NebGuides
Dairy 10-Point Quality Control Program - Mastitis Treatment Records (pdf)
Milk Urea Nitrogen Testing (pdf)
Ramping-up to lower heat stress
Rick Stowell, Extension Specialist- Animal Environment
If the early-June dose of sweltering tropical heat did not hasten your plans to get cooling systems in good operating condition, maybe this photograph of one of the highly trained Holsteins at the former UNL Dairy Research Facility will nudge along those efforts. • First off, ‘Beatrice’ clearly appreciates the easy access to water, though her using it to cool her feet may have made her think twice about drinking it. Is access to drinking water a challenge for some of your cows?
Making the best bed: Pros and cons of bedding options
Kim Clark, Dairy Extension Educator
Bedding choice directly influences cow comfort, but the decision on which material to put underneath cows must consider several other factors, such as cost, availability, ease of handling, udder health, pathogen growth and more. Use the following list of pros and cons to sort through the options for making the best beds on your dairy.
3 goals to achieve for greater cow comfort
Kim Clark, Nebraska Dairy Extension Educator
Originally published in Progressive Dairyman February 11, 2019. Dairy cows spend 12 to 14 hours a day lying down. Ensuring they have adequate space and comfort for lying leads to healthier, cleaner cows producing higher quality milk. Dairy farmers can achieve this by focusing on goals related to cows, management and comfort: 1) Our goal for cows 2) Our management goal 3) Our comfort goal
7 benchmarks for the best bedding quality
Kim Clark, Nebraska Dairy Extension Educator
Originally appeared in Progressive Dairyman January 21, 2019. Promoting a surface on which cows want to lie down is about more than just comfort. The bedding material a dairy chooses plays a critical role in preventing mastitis, reducing injury, regulating temperature and fitting into the overall management system. One measure of bedding quality is the concentration of environmental pathogens, which play a role in milk quality and are major causes of mastitis – clinical and subclinical. Environmental pathogen concentrations are impacted by the dry matter and pH of the bedding materials. As bedding dry matter increases, the concentration of environmental pathogens decreases, and as the pH of the bedding material increases, environmental pathogen concentrations increase.