In certain contexts, dairy firms are supplied by small-scale family farms. Firms provide a set of technical and economic recommendations meant to help farmers meet their requirements in terms of the quantity and quality of milk collected. This study analyzes how such recommendations may be adopted by studying six farms in Brazil. All farms are beneficiaries of the country's agrarian reforms, bu...

OBJECTIVE To describe antimicrobial susceptibility patterns in Campylobacter spp isolated from dairy cattle and farms managed organically and conventionally in the midwestern and northeastern United States. DESIGN Longitudinal study. SAMPLE POPULATION 128 farms. PROCEDURE Samples and data were collected every 2 months from August 2000 to October 2001. Fecal samples were collected from cal...

In dairy production systems, tradeoffs can occur between fertilizer N applications and crop N use, feed N consumption and manure N excretion, and environmental impacts. This paper examines (i) how stocking rates affect N imports and management on dairy farms, N use efficiency (NUE; i.e., the amount of applied N incorporated into product N), and N loss; (ii) how reductions in fertilizer N and fe...

The objective of this study was to determine, via simulation, the premium required for dairy farmers supplying milk with a high concentration of unsaturated fatty acids (UFA) to a dairy processor to equal the operating profit ($/ha) of average farms, under New Zealand conditions. Fifty average farms (AVE farms) and fifty farms that fed an oilseed supplement to dairy cows (UFA farms) were simula...

Campylobacter jejuni, Campylobacter coli, and Arcobacter spp. were detected in feces of healthy dairy cows by highly specific multiplex-PCR assays. For C. jejuni, at this one-time sampling, cows from 80.6% of farm operations (n = 31) and 37.7% of individual dairy cattle fecal samples (n = 2,085) were positive. Farm management factors were correlated with prevalence in herds in which >25% of cow...

A model to calculate the economic losses of mastitis on an average Dutch dairy farm was developed and used as base for a tool for farmers and advisors to calculate farm-specific economic losses of mastitis. The economic losses of a clinical case in a default situation were calculated as euro210, varying from euro164 to euro235 depending on the month of lactation. The total economic losses of ma...

During the week of December 5, 2005, public health officials in Clark County, Washington, were notified of four county residents with laboratory-confirmed Escherichia coli O157:H7 infection. All four residents reported having consumed raw (i.e., unpasteurized) milk obtained from a farm in neighboring Cowlitz County, Washington. The farm participated in a cow-share program, in which persons purc...

The objective was to compare farm veterinary surgeons' and dairy farmers' opinions on herd health plans and herd health and production management with the aim of discovering and better understanding the differences. Two comparable questionnaires, one for farm veterinarians and one for dairy farmers, were distributed throughout the UK. While listing the 'major roles' of the veterinarian on the f...

Dairy sires were ranked for overall merit by an average daughter's contribution to farm net profit. Biological characteristics of sires and economic factors of a dairy farm were linked by linear programming. Availability and constraints of resources were in the model. Average daughter's returns over variable costs attributable to sire proofs for several traits was the measure of sire's net meri...

We describe a new mechanistic bioeconomic model for simulating the spread of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP) within a dairy cattle herd. The model includes age-dependent susceptibility for infection; age-dependent sensitivity for detection; environmental MAP build up in five separate areas of the farm; in utero infection; infection via colostrum and waste milk, and it allows f...