Consumers are increasingly concerned about the safety of their food and uncertain about food production practices. Potential threats to human health related to dairy products and dairy farming include errors in pasteurization, consumption of raw milk products, contamination of milk products by emerging heat-resistant pathogens, emergence of antimicrobial resistance in zoonotic pathogens, chemic...

D (Dairy Herd Improvement Association) records are an essential part of dairy herd management for many progressive dairy operations. The old adage “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” holds true when it comes to dairy farm management, particularly when it comes to somatic cell count (SCC) management. When working with dairy farmers, we often hear the statement “I don’t know how I woul...

One of the primary objectives of dairy producers is to promote dry matter intake (DMI) to support milk production. Considerable research to date has focused on improving the DMI of lactating dairy cows by changing the nutrient composition of feeds. However, the DMI of group-housed lactating dairy cows is also affected by feeding behavior, which is modulated by the environment, management, healt...

Sustainability of dairy farm production systems can be measured by the intersection between profitability and environmental stewardship. It is clear that unprofitable farms are destined to go out of business. Similarly, although not as evident, farms that are not efficient in the use of input resources, having higher wastages, and consequently producing more emissions, are likely to be un-susta...

A field trial was conducted on 5 farms to determine the effect of feeding distillers dried grains (DDGS) on milk production in the southern dairy region of Chile. The trial was repeated on each farm during winter (July and August; primarily silage-based rations) and spring (November and December; pasture-based rations). Only for one farm could the treatments be applied concurrently by feeding d...

Short-run and long-run technical and allocative efficiencies were computed for 395 New York dairy farms using data envelopment or nonparametric procedures on 1990 Dairy Farm Business Summary data. The farms were, on average, more allocatively efficient in the short run than in the long run, but were more technically efficient in the long run than in the short run. Stanchion barns were as effici...

Large-scale dairy farms around Damascus do not have enough land for forage cultivation mainly due to high price of land, allocation of land for vegetable production, which is more economically important than fodder cultivation and unfavourable climatic factors. Farms are therefore forced to transport roughage from distant crop cultivating areas. In the case of the dairy farm described in this w...

To examine the dissemination of Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) within cattle groups, dairy calves on two farms utilizing different calf-rearing practices were exposed to a traceable STEC strain. Test strain dissemination differed significantly between farms, with a higher prevalence being associated with group penning. Pen floors and calf hides may be the main environmental mechanisms ...

The traditional New Zealand ryegrass/white clover based seasonal dairy farm system has remained unchanged for many years. Because pasture remains the predominant source of feed, increased milksolids (MS) production is dependent on growing or utilising more pasture. If the increased pasture growth from N fertiliser is discounted then increases in MS production have not occurred on our best dairy...

This paper investigates determinants of growth of milk production in German dairy farms. Event history analysis is applied to estimate the likelihood of a farm’s moving from a nongrowing episode into a growing episode and to assess the impact of various covariates on that likelihood. The analysis is based upon a balanced panel of annual farm accounts from 616 specialised dairy farms from German...