Dairy Nutrition
As temperatures rise and cows begin to feel the effects of heat stress, nutritional strategies become key to maintaining intake, metabolism and productivity.
If you’re looking for a dairy forage that’s highly versatile, reliable, and digestible, pearl millet might be the crop for you.
Eight graduate students competed in the 3rd Annual Three Minute Thesis and poster competition at the Four State Dairy Conference, where Iowa State’s Shedrack Omale took top honors for research on methane-reducing seaweed in dairy diets
Practicing good “silage hygiene” helps ensure a quality product that does not contain mold, mycotoxins, or other potentially damaging pathogens that can jeopardize silage quality, feed value, and even animal safety.
Feeding liquid whey is a sustainable way to recycle nutrients, support production, and potentially earn carbon credits—all in one package.
Cattle rely heavily on their sense of smell, and understanding their odor preferences could help improve handling, health, and overall management.
Making silage out of soybeans is highly possible, and may be a growing trend in homegrown dairy forage production.
Protecting your hay’s quality and value doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does need to be monitored.
There’s an innovative new way to potentially monitor the digestive activity, environmental impact, and health of dairy cows – and it’s as simple as breathing.
Protecting the future performance of the herd starts with cooling the cows who are carrying it.
What a cow eats and how she’s cared for before calving can shape her calf’s health, resilience and productivity for years to come.
Cattle are naturally foragers, but not everything they consume is naturally good for them.
Human nutrition increasingly embraces fermentation as a natural and non-medicated means of promoting digestive health and supporting the gut microbiome. Now, some dairies are doing the same, by feeding kefir to their calves.
Once the darling of dairy nutrition, BMR corn hybrids have fallen partially out of favor thanks to yield drag compared to conventional hybrids.
The dairy of the future doesn’t have to be flashy—it just needs to be efficient, sustainable, and built around cows, labor, and market access, says Pennsylvania farmer Steve Harnish.
The global feed survey data estimates world feed production increased in 2024 by 1.2% to 1.396 billion metric tons. What does this mean for the year ahead?
More colostrum would be welcome on virtually every dairy farm, especially if it also had higher quality. A team of Cornell University researchers explored whether a dose of oxytocin could help fresh cows deliver either, or both.
A crop that was initially developed for the human food market is now being served up in heaping portions to the humble dairy cow.
Can pasteurized whole milk be enhanced with added milk replacer powder? If so, is it possible to add too much of a good thing?
Feeding dairy-beef cross steers a low-starch, forage-based diet early in life may be the secret to fewer liver abscesses, healthier rumens, and heavier carcasses without sacrificing performance.
Wageningen University is developing an AI-powered dashboard to help feed manufacturers identify potential safety hazards such as mycotoxins, dioxins, and heavy metals early in the production process.
What happens inside a cow’s udder when nutrition takes a hit? A new study reveals how quickly the mammary gland adapts—and what it means for milk production.
As dairy producers strive for efficiency and higher profitability, the famed “7 lb. target” has become a focal point in dairy production conversations.
Japanese researchers have created a no-touch cow-tracking system using multi-camera technology, offering 90% accuracy for better health monitoring and herd management.
Any hiccup in fresh-cow health is likely to put reproduction in jeopardy.
That perfectly balanced ration, carefully curated by your nutritionist, looks ideal on paper -- or, more likely, in your feeding software. But how often does the prescribed formulation actually make it to your cows?
Calf raisers are becoming increasingly cognizant of the need to optimize lifetime dairy cow performance by feeding them generously in their first weeks of life. But how, exactly, do you know how much to feed?
From the moment a calf is born, its journey to becoming a productive member of the herd begins.
Each year, billions of pounds of almond hulls are incorporated into lactating dairy rations, providing a valuable source of nutrients.
When cows accumulate too much copper, it piles up in the liver. The result can be liver damage at the cellular level, liver necrosis, and impaired liver function.