Pica is an abnormal behaviour usually seen in grazing cows, where they lick, chew, or eat inedible materials. This can include licking soil and fence posts, eating stones, drinking urine etc., and while cows may look healthy there is the risk of them ingesting material that can damage their gut and could ultimately lead to death.
With spring turnout fast approaching, it is a crucial time to be thinking about dietary magnesium and making sure that the milkers’ ration is targeted to meet the cow’s production needs.
If we dried whole milk to a powder the protein level would sit at an average of around 24% and the fat level 30%. At 23% protein and 27% oil our new Elixir+ is as close as it gets!
If you have encountered crypto in your calves, firstly, you are not alone, 40% of all scour cases are diagnosed as crypto so it is a common and big problem. It is not easily eradicated but there are steps we can take to reduce and hopefully remove the problem.
Now more than ever we are looking forward to getting out and about and enjoying our horses. Lessons, clinics and, yes, even competition are opening up again – and we can’t wait! However as we come out of lockdown, it’s worth thinking about the challenges faced, particularly at this time of year, and how we can help our horses stay fit and well, and ready for the challenge ahead.
Did you know that horses and ponies turned out 24/7 may consume 3 times their daily calorie requirement from grass alone? If your horse or pony is a good doer we hope the following tips and information help you to keep his waistline in check this spring…
Managing the shedding of eggs from ewes in spring can be one way of minimising the worm larvae uptake by lambs later in the grazing season and thus reduce the need for subsequent treatments.
The rationale behind treating ewes is that it reduces the number of worm eggs a ewe puts onto pasture when her immune system relaxes around lambing – a term known as the spring rise.
In mid-season lambing flocks, the aim is to get lambs to 32 to 42kg as soon as possible, capitalising on early feed conversion efficiency (FCE). Investing in early nutrition to capitalise on this early growth potential will pay dividends.
With the fortnight of Eid celebrations commencing in mid-July, those who lambed early to mid-March need to get lambs finished quickly to ensure they don’t miss market opportunities.
Putting the economics to one side, a dairy cow has a genetic potential to produce milk and they will try their best to achieve this whether we choose to feed them appropriately or not. We must meet a cow’s nutrient requirement and feed for genetic potential or risk a negative effect to health or milk production. The skill for a nutritionist during challenging periods of feed cost is to manage the purchased feed cost per litre to mitigate the impact, whilst not sacrificing health or yield. Easy!
80% of output and outcomes can be traced to 20% of inputs or activities (otherwise known as the Pareto principle). In dairy farming, a specific focus on inputs in the transition phase (the period three weeks pre- and post-calving) will lead to improved performance for the remaining 80% of the time.
