Dairy Farmer's Wish List

 I'm making my list and checking it twice tonight in preparation for our monthly milk testing day tomorrow. It's a kind of  dairy farmer's wish list-- its a list of cow's to test for pregnancy and wishing each one will be!  Finding a cow to be pregnant is always  a  big deal because managing the reproductive cycle is a central component on today's dairy farm.   Thanks to new dairy technology, we can now check a cow's milk to determine pregnancy.

Milk pregnancy test is a great tool for the dairy farmer's tool box to assess and maintain herd health, consider reasons for the inability of a cow to get pregnant and to identify open cows early. The test is 98% accurate and can be done as early as 35 days after a breeding date. Most importantly, it is a noninvasive test that requires no additional labor and doesn't create any stress on the cow.

Our monthly milk testing provides information about each cow's milk quality and quantity and provides information about the health of each cow. All of this information is used in making management decisions to help us care for our dairy cows and provide high-quality milk.   Adding the   milk pregnancy test that can be done when we do our monthly milk testing  is a great tool to add to our  dairy farmer tool box!


                  In just 24 hours after we send the sample, I can't wait to see if I get my wish---

                                                                      She's Pregnant!

Dairy Tools of the Trade

Keeping up with information about our dairy cows is an important part of our dairy farming operation to insure healthy dairy cows and quality milk. One of our best tools for managing our herd information is through Mid-South Dairy Herd Improvement Association. This association is a complete professional testing,management and reporting system for dairy farmers.

Once a month, Greg, our Mid-south Dairy Herd Improvement technician, will come to the dairy farm to collect milk samples from each dairy cow during the morning milking. Each sample will give us information about the individual cow's milk production and qualities of the milk that include butterfat,protein, and somatic cell counts. Before Greg comes to the farm for this testing, I will have recorded all herd health information, breeding and calving records into the computer system. After each cow is sampled, Greg will enter the milk weight information on our computer system , transmit all of our records to the Mid-South office in Springfield,Missouri and send the milk samples to the lab for analysis. A few days after the test day, we will receive paper copies of the test information and be able to download the test information to our computer system.

Managing our dairy herd with information that we obtain from tools like our dairy herd improvement records assists us every day in making sure that our healthy herd is producing quality milk.

June Dairy Month--it's all about healthy cows,quality milk, and the dairy farm families that work everyday to produce a great product!