Herd Health and Nutrition Conference

Presentation: New Perspectives in Transition Cow Management - key nutritional strategies and feeding management during the pre-calving and post-calving periods. He believes that the impacts of the transition program should be evaluated in a holistic way that considers disease occurrence, productivity, and fertility.

Presentation: Keeping Things Consistent at the Feed Bunk! - Dairy cow production, health, and efficiency are optimized when they eat a consistent diet, both in time and composition. From a feed bunk management perspective, this includes ensuring rations are delivered accurately and precisely, as well as by ensuring cows have good continuous access to that feed.

Presentation: Optimizing the Role of Starch as an Energy Source in Dairy Cattle Diets - This presentation will discuss the importance of starch to dairy cows and strategies to optimize its digestibility and utilization by lactating animals.

Presentation: Feed Bunk Management Panel Discussion - The panel will feature a discussion of on-farm feