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Retaining employees is critical to the long-term health and success of your dairy operation. Therefore, failing to create the right environment to retain employees will affect the bottom line of your business and create organizational issues, such as worker insecurity, excess duties that workers must absorb and time invested in recruiting, hiring and training new employees.
Analyses of wheat and barley straw samples reveal a potential mycotoxin risk in straw. Producers would be advised to pay attention to straw management and mycotoxin risk.
In poultry production, environmental and economic sustainability are closely intertwined. Profitability comes from efficiency which also translates into environmental credentials. Thankfully, poultry producers can avail themselves of a proven solution that not only meets consumer demands and benefits the environment, but also helps to improve on-farm feed efficiency and product quality.
Click here for full article.
In the European Union, pharmacological levels of zinc oxide can no longer be applied in pig feed from June this year. The question now is how to get piglets through weaning well. One part of the answer lies in keeping the animals’ guts as healthy as possible.
Necessity is the mother of invention was the overarching theme adopted by vice president of Europe at Alltech, Patrick Charlton, who recently addressed members of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists of Ireland in Belfast.
He visited Northern Ireland to deliver three core messages: that agriculture will be at the very heart of every sustainability strategy conceived over the next decade and beyond; that a new green revolution – based on fast-evolving science – will drive all the sectors of agriculture forward; and that the days of cheap food are coming to an end.
The global move towards cage-free egg production seems to be unstoppable. Far from being restricted to Europe and North America, the commitment of many large egg producers, retailers, food service companies and hotel groups to ban cage eggs from their supply chains is making cage-free eggs a global and ever increasing reality.
Aside from exterior updates, the MechFiber+ range features reshaped paddle castellations and the latest 4th Generation KEENAN Controller, feed management app and InTouch dashboard.
Link to Farmers Journal article below:
https://www.farmersjournal.ie/keenan-updates-mechfiber-diet-feeder-range-684047
Minerals and vitamins can have a huge impact on the quality of feed. The form in which they are provided can have several flow-on effects on the stability of other feed components, such as enzymes, antioxidants and vitamins.
When you consider the long history of the beef sector, stress is a relatively
new issue being examined and discussed by those in the industry. In recent
years, scientists and producers have begun to realize the impact that stress
can have on calf performance. Fortunately, however, there are solutions for
mitigating stress for your cattle during transitions.
March 2022
The last few weeks have been a blur for all, as the calving season got into full swing on many farms throughout the country. Long days of milking, feeding, and calving have been tempered somewhat with the presence of good weather allowing early grazing, where land allowed it, and the ability to empty tanks of slurry. The later stages of February, unfortunately, brought a dramatic end to the good spell of weather. While there are many fresh cows on farms now, we must not forget about the later-calving cows. This can usually be a time where their space, diet and body condition go out the window, leading to a perfect metabolic storm. Maintain the same diet at the same intake if it has worked so far, making sure that cows are not gaining body weight, as fat dry cows are up to nine times more likely to have metabolic issues. If they are gaining bodyweight, you might need to reduce the energy levels in the diet. Make sure to feed good minerals at the required rate and, as the milkers take centre stage, continue to provide adequate space for this group of cows. If we want these cows to be part of a future six-week compact calving system, we need to give them the best possible start. Fresh cows are also under immense pressure now. Regardless of performance and appearance, these cows are in negative energy balance (NEB) and how we manage this will determine success and failure. We have the perfect ingredients now to create a recipe for disaster:
· Great milk yield and very high solids
· High feed prices
· Weather that allows long days at grass
While you might think this is an ideal scenario, we need to first look after the cow and her dry matter intake (DMI). While the focus of many is paddock clean-out and the percentage of the farm grazed, we cannot forget about the cow in all of this. Cows are hitting six weeks calved soon, and we need to target 18–20 kg DMI by maximising the amount of grazing and knowing the figure that is available, making up the shortfall with concentrate. If this goes beyond a certain level (0.22 kg concentrate per litre of milk out by day), then we will require silage as well. Around mid-March, milk solid percentages will drop and return to more realistic levels once cows are calved for four to six weeks. While some of this is normal as the cow begins to rely on her diet as opposed to her own body reserves, the amount of the drop can tell a lot about her diet in the previous six weeks. We need to feed for our general peak milk yield now and keep the diet protein low. Good weather allows us to graze a lot, but we also must ration this as we can also run out before the ‘magic day’ in early April. We can run into a major feed deficit in late March/April, resulting in large inputs of supplementary feed when we could have prevented this with more reasonable levels of supplementation earlier in March. Having the cow at the centre of your production system is very important for the month ahead if we want her to continue to milk well and go back in calf. If we are not prepared to do this and your cows are struggling to stay in the system, then maybe you have the wrong cow or the wrong system for that cow.
