Dairy cattle

anything when getting up or down? Are they hesitant or confident? Are any physical injuries occurring as they lie down in their environment? Stand in a typical free stall or tie stall and drop to your knees. Is it a painful experience? Producers take a good look at the physical condition of the cows to maintain an adequate evaluation. If the cows have swollen knees, or swollen abraded hocks, then the producers have a stall problem needed to be addresses. What about the rump and hooks area? Are there abscesses, or bump and bruises? Upon completion of these simple observations one should have an idea whether to not the free stalls or tie stalls require modification. In general, we often don’t think about socializing with cattle but is a factor that is needed in our dairy cows lives. Socializing refers to the amount of time that a cow can spend walking around given the ability to interact with other animals around themselves. Meaning that that are participating in activities such as grooming, exercising, licking, but most importantly, expression of heat. These particular activities all having a large impact of cow health, environment, grouping, and time allowed by other activities. On average, a cow spends about an hour and a half (6%) of her day socializing…

The use of artificial insemination in dairy cattle selective breeding enables the best bulls and cows are chose to improve the genetic make-up such as qualities - milk fat content and quantity of milk in the dairy cow population. This helps to prevent the spread of diseases that can result from normal sexual reproduction because AI is done using sterile procedures also the use of AI can minimize injury to the cattle population that caused by aggressive bulls during the mating process. The use…

DAIRY COWS There are 60,000 dairy farms in the United States alone -- California being the number one producer. Every cow produces 360,000 glasses of milk in their lifetime to be consumed by the American population (Dairy Facts). Just like all mammals, the only time a cow will produce milk is if it has a calf. To get a cow pregnant, they will artificially inseminate them. To do this, they collect semen from the bulls and then put the cows in what the industry calls a “rape rack”; which is a…

What are the effects of preconditioning cattle at weaning? In the beef cattle business the question commonly asked is, what are the effects of preconditioning weaned cattle? Well through many studies I can confidently say that preconditioning cattle is a must, but the way the beef industry works, it does not always look to be profitable to the commercial cow calf producer. When preconditioning cattle it will add in more expenses and more labor to be able to implement these practices when the…

Dairy cows are an important aspect in almost everyone’s daily life, whether you are a farmer benefiting from their production to live or you are a dairy product consumer. In this essay, we will see some important aspects concerning dairy cow reproduction; before, during and after gestation. Whether by natural means or artificial insemination, it is primordial for the farmer to know when and how long the cow has been in estrus to plan the pregnancies and calving’s. There are many different…

SYNCHRONISATION IN CATTLE SHELEMBE KHOLEKA INTRODUCTION Most beef and dairy farms in Africa use a pasture based breeding and calf rearing system which requires them to manage their herds such that calving and maximum milk production coincides with the period when the grass and pasture is good and nutritious which mainly occurs during spring and early summer (Xu et al., 1997; Lane et al., 2008). In order to maintain short breeding and calving seasons that would result in calving and peak milk…

number of other dairy items, but cows provide much-needed meat products for the homestead family as well. Of course, there are a large number of different cow breeds, so how is the new homesteader to know which is the best dairy cow breeds? My favorite types of cows for dairy products are as follows: Holsteins Holsteins are one of the most common breeds of cow found in dairy farms, for one important reason: they tend to produce more milk than any of the other breeds. They’re easy to spot, due…

Introduction The commercial viability of an industry, is its overall ability to succeed and be profitable over time. The Riverina region’s dairy industry, consists of twelve farms, producing almost thirty million litres of milk per annum, supplying not only the region but also is a significant contributor to Australia’s manufacturing and export trade of dairy products (Department of Primary Industries, 2014). The sustainability of dairy farming in the Riverina is influenced through significant…

company need to follow the “Sustainable Dairying: Water Accord”? Water is necessary in dairy farm activities for growing grass, washing down milking areas and cooling the milk. Being an area of low annual rainfall in Hastings District, the company is applying for water rights to use the water from a local river. The river has acceptable microbiological water quality currently although several tributaries have high numbers of indicator bacteria. The National Policy Statement for fresh water…

participation on intra-household time allocation in rural Ethiopia, by observing 156 households --78 milk market participating and 78 non-participating -- for two consecutive days. In this way we aimed to find out how a change in dairy farming production and marketing system affects adult household member`s time allocation regarding dairying and non-dairying activities. Our findings show that members of milk market participant households allocate significantly more hours on dairying and…