The purpose of the study was 2-fold: 1) to propose a novel modeling framework using Markovian linear programming to optimize dairy farmer-defined goals under different decision schemes and 2) to illustrate the model with a practical application testing diets for entire lactations. A dairy herd population was represented by cow state variables defined by parity (1 to 15), month in lactation (1 t...

In Kenya, strong demand and the fact that most of the nation's 3 million dairy cattle are in the hands of smallholders provides a tremendous opportunity for households to participate in the dairy market and increase rural incomes. Unfortunately, recent output has not kept pace with increasing demand, suggesting that barriers prevent rural farmers from tapping dairy's underexploited potential. U...

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...

Mastitis continues to be a cause of significant economic loss to the dairy industry internationally. Despite significant advances in our understanding of the disease, clinical and sub-clinical mastitis remains a problem in dairy herds and prevalence rates in many countries remain similar to those published decades ago. In the complex milieu of the modern dairy farm, it is the interaction of pro...

BACKGROUND:Due to the large proportion of iodine present in milk and dairy products, they have been one of the important sources of nutritional iodine in several countries. Information about variation in milk iodine concentration in Iran is limited. OBJECTIVES:The present study was conducted to determine the iodine concentration in Iranian milk and dairy ...