Feed & Nutrition

Climate change, greenhouse gases (GHG) and methane are a few topics we are hearing more and more about in the news today. There has been a global push to reduce methane on farms to minimize GHG effects on the Earth, but it is also a push toward more-efficient animals.

Even when producers put up the right quality of feed for a class of cows, ensuring all cows have enough feed is a goal that has a few components to consider.

Editor’s note: This is the final article in a four-part series about how an Oregon dairy farmer is making robots work on a grazing system. Read the three other articles How we milk 3 times a day with robots for success, Robot repairs: The solution or the problem? and Keeping milk-quality forage coming throughout your harvest season.

Heat stress is a topic regularly addressed for dairy farms as it causes detrimental impacts each year. On the other end of the spectrum is cold stress, a subject that isn’t talked about as regularly but one that can still create some challenges for farms.

Managing the welfare and resiliency of cows on a dairy involves a series of routine daily tasks, such as feeding, milking and general herd care. Whether they have a few family members or a team of 200 employees, producers typically establish protocols to complete tasks efficiently while maintaining animal health and productivity. But some feed-management protocols designed to maximize labor efficiency can actually increase levels of harmful bacteria in the total mixed ration (TMR), including clostridia.

Feed rations account for more than half of the cost of milk production; this number varies depending on the price of milk and feed. How dairies meet feed challenges determines, to a large extent, the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the dairy industry.