Nutritional requirements increase significantly and play a pivotal role in the cow’s energy status and health at the time of birth and in the early weeks of lactation when milk production is reaching its peak.
What makes a rumen healthy are the billions of microbes – bacteria, protozoa, fungi and yeasts – whose job it is to ferment the feedstuffs that a cow consumes in her diet. Collectively, we call them “bugs.”
Various health challenges may occur in animals and humans when high enough levels of mycotoxins are ingested through contaminated foods.
Nutrition for dairy cows is being fine-tuned daily – the result of an increasing need for improved feeding efficiencies as milk prices remain low and …
The trace minerals that receive the most attention are copper, zinc, manganese, selenium, cobalt and iodine. Deficiencies in trace minerals can impact growth, health and reproduction.
Animal agriculture in general and ruminants in particular are considered to be a key contributor to excessive greenhouse gas (GHG) accumulation.
A general rule of thumb is that a well-managed pasture should be able to produce an average of about one ton of dry matter per acre throughout the growing season
Rumen-protected fats offer the option to dairy farmers of adding extra energy to a diet to compensate for low energy corn silages or other roughage
Protein nutrition and amino acid metabolism will continue to be an area of intense focus in the fine-tuning of dairy cow diets
Achieving the optimal balance of protein to carbohydrates in the rumen will make the rumen more efficient in growing microbes and produce the most power
