Herd Management [DA.HM]

MMN May 2024 – Risk Factors for Twinning

As dairy cattle have been selected over the years for higher milk production, a higher rate of twinning has also been observed. In fact, the rate has tripled over the…

MMN May 2024 – Colostrum Beyond Antibodies: What is New?

Project: Identifying critical control points for colostrum contamination and Mycoplasma bovis prevalence in first milking colostrum from Scottish dairy herds. When colostrum quality is discussed, it is tempting to think…

Providing a Comfortable Thermal Environment for Calves

Despite the various methods for housing calves (e.g. individual, paired, group, pens, hutches) the basic principles for housing should be the same. The environment should be as clean as possible,…

MMN March 2024 – Dairy Cow Building Design

Building layout is important to ensure that dairy cows have good access to feed, water and space for lying to maximise cow comfort and productivity. Feeding It is important to…

MMN March 2024 – Are Robots for Me?

With the ongoing problem of finding good reliable labour, dairy farmers are increasingly asking themselves: Should I be looking at robots to milk my herd? In the following article I…

MMN March 2024 – How Long are your Heifers Lasting?

According to the recently published NMR 500 Herd KPI Report for 2023, the medium number of lactations per cow at exit was 3.6 and the culling rate was 28%, with…

MMN January 2024 – Selecting Beef Bulls for Use on Dairy

Sales of sexed dairy semen are increasing year-on-year and have been reported by AHDB to have reached 76.5% out of all dairy semen sales in the 12-month period up to…

MMN January 2024 – Spring Block Calving: How does your Herd Measure Up?

Measuring reproductive performance of the herd can allow comparison between years, areas for improvement can be identified and you can check the effectiveness of management changes made. Regular measuring and…

MMN January 2024 – Colostrum Quality from Heifers

It is often said that the quality of colostrum (in terms of immunoglobin content or IgG) from heifers is not as good as that from cows. Older cows are likely…

The Benefits of Rumination Monitoring

Cows will typically ruminate for around 500 minutes a day (7-8 hours) and a reduction in rumination time can be a sign that something is not quite right. Cows can…

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