FEED & NUTRITION

With a desire to feed top-quality nutritious hay and increase their return on investment, Lars and Ingrid Steunebrink from Kirkton, Ontario, found themselves a new way to dry hay.

As we start the new year, there are some new regulations regarding medically important antibiotics. However, chances are you are already compliant with the changes, so take a deep breath and sip some hot chocolate.

Keeping productive and healthy cows longer positively impacts the profitability of a farm. Since the cost of raising a replacement heifer is about $2,100 to $2,500, it takes more than one lactation to pay it back. Therefore, a dairy cow will start to be profitable only once it is in its second lactation.

A few years ago, a new forage grass appeared on the North American market called festulolium. Festulolium is the result of a cross between a fescue and a ryegrass that offers increased yield and feed value compared to the individual species.

The first edition of the International Silage Conference (ISC) in 1972 – called “Silage Seminar” – was held in Edinburgh and was open exclusively to British researchers. The conference has since evolved and is now held every three years and hosted by various countries throughout the world.

The number of farms with automated milking systems has rapidly increased in North America over the past 15 years. Despite the increase in adoption, there have been very few controlled studies that have evaluated feeding management strategies for cows milked within automated milking systems.