Animal Nutrition
Feed costs will continue to be the No. 1 expense. Jim Salfer, Extension dairy educator with the University of Minnesota, offers some best practices to help producers lower feed costs.
Raising heat-tolerant cattle that are able and willing to go further to graze in subtropical climates is the goal of a new beef cattle research project at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research station at Beeville.
The livestock production businesses of the future will need to balance much more than the bottom line.
Head to Lancaster County Pennsylvania and the sweet aroma of candy can be smelled on a family dairy farm. Red Knob Dairy has been feeding upcycled Hershey candy waste to their cows for more than a decade.
More dairy heifer raisers are taking a page from the feedlot world these days by utilizing liquid supplements as carriers for vitamins, trace minerals, and feed additives in heifer TMRs.
Persistent drought in major beef cattle production regions continues to have a significant impact on the cattle industry despite improvements in drought conditions in other parts of the country.
“Pushing feed is perhaps the simplest and least expensive management strategy dairy operators can implement.”
So-called “sacrifice pastures” might be needed to help promote forage production the rest of this cattle grazing season.
Supplementing early lactation dairy cow diets with bile acids could provide a pathway to suppressing fatty liver and ketosis, and ultimately boosting milk production and profitability.
When cattle diets are changed without an adaptation period or if cattle have sudden access to a new feedstuff, health problems can follow.
Testing forage and feed for nutrient quality helps ranchers ensure they are meeting nutrient requirements for optimum beef cattle performance.
Feed additives can be included in dairy cattle diets for a variety of reasons. However, feed additives should not be considered a cornerstone to any farm feeding program.
When calves on grass drop like flies, have minimal gains and many carcasses are condemned on the rail, Kansas State University experts uncover the unfortunate cause.
When a significant number of cattle died in less than two hours, a number of questions are raised. Kansas State University experts discuss this toxicology case and the answers that were found.
Could probiotics improve early calf growth? Researchers think so.
While “high-risk” cattle are often given high levels of hay or forage to aid in the transition to a milled diet, a study at the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station researches ways to increase performance.
When cows get below their lower critical temperature and get into cold stress, they can adapt by increasing feed consumption to increase their basal metabolic rate and increase heat of fermentation.
Determining how much forage cows will eat on a per day and per month basis for the duration of winter always requires a little “cowboy math”.
Determining proper mineral supplementation merits more thought than simply going to the feed store, grabbing a few bags or a pallet of the mineral they have on hand and throwing it in a lick tub.
Estimating forage usage by cows is an important part of the task of calculating winter feed needs. Hay or standing forage intake must be estimated in order to make the calculations.
Grazing regrowth on irrigated alfalfa fields is likely in fall grazing plans for many producers. However, alfalfa has several challenges to grazing from animal and plant health perspective.
Creating a herd where all the individuals are healthy and normal increases your chances of economic success.
Purina introduces EfficienZ, a non-nutritive feed additive available in select supplements marketed by the company.
Researchers at Virginia Tech University have investigated what effects infusing extra acetate or propionate, or lowering the pH, would have on thermodynamics of VFA in the rumen.
Probiotics fit well into an effective feeding strategy that can be implemented in conjunction with infrastructure considerations to combat the high cost of heat stress.
Dr. Pedro Melendez, a veterinarian and dairy specialist at Texas Tech University, addresses five sources of shrink that can cause substantial losses in terms of feed used, ration formulation and poor performance.
All feed types are costing more, and there’s no way around that. However, several management practices can be used to potentially lower costs without sacrificing cow health or the animal’s next lactation.
Bulls don’t always transition well from one farm to the next. Some extra TLC could mean the difference in whether that animal stays in good condition and maintains good sperm quality and quantity or struggles to adjust.
Cattle grazing pastures with high soil-test phosphorus may be getting enough of the nutrient from the grass to eliminate the need for a phosphorus feed additive.
TMR consistency and composition are important to efficient and reliable nutrient delivery in lactating cow rations. But the impact of those factors actually can span much further.