biosecurity protocol, and 75% use separate equipment for handling feed and manure. Even though more than half of respondents use technology, such as herd activity monitoring systems, to help identify sick animals, the overall picture suggests room for improvement in daily hygiene and health protocols.

(Farm Journal)

Training and Education Should Be Proactive

The approach to biosecurity training also calls for reform. The findings show a reactive pattern, with 32% of farms providing training only in response to biosecurity issues, while another 30% conduct quarterly meetings. These figures reveal substantial portions of the industry lack consistent, proactive staff education, an essential pillar of effective biosecurity management.

Chief Science Officer Jamie Jonker, Ph.D., with National Milk Producers Federation says biosecurity on dairy farms is a continuous process that requires proactive updates and employee education to keep pace with evolving disease threats.

“The National Dairy FARM Program offers comprehensive biosecurity materials and evaluation tools as well as certified FARM Biosecurity evaluators who can draft tailored plans and guide training to ensure consistent implementation,” he says. “Leveraging these resources helps producers stay ahead of risks and maintain a strong, resilient operation.”

(Farm Journal)

Cybersecurity: An Emerging Concern

Beyond biosecurity, the increasing reliance on technology introduces cybersecurity challenges. Only 29% of farmers have collaborated with cybersecurity experts to protect their farm systems and data. As farms grow more technologically interconnected, safeguarding digital infrastructure is an emerging need.

The insights from Farm Journal’s recent research paint a clear picture for the U.S. dairy industry: In an era of escalating disease threats such as H5N1 and NWS, a reactive or static approach to protection is no longer sufficient. Ultimately, this research serves as a pivotal reminder that biosecurity and cybersecurity are not one-time tasks, but dynamic, ongoing processes demanding continuous review and proactive management.

“Improvements in biosecurity will require a paradigm shift in how we see our individual operations’ vulnerabilities,” Ramsey says. “I believe there are some misconceptions around what biosecurity looks like. For many, it’s thought of as Tyvek suits and face masks, not clean boots and coveralls, and shower-in-shower-out facilities, not limited-farm entry. There are simple ways to create biosecurity plans into every operation, and there are experts in our industry building innovative solutions to the complexities of the cattle industry.”

Consumers Care More About Dairy’s Water Story

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 14:35:26 GMT

Dairy farmers are under the spotlight when it comes to water use, with consumers wanting more transparency than ever. For producers, managing this vital resource means balancing production needs with sustainability and regulatory expectations.

Tara Vander Dussen knows this all too well. The former environmental consultant and current co-host of the “Discover AG” podcast has spent much of her career helping farms navigate water regulations and sustainability challenges. She has also faced these pressures firsthand on her own dairy in New Mexico.

“Water is literally our limiting resource,” she says. “Conversations about the future of dairy revolve around how we access, use and conserve water.”

On an episode of “The Dairy Podcast Show,” Vander Dussen discussed why tracking and managing water is essential for dairies, noting that sharing these practices with consumers helps build trust.

Tracking and Cutting Water Use
Improving sustainability begins with understanding exactly how much water a dairy uses. Tracking provides a clearer picture of inefficiencies, helping farmers make smarter decisions.

“The first step [to improving water management] is knowing your numbers,” Vander Dussen says. “Through your farm’s permitting process, you can figure out how many gallons per cow per day you actually use. That baseline helps you see where water is going and where it might be wasted.”

Without that data, small leaks, overuse or inefficient equipment can go unnoticed, but improving water efficiency doesn’t always require large-scale investments or major infrastructure projects. Often, simple, low-cost adjustments, like repairing leaks, adjusting flushing routines or improving cleaning schedules, can make a big difference.

“The simplest management changes often have the biggest impact,” Vander Dussen notes, adding that the key focus should be figuring out how to recycle water as many times as possible.

Consumers Are Watching
With water under the spotlight, dairy farmers are finding transparency and communication more important than ever. Effectively conveying how water is reused and conserved is essential, particularly as consumers are becoming more engaged in understanding the sustainability of their food systems.

“With water becoming more limited, there will be more conversations with consumers about who is using water and how much of it,” Vander Dussen says.

She sees this curiosity as an opportunity to showcase conservation practices. Farmers can build trust by showing the steps they take to reduce water use and explaining why those choices matter. Part of that trust comes from presenting information in a clear, relatable way.

“We have to meet consumers where they’re at,” she says, “bring them into the fold of agriculture, bring them into food, without getting too lost in the weeds. It’s striking that balance of giving them information without overloading them.”

