Traditionally, the management of manure nutrients has focused primarily on the production, collection, storage, and field application of manure. By contrast, a total systems approach expands this focus to include concerns about human and animal health, odor and fly control, nutrient import and handling, ration balancing and feeding management to optimize dietary nutrient utilization, management...

Structural change in the US dairy industry toward fewer and very large farms has fueled interest and government funding of research into the feasibility of constructing anaerobic digesters (ADs) on large operations as a waste management strategy. Some groups opposed to increasing scale and concentration in the livestock sectors, including dairy, also oppose ADs because of the connection with la...

BACKGROUND Neonatal diarrhea accounts for more than 50% of total deaths in dairy calves. Few population-based studies of cattle have investigated how the microbiota is impacted during diarrhea. OBJECTIVES To characterize the fecal microbiota and predict the functional potential of the microbial communities in healthy and diarrheic calves. METHODS Fifteen diarrheic calves between the ages of...

The aim of this study was to evaluate microbiological contamination levels of indoor air in some farm settings, including barns and dairy objects. The level of microorganism emissions from farm buildings into atmospheric air was also estimated. In the research a MAS-100 air sampler (MERCK) was used. It was revealed that the number of microorganisms in barns ranged between 1.7·10 8.8·10 for meso...

The benefits of anaerobic digestion (AD) of dairy manure vary from economic (reduced power costs/income from excess electricity/heat), to environmental (reduced greenhouse gas emissions, better control over field application of digestate) to social (through reduced odor during storage and application). However to realize these benefits economically, is the true challenge of AD, and a part of th...

The quality of Irish agricultural product will become increasingly important with the ongoing liberalisation of international trade. This paper presents a review of the global and Irish dairy industries; considers the impact of milk quality on farm profitability, food processing and human health, examines global trends in quality; and explores several models that are successfully being used to ...

Very little is known about the use of antibiotics on small dairy farms in lower/middle-income countries. The use of these drugs can have profound impacts on animal health, farmer income and public health. A survey of 156 farmers was conducted in Cajamarca, a major dairy-producing center in the highlands of Peru characterized by small farms (<15 cows) to assess patterns and determinants of antib...

BACKGROUND Mastitis prevalence, milking procedures and management practices were investigated in 25 big dairy herds supplying milk to an Estonian dairy company. The aim of the study was to provide information for the company to be used in their new udder health improvement program to be set up after the completion of this study. METHODS Quarter milk samples were collected from 3,166 cows for ...

This study aimed to assess the merit and suitability of individual functional units (FU) in expressing greenhouse gas emissions intensity in different dairy production systems. An FU provides a clearly defined and measurable reference to which input and output data are normalised. This enables the results from life-cycle assessment (LCA) of different systems to be treated as functionally equiva...

Farm animals have been suggested to play an important role in the epidemiology of Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) in the community. The purpose of this study was to evaluate risk factors associated with C. difficile dissemination in family dairy farms, which are the most common farming model in the European Union. Environmental samples and fecal samples from cows and calves were collected...