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Nutrition, lameness cut into milk production

Increasing milk production per cow could involve simply improving the processing of corn silage. Mike Hutjens, retired University of Illinois dairy specialist, says that if corn kernels in the silage are not adequately broken, the cow won’t absorb enough starch. Hutjens recommends testing manure samples to see how much starch is passing through the cow.

“If it’s less than three percent, hurray for you; if it’s over five percent, we’ve got a problem, and the question now is can you correct it,” Hutjens told Brownfield Ag News. “If it’s [the result of] unprocessed corn silage, you can’t do much this year, but next year you get to process it again and get it right.”

Additionally, Hutjens says lameness in cows is more frequent than it should be. On a score of one to five, he says a judgment can be made about how production is affected by an animal’s degree of difficulty in getting around.

“A score three cow is one that is not lame, but in fact is just showing the characteristics of the bobbing head, the shorter gait; she’ll give up five percent of the milk [production],” says Hutjens. “Normally we’d like to see less than ten percent of the cows score a three or higher, and some of the work in Minnesota says that’s going to be in the high teens.”

Some animal rights advocacy groups – Hutjens specifically cites PETA –push for that number to be closer to only one percent, but Hutjens says that’s almost unattainable unless cows are pasture fed.

Hutjens’ talk to Missouri dairy farmers was about striving for five more pounds of milk production per cow.

AUDIO: Mike Hutjens (5 min. MP3)