Vander Dussen also highlights the scale of the knowledge gap.

“We are trying to catch people up about a hundred years. That is a huge gap. What often fills it, especially online, is misinformation. One video or something trending on TikTok can shape perceptions. We have to do a better job and accept responsibility as farmers to bring consumers along on this journey.”

Making Every Gallon Count
There are several ways dairies can reuse water throughout the operation, and many farms already rely on these practices to stretch every gallon. The process often begins in the parlor with plate-coolers, where cool groundwater is used to lower the temperature of the milk. Because this cooling water hasn’t touched any contaminants, it can be used a second time for sanitizing milking equipment.

After its second use, the water is often directed to a lagoon for storage until it’s needed for barn management. From there, farms commonly use the recycled water to flush manure from holding pens during milking and later to clean alleyways where cows stand and eat. Once the water completes its job in the barn, it returns to the lagoon for another round of storage and settling. In the final stage, recycled water is applied to fields for crop irrigation.

The Future of Dairy Depends on Water
Across the country, water is central to dairy’s future, but how dairies use and conserve water is no longer just an operational concern; it’s a story the public is watching.

Vander Dussen sees this as an opportunity. By showing consumers how water is recycled, conserved and managed thoughtfully, dairies can build trust, highlight their farm’s sustainability efforts and strengthen community connections.

Can We Shape Calves Before Birth?

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 15:35:49 GMT

What if the most powerful determinant of a calf’s lifetime performance isn’t the genetics you select or the ration you feed, but the environment that calf experienced as a one-cell embryo? As research accelerates, developmental programming is becoming one of the most promising frontiers in cattle reproduction.

For two decades, the beef and dairy industries have focused relentlessly on improving fertility — and it worked. Conception rates rose, days open stabilized and the long slide in reproductive performance reversed. With conventional reproductive efficiency nearing a functional ceiling, scientists are shifting attention upstream, where the environment itself may program the future trajectory of the calf.

It’s well known that a resulting phenotype represents the consequence of genotype and environmental interactions. The performance of an animal depends on the genes they inherited, how much feed they get, whether they get sick, whether it’s hot or cold, and a plethora of other environmental factors.

“We’ve made tremendous progress in optimizing the environment that those animals are raised in by providing the best nutrition, the best housing, the optimal photo period and treating disease with pharmaceuticals to optimize phenotype,” says Peter Hansen of the University of Florida. “But we usually do that after the animals are born. We don’t really think too much about what is happening to those animals when they’re embryos or when they’re fetuses or even when the germ cells are being produced.”

Evidence of Developmental Programming

Recent work has shown us the environment of the mother and the early embryo can affect the postnatal phenotype of that embryo. The environment of the fetus can affect what kind of calf it becomes.

When embryos are produced in vitro, they are put in an artificial medium. Under normal protocols, this culture medium is choline-free. Choline is a methyl donor that may factor into the one-carbon metabolism of bovine embryos. In the uterus, choline is present at millimolar concentrations.

Work led by Eliam Estrada-Cortes in Dr. Hansen’s lab investigated the effect of culturing bovine embryos with or without choline. They found choline cultured embryos resulted in calves that were heavier at weaning with altered muscle DNA methylation.

“We’ve done this experiment three times, and each time the choline calves weigh more than the calves without choline. And that goes all the way through to slaughter,” Hansen says. A nutrient present (or absent) in the culture dish during critical development time can make a big difference.

The condition of the fertilizing bull can also affect embryonic development and quality. Arslan Tariq from the University of Florida investigated the effect of bull overnutrition on fertility, finding heavier bulls produced semen that delayed embryonic development and decreased embryo quality, without changes to sperm motility or fertilization rate.

Historically, seminal plasma is removed from sperm for artificial insemination as it contains elements that can be detrimental during storage. That being said, seminal plasma modulates the maternal environment in a significant way, impacting the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy. As a part of her PhD thesis, Gabriela Macay at the University of Florida evaluated the reproductive, health and production performance of female offspring conceived in the presence of seminal plasma. These animals had increased birth weights, increased milk yield and had greater persistence in the herd compared to controls.

“What we now know is the environment of the mother that the early embryo is in can affect the postnatal phenotype of that embryo. The environment of the fetus can affect what kind of calf it becomes,” Hansen says. “And the environment of the bull.”

How Does This Affect Reproductive Management?

Developmental programming shifts reproductive management from a focus on achieving conception to a broader view of how early-life conditions shape an animal’s long-term health, productivity and resilience. This expands the veterinary role from problem solver to long term system designer who helps producers make choices that shape herd-level outcomes years down the line.

The next revolution in cattle reproduction may come from understanding the earliest biological environment that determines how a calf learns to grow, metabolize and perform.

Tips to Make Informed Culling and Cow Longevity Choices in a Dairy Herd

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 15:54:27 GMT

How long a cow should remain in a milking herd is a tricky question without a straightforward answer. Some people will argue that increased herd longevity is a good thing. Nigel Cook from the University of Wisconsin outlines how this argument has been presented to him:

“People think longer lives result from healthier cows and that reflects better animal welfare, decreased environmental footprint (raising fewer replacements can decrease our methane emissions per pound of milk), and we can improve our economics because we’re keeping cows longer,” he says.

However, if you look a little deeper, this reasoning may be flawed. When comparing real herds, there are a variety of situations that may explain why there is no one-size-fits-all for turnover rates in a dairy.

“There are herds with lower turnover rates, with great welfare and excellent health. They sell heifers or build another barn, they expand. But there are also herds with lower turnover rates that have low turnover rates because they have to keep cows. Those cows may be high somatic cell count cows, mastitic cows or lame cows, and that impacts their overall performance and fertility,” Cook explains.

On the other hand, high turnover rates can also reflect good herd management.

“There are herds with high turnover rates that can support those rates because of good health and good fertility. They have the replacement supply they need to do it,” Cook continues.

Avoid Hasty Culling Choices

In the U.S, the average time for a dairy cow to remain in the herd is 2.5 lactations. Over the past 10 years, many improvements have been made in dairy herds: cattle are producing more milk with improved component contents, fertility rates are up and somatic cell counts are down. Despite these changes, herd turnover rates have remained fairly constant. Cook proposes this is because producers follow breeding, and not necessarily culling.

“The process of culling is enormously variable,” Cook says. “Few farms use relatively well organized, high quality summaries of data to help them select cows early enough in lactation to decide which cow leaves.”

Cook highlights how a lot of farms put too much focus on the cow’s immediate production history instead of their lifetime production.

“They have a heifer, they have a slot. They’re just making that decision that day without a lot of prior planning. I wish we could change that,” he says.

This can lead to hasty cull decisions that may not be the best move for the herd overall. This was confirmed in an unpublished survey of over 60 Wisconsin dairy herds. Cook and colleagues found that 29% of cows culled for production reasons were better performers than half of the cows in their own herds.

“We should be holding our farms accountable to the quality of the cows leaving the herd, not the quantity,” Cook says.

The Economics of Culling Decisions

Mike Overton, global dairy platform lead for Zoetis, suggests letting herd economics be a driving factor when making the decision to cull and selecting cull cows.

“When we look at [culling decisions], we’re trying to replace an inferior cow, and that represents an opportunity to improve the herd,” Overton says. “It comes down to timing. We do it too late, we cost the herd money. If we do it prematurely, we cost the herd money.”

Consider the predicted value of the incoming and potential cull animals. If you replaced that animal, what would the improvement in milk production be? How about the improvement in herd genetics? One additional consideration is the revenue for the current cow when she leaves.

“When you have a heifer calving into a herd and her predicted value is greater than the lowest value cow in the herd, replace that cow. If not, that heifer should go elsewhere,” Overton says.

While Overton advocates for more aggressive replacement strategies, he says he is often countered with the idea of whether the departing cow has ‘paid for herself’.

“The decision to replace the cow should never account for when she’s paid for herself. That’s flawed logic,” Overton says. “This line of thinking might work for your average and above average animals, but your lower producing cows, the ones you should be culling sooner, will end up staying in the herd longest.”

Also consider older cows have a higher risk of health complications, as well as a lower market value per pound at slaughter. The salvage value of a cow should play into your culling decisions.

“Most people assume a low replacement rate equals greater profitability,” Overton explains. “It would be true all things being equal. If you think about if all cows were healthy and equal in production and market value, and the only reason for replacement was mortality, a lower replacement rate is going to be better. But we also know that cows are not equal in value or productivity.”

It’s possible to fall into the trap of trying to hit longevity, productivity or replacement rate benchmarks; however, these may cause lower performing cows to be kept for longer. Cull decisions should be well informed and tailored to each herd.

“Don’t be afraid to replace poor producing animals, even first lactation animals, if you’ve got heifers available to take their place. Never restrict replacement just to try and hit a benchmark,” Overton says.