A Dairy Happy Moo Year

I know...."cheesy" title right?!
What better way for us to end the year than a test day? Every 6 weeks we have a crew from DHIA show up and they take milk samples from each cow in the herd to test for milk quality.
Seeing as how producing high quality milk is the ultimate goal of the farm this is a great tool.
We are particularly interested in the results from this test because we have been doing some trials with a new sanitary solution that we clean the cows under with before milking. We tried in on 2 of 9 groups of cows and plan on using it for all groups if we like the results from this test today.
We are very proud of how far we have come in the last decade when it comes to milk quality and have set new standards and goals each year. For 2010 we reached our goal of maintaining an average SCC (Somatic Cell Count) of under 100,000. (That was actually blown away- 94,000 BABY!)
Can't wait to improve on that in 2011!

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Tunnel Vision

The new high-tech ventilation system is finally up and running in the calf barn!
This is such a simple idea- a plastic tube runs down the center of the barn and a fan pushes fresh air through tiny holes placed all down the tube.
We are really excited to see if this helps cut down the number of coughs and colds that some of our babies are susceptible to. We like raising our calves indoors to keep them from being stressed by extreme cold and heat and now we can give them fresh air too!
Our biggest priority is their health and well-being and this is just another tool to help us do that.
We are especially thankful to our veterinarian who helped us design this system and customize it to our barn and for always being an advocate for the health of our future milking herd!

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