increase font size
As cows transition from dry to milking animals, they undergo big changes that leave them at risk to many health conditions.
During the transition from dry to milking cows, it’s crucial to manage their health effectively to ensure their reproductive performance, production, and longevity aren’t compromised.
Watch out for warning signs like difficult calvings, retained foetal membranes, lameness, clinical mastitis, or other health issues.
Calving brings about significant physiological changes in cows, increasing the risk of mastitis and lameness. However, there are strategies to support them during this time. Avoid overfeeding springers, check them regularly, provide magnesium to prevent milk fever and grass staggers, and supplement with trace elements for immune function. Hygiene, patience, and proper teat care are also essential.
As dairy cows transition from dry to milking animals, they undergo big changes that leave them at risk to many health conditions.
Therefore, it’s vital that cows are properly managed during this time because diseases can have far-reaching effects on their reproductive performance, production, and longevity.
Trigger Points
It’s important to recognise what a normal level of disease is around calving, so you can identify when to intervene. Look out for any of these red flags:
Physiological Changes
The calving process causes big changes in the body. A cow’s immune function is compromised, and teat canals open during a time when unfavourable ground conditions are common. These risk factors can lead to an increase in mastitis rates. Many of the clinical mastitis cases seen in the first two weeks after calving, when the cow comes into milk, are contracted in the late dry period.
To make calving easier hormones relax the cow’s pelvic tendons and ligaments. However, the hormones affect all the tendons and ligaments in the body including the foot. This creates a less stable foot that’s more prone to damage. In addition, body condition loss after calving affects all areas of fat in the body including the fat cushion in the foot, reducing the foot’s ability to absorb shock. These two factors make the risk of getting lame much higher. Poor stockmanship and management around calving can result in increased lameness (more than 5% of the herd per month) around mating and further into the season.
Scanning is a great time to start identifying and managing groups of ewes based on feeding priorities. Wormwise's Mary Bowron discusses some of the possible reasons ewes lose condition in early winter - and it's not necessarily internal parasites.
Healthy, well-grown calves are the building blocks of any future dairy herd. Giving them the best start to life is crucial, and the primary strategy to reduce the burden of disease caused by rotavirus infection is vaccination.
Beef + Lamb New Zealand is reminding farmers with lucerne stands to graze them hard over the next few weeks in preparation for a winter weed control programme.
Giving calves the best possible start to life has been shown to boost growth and resilience.
Animal welfare improvements as well as reduced costs for dairy farmers are at the heart of a new move which could help cut back on the waste of unused vet drugs.
New Zealand dairy farmers are set to be the first in the world to receive access to a new digital physical milk pricing tool that enables them to fix the price for their physical milk.
State farmer Pāmu is opening its farm gates this summer in an effort to give the rural sector the opportunity to see how large-scale, multi-system farming is delivering productivity and profitability across New Zealand.
A five-year study has found that the cost of reducing emissions without technology may be significant and unsustainable for Northland dairy farmers.
DairyNZ says Waikato farmers need certainty on Plan Change 1, but they say that certainty must be matched with practical, workable rules and a clear transition that doesn't get ahead of the new resource management system currently under review.
While the Government has moved quickly to make commercial hauliers' lot easier during the current fuel crisis, they appear to be stuck in the creep box when it comes to the agricultural industry.
Waikato farmers have been told that the Government’s new planning system legislation and the region’s Plan Change 1 (PC1) “won’t mesh together very well”.
OPINION: No one messes around with Winston Peters, more so in a general election year.
OPINION: Staying on Federated Farmers, this week's annual general meeting in Auckland is shaping up to be an interesting one.
