A small field experimental study was undertaken to ascertain the applicability of desktop video conferencing (DVC) for a University Extension Office. Subjects (county extension agents and a faculty expert in dairy nutrition) engaged in a “ration balancing” task for herds of dairy cows, using DVC and face-to-face collaborative meetings. Subjects preferred DVC over face-toface collaboration, pres...

Kaiser and Shaver (2006) and Bucholtz (2006) reported starch concentrations in diets fed to high-producing dairy herds ranged from 25 to 30 % on a dry matter (DM) basis. Increased corn prices have heightened the interest in feeding reducedstarch diets. Results from short-term dairy cattle feeding trials suggest that reducedstarch diets formulated by partially replacing corn grain with high-fibe...

BACKGROUND Infection with bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV-1) causes a wide range of disease manifestations, including respiratory disease and abortion, with world-wide distribution. The primary objective of the present study was to describe aspects of BHV-1 infection and control on Irish farms, including herd-level seroprevalence (based on pooled sera) and vaccine usage. METHODS The characteristics...

Repeat breeding (RB), defined as cows failure to conceive from 3 or more regularly spaced services in the absence of detectable abnormalities, is a costly problem for the dairy producer. To elucidate the occurrence of RB in Swedish dairy herds and to identify risk factors of the syndrome totally 57,616 dairy cows in 1,541 herds were investigated based on data from the official Swedish productio...

Three-hundred and thirty-five lactating dairy cows from two herds were used to compare the effects on reproductive performance of intramuscular injections of 100 micrograms gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), 250 micrograms GnRH or saline given on day 13, 14 or 15 postpartum. The incidence of ovarian cysts or uterine infections was not reduced after GnRH injection. Culling rate for infertili...

BACKGROUND Many studies have been conducted to define risk factors for the transmission of bovine paratuberculosis, mostly in countries with large herds. Little is known about the epidemiology in infected Swiss herds and risk factors important for transmission in smaller herds. Therefore, the presence of known factors which might favor the spread of paratuberculosis and could be related to the ...

The aims of this study were to estimate mortality rates in Norwegian dairy calves and young stock up to 1 yr of age, identify risk factors for calf mortality, and evaluate the etiology of calf mortality based on postmortem analyses. The material comprised 3 data sets. The first data set included information on 289,038 offspring in 14,474 dairy herds registered in the Norwegian Dairy Herd Record...

BACKGROUND Bovine respiratory syncytial virus (BRSV) and bovine corona virus (BCV) affects cattle worldwide. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of these infections on general health and reproduction parameters measurable on herd level and to explore the association between antibody status and some herd characteristics. METHODS We collected a pooled milk sample from five primiparous cow...

For more than 20 years, dairy producers have been using low DCAD diets in their dry cow feeding programs to prevent milk fever and subclinical hypocalcemia during the transition period. The use of low DCAD diets in dry cows has virtually eliminated the incidence of milk fever in most dairy herds. While dairy producers are well aware of the importance of proper DCAD concentrations in the dry per...

In recent years, Montbeliard cattle have been imported to France from Uzbekistan in order strengthen the breeding base of and create high-yielding herds increase livestock production. However, productivity characteristics this breed not studied our hot climate conditions special studies depending on various factors. Studies shown that level milk yield co-breeding cows depends type It was found ...