Dairy Producer's Banquet is Thursday, Dec 5 This is a pretty exciting lineup. Dr. Bill Wavrin is our main speaker and will fill the morning. He is a dairyman, a veterinarian, a proclaimed capitalist, and humanitarian from how he sees his employees in his first talk "Organizing Milk Harvest - Producer Perspective on Infrastructure and HR." "What to Expect from Your Future Vet" is his second talk. He says, "Your vet is valuable with a sleeve or a scalpel, but more valuable when they lay them down."

Dr Barb Peterson will keep you awake after lunch with "Bovine Influenza in the rear view mirror and practical biosecurity." She is the practitioner in West Texas that identified H5N1 as the cause of what was then a "mystery disease.' She started her career in West Texas, moved into a USDA slaughter plant, was our Vaccinova Tech service vet enhancing our Salmonella and Pinkeye vaccines, did some time with artificial intelligence and is now back in practice in West Texas.

Jason Hartschuh, OSU Dairy Extension Educator, will discuss "Identifying Mold and Mycotoxin Issues in Dairy Cattle". We seem to have more issues with these ornery toxins year after year and we need a plan to deal with them.

Calf Offering Water Right After Milk This practice has become popular enough that companies are now developing supplemental electrolytes for the water. This should give more punch to this practice that is creating healthier calves with improved growth. If you would like to try these electrolytes, let Dr. Hardesty know. Of course, the warm water needs to be offered right after the milk bottle is removed. If they feel satisfied by milk, they will lie down and won't get back up.

 

 Reducing GHG From August 2024 JAVMA: Sustainability is now a top 5 purchase driver for food and beverages. The percentage of consumers that prefer to purchase products produced in a sustainable manner has increased 10% between 2009 and 2019. There is a challenge defining what sustainable is, but some science is coming out, even if some is modeling.

There will be programs trying to monetize carbon credits for GHG reduction. Some of these will be based on theories, some on science. The theory based programs will rely on some program to monetize them. The science based ones will monetize themselves. The JAVMA article models that globally, a 10% decrease in livestock disease incidence is estimated to reduce GHG emissions by 800 million metric tons. Therefore every percentage point that dairy cattle disease rates decrease, milk production increases enough to meet the nutritional needs of 80 million people. Modeling shows that mastitis, lameness and reproductive efficiency improvements can have a substantial impact on GHG also. Every case of lameness increases emissions by 1.5%. First time mastitis incidence increased emissions by 6% and double that for 3 or more cases.

So what do we do that we aren't already doing? The situation reminds me of the pre-ovsynch days when we found open cows and said watch her for heat. We didn't have a plan for when it didn't work. Do we have a full plan for keeping your cows healthy? We start with a clean, well balanced diet that is well available. Next is comfortable housing, which means well managed sand bedding. Complete cooling systems with fans and sprinklers. A well executed and evaluated vaccination program and an intensive reproductive program. Same stuff to decrease GHG as increasing profits.

 

 Barn Management for Milk Quality in a Nutshell

Dr. Andy Lefeld

The objective of milk quality is to milk clean, dry, well stimulated teats. It makes it a heck of a lot easier to do this if we put some effort into the 95%+ of the day when she's not in the parlor. Our management of the barn and cleanliness of the stalls can play a huge influence on the quality of the milk we get in the parlor.

What type of bedding are we using? Are we using bedding (be honest)? The substrate of what's covering the platform plays a major role in how comfortable it is for cows to use stalls, and what her risk is of developing mastitis. Organic material (straw, manure solids, wood shavings) offer easy access to nutrients for bacteria to use for growth, so generally (although not always) organic bedding has a higher bacteria count. Inorganic bedding (sand), generally has a lower bacteria count. Its not always about what's in the bed that's important either: How we manage the stalls can have a HUGE influence on how clean the bedding is. If we put really clean sand or shavings in the stalls, but cows urinate or defecate on the bedding and we don't clean it, it doesn't really matter what we used to begin with: its crap. So we need to use clean bedding AND manage the space.

After cows come back from the parlor and eatand then lay down, do we ever take a look at how the cows are indexed in the freestalls? The ultimate goal is to have a row of nice clean cows with their butts uniformly just over the curb with close to 100% stall usage (with few cows standing/perching, but this isn't a stocking density discussion). In order to make this happen, we need to have our bedding AT LEAST even with the curb. If our bedding is below the curb, we end up with ponds (or lakes) that will tend to allow cows to lay further up in the stall, and you'll end up with manure in the back of the stall. If bedding is adequate, but the cows are still too far forward, you may consider some maintenance to your stalls and move the neck rail back, or adjust/install a brisket rail.

As discussed, the cleanliness of the bedding is also important. If we're using sand and the sand lane isn't dialed in with A LOT of fiber in the sand, we've lost our advantage of having inorganic bedding. Do we have enough stockpiled and drying space to let it dry? For separated manure solids we need to incorporate a system to get the manure as dry as possible. Are our alleys clean enough that cows don't track manure into them? I've seen this mostly as an issue on flush barns that our alley cleanliness closest to the platforms has manure buildup that ends up in the back of the stalls. Is the slope back to the stall curb enough to flush clean. If not, we may need to scrape manure away from the curb once a day. We have some scrapers attached to groomers that do this in one pass. Bedding cultures and analysis can be done to identify how our bedding stacks up and identify if there are risks.  Solids can make a comfortablebed, but we had several SCC blow ups thissummer. Get solids dry as you can even reducing yield. Add a little every day. Deep beds can be tilled at every milking helping to dry the bed. Hydrated lime decreases bacterial counts for 24 hours. Adding 2 to 5 pounds to the back of stalls daily works better than mixing lime into the pile of solids. Wear a mask, it is not lung friendly.

Milk Quality at its core is very simple: Milk clean, dry, well stimulated teats. Sometimes we focus a lot in the parlor, but the cow spends nearly all of her day out in the barn. Let us know if you need help identifying opportunities for your milk quality.