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Problems Frequently Encountered On A Dairy Farm

By Lianne Derocco


The life of a dairy farmer is not all beds of roses and great although the dairy farming industry is one among the top agricultural industries in the US. The dairy farmer has to face a lot of issues, and this is a fact. If you are one of these dairy farmers, the following may be some issues that you may have to handle.

All animals produce waste and dairy cows certainly are no exception. Cow waste typically is stored in large waste pits or structures known as waste lagoons. Waste often needs special manure treatment in order to keep it from becoming too hard and solid, as it is best to have the waste as liquid as possible. However, poorly treat waste can cause a sludge layer to form on the bottom of your pit or lagoon. A hard top crust also can form and this can greatly increase flies, odor and foaming.

Treatments of the waste materials with chemicals are often done by farmers, to prevent these from happening. There are natural products that can be used as agricultural waste treatment that can be used these days however. These are natural products that eat away and liquefy the tough top crust, the manure digesters with one called Activator Plus. There are also the biodegradable spheres that are just tossed into the lagoons and will eat away the sludge and also keep the top crust from forming, and these are Agra Sphere and Lagoon Agra Sphere, which are easy-to-use products. No chemicals are included in these products and only special bacteria used for the treatment of agricultural waste by these manure treatment products.

Individual cows also can have a host of problems. One problem that sometimes occurs is infertility. In order to produce milk, a cow must constantly be producing calves. When a cow cannot become pregnant, this animal also can no longer be used to produce milk. Therefore the cow will be culled, which means to be separated from the herd. Often these animals then are used as a source of beef.

There is also mastitis, a common problem also encountered in dairy cows. This problem is caused by a mammary gland infection and can also be fatal. The cows are often culled in this situation and treated with antibiotics until there is no more infection and after all antibiotic traces are gone, the milk produced are then suitable again for the market.

One thing greatly taken into consideration is the amount of milk produced by a cow each day. Six gallons of milk each day is the average milk production of each cow. A cow may be culled if the milk production is already little. Lower milk production can however lead to better cow longevity, and there are studies to show this. A dairy cow may live longer and thus produce more in a longer time, compared to a cow producing seven gallons of milk a day if you are receiving only four gallons of milk a day from this cow. There are also studies showing that cows roaming in pastures and also playing music while lactating, can improve production of milk, and this is because stress in cows is related to milk production.




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