Barns & Equipment

If you’ve heard cow comfort talked about once, you’ve heard it 1,000 times: “If you take care of your cows, they will take care of you.”

At the parlor and in terms of milk production, the liner is where things begin. Starting with the sticker price to determine which liner to buy is just the beginning, too.

As a farmer, you know your dairy operation like the back of your hand. But do you know the best safety practices for your compact track loader or skid-steer loader?

Well might 2020 be called the asterisk year. From now on, any five-year average or historical data could well put an asterisk beside 2020 to explain the anomaly of a pandemic. What did it affect? Well, what didn’t it affect? It’ll be the year that screwed the curve.

This is the third of three articles in the “Flipping Your Freestalls” series. Read the first, “Flipping your freestalls: What to watch for, how to measure” and the second “Flipping your freestalls: Top four tips.”

This is the second of three articles in the series "Flipping your freestalls." Read the first, “Flipping your freestalls: What to watch for, how to measure.”

Tip 1: Improve the stall surface

When cows are not provided with a comfortable place to rest, they will not use or occupy the stalls well. Hock injuries are commonly observed in situations where cows are forced to lie on a hard surface or when insufficient bedding is provided.