FEED & NUTRITION

Mycotoxin contamination can affect even the most well-run dairy farms. It’s important for farmers to detect mycotoxins early so they can mitigate the risk to their animals and minimize any future health and production issues that could arise in the future.

“I want to plant more alfalfa so I don’t have to fertilize as much.” If I had a nickel for every time I have heard that, I would have a lot of nickels! That statement might apply to nitrogen fertilization of alfalfa, but all other nutrients need to be applied depending on soil and/or tissue levels.

Looking back to the 2019 forage year, it was a disaster for some dairy farms and a challenge for most. It was almost a perfect storm; several factors that could go wrong happened somewhere.

Corn silage is the go-to homegrown forage for supplying digestible starch and fibre high-producing cows require. Often, however, shortcuts and oversights during the growing, harvest and storage processes can limit its resulting feed value.

Over recent years, a whole category of additive products have exploded in dairy cow (and other food animal species) nutrition. Microorganism-based products such as yeasts, bacteria, fungi, enzyme products, etc., have become standards in dairy nutrition and are commonly found in a significant number of diets.

Coming off a couple of years of adequate to excessive rainfall throughout many dairy forage growing regions across the country, feed hygiene is an increasingly scrutinized forage quality item.