INTRODUCTION Reproductive efficiency of the dairy herd is important for the economic success of the dairy operation. One of the most important reproductive technologies of the dairy industry is artificial insemination (AI). Artificial insemination reduces the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among cattle and increases the use of genetically superior sires to improve performance of the...

Early identification of nonpregnant dairy cows post breeding can improve reproductive efficiency and pregnancy rate by decreasing the interval between AI services and increasing AI service rate. Thus, new technologies to identify nonpregnant dairy cows early after artificial insemination (AI) may play a key role in systematic management strategies to improve reproductive efficiency and profitab...

The Beef Cattle Institute at Kansas State University (BCI) has developed bilingual educational tools based on audiovisual technology to improve technical knowledge within livestock operations. The Dairy Animal Care and Quality Assurance (DACQA) program is available in a package of 36 multimedia modules with a total length of 2hrs and 42 min of training material to train animal care givers in ar...

Humans learned to exploit ruminants as a source of milk about 10,000 years ago. Since then, the use of domesticated ruminants as a source of milk and dairy products has expanded until today when the dairy industry has become one of the largest sectors in the modern food industry, including the spread at the present time to countries such as China and Japan. This review analyzes the reasons for ...

Over 9 million dairy cows generate an estimated 226 billion kg of wet manure annually in the USA. To help mitigate dairy greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the degradation of this organic-rich waste, manure can be processed via anaerobic digestion (AD) to methane and ultimately electricity. This potential value of AD has generated high-level dairy-industry support for broad-scale te...

The presence of highly heat-resistant spores of Bacillus sporothermodurans in ultrahigh-temperature or sterilized consumer milk has emerged as an important item in the dairy industry. Their presence is considered undesirable since they hamper the achievement of commercial sterility requirements. By using a selective 30-min heat treatment at 100 degrees C, 17 Belgian dairy farms were screened to...

Following a 1980s decline in the number of cranes in the Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge area of the Pecos River Valley in eastern New Mexico, peak fall migration numbers increased from 5,640 in 1989-90 to 15,790 in 2003-04 and 13,650 in 2004-05. Concurrently, hectares of corn grown for silage to feed dairy cows increased from 1,781 in 1989 to 8,013 in 2003 and 7,325 in 2004. The populatio...

Hay and pasture crops are critical to Kentucky Agriculture and to that of the entire temperate region of the US. The sale of cattle, calves and dairy products provide 29% of Kentucky's farm income compared with 23% for tobacco. Beef cowcalf enterprises comprise the majority of cattle numbers in the state, however, dairy production is also significant. A substantial horse industry also exists in...

Dairy cattle mate-allocation is an important problem for the dairy industry. The problem involves the selection and the allocation of sires and dams with the aim of improving the breeding objective. In this paper, a description of the initial design of an advisory intelligent decision support system, currently under-development by the authors for farmers in Australia, is illustrated. The design...

Bovine Mastitis is a common disease entity of dairy cows, accompanied by physical, chemical, pathological and bacteriological changes in milk and glandular tissue (Samad, 2008). It is a harmful disease affecting the dairy industry worldwide and is a matter of great concern for leading milk producing country like India because of the losses incurred due to high morbidity, discarded milk, treatme...