As humans, I think it is just part of our nature that we tend to go for the same brand or same type of product time and time again. Often, we are hesitant to try something new or don’t see the need to, since what we are currently using is serving its purpose for us.
As a dairy farmer, I can attest that this holds 100% true when purchasing products for the animals as well. Once we find something we like and that works well at the dairy operation, we tend to stick with it.
I will say that our operation does try new products that come out, or that we haven’t used before, but mostly in situations where we don’t already have a product in place covering that need.
Throughout all stages of the dairy cow’s life, there are multiple protocols that are beneficial to have in place for not only the well-being and health of the cow, but her success in the herd as well. Starting at birth, all of our calves on the dairy receive Inforce 3 and First Defense. I previously went more in-depth on these two products and how they have benefited our calf program, but without going into that detail again, I must say that they are a key component of our newborn protocol and overall have led to healthier calves on the farm. These two products are major staples to us, and I feel that a lot of dairies could benefit from using these products.
Moving into the breeding heifer age, and then onto the milk cows, a product that we implemented within just the past year are the Semex ai24 eartags. Once again, I previously wrote an article based on these and all that they have helped with in the management of our breeding and cow health programs. But these are truly a tool we rely on daily to make decisions on the current status of the herd and their health, as well as decisions that will affect the future. For us, the eartags seem to be covering all of the bases that we are looking to have covered. For some dairies, the collars or another activity monitoring system may be better, but overall, I think that some variation of a monitoring/activity system is a very key component to having a productive, healthy herd.
Subsequently, a product we very recently started using is Healthy Cows ProPreg. Although we haven’t been using this product long enough to date to see how it will affect us in the long run, in the meantime we have no complaints with it and foresee that it should drastically improve the reproductive health of our cattle. Until the dairy farm owner/manager met with this company at a tradeshow, and brought information back to the dairy, I had never heard of the product. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it is a type of probiotic that is used at various stages throughout the cows’ cycles to aid in reproductive tract health. I must say that it is user-friendly to administer and ultimately should not only help our lactating cows, but calf health as well.
With that, there are several other products that we use daily, even multiple times through the day that we love, but these are the products that rise to the top of our list. Not only do these products help us farmers with management and ease of application/use, but in the end, they are benefiting the animal throughout various stages of life, which in the long term helps with profitability of the cow.
If there are products that your farm implements daily and you stand behind, I would love to hear about them via email. As dairy farmers, I truly believe that we must help each other out, bounce ideas off of one another and share our successes and failures to not only help each other’s operations, but the dairy industry as a whole.
