Herd Health

The COVID-19 pandemic brought into focus what can happen when a population is exposed to a pathogen – in this case, a virus – that has never been seen by that population before.

Warmer weather is nearly here, and with it comes high temperatures, high humidity and increased chances of heat stress. According to a 2019 Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research study, the U.S. dairy industry experiences $1.5 billion in losses to heat stress annually.

While the first 85ºF day is a blessed event for beachgoers and sunbathers, it is equally unwelcome in the dairy production sector. From parlors and pens to fields and farms, heat stress is a major challenge for cattle and the people who work with them. This stress tends to be exacerbated when we see high temperatures dragging on for upwards of five consecutive months.

Before discussing subclinical hypocalcemia, it is helpful to review the more obvious disease of clinical hypocalcemia, or what everyone knows as milk fever. This disease can occur in mature dairy cows within three days after calving.

Lameness is simply defined as “a symptom of pain.” Lameness is the third-most common reason for culling cows, after infertility and mastitis, and it is reported that 10% of dairy cattle are culled due to this affliction.

One of the most common questions dairy farmers ask is how to create an effective program to control digital dermatitis (DD), which is often followed up with the statement that despite their best efforts to run frequent footbaths, they still seem to struggle with too many cases of DD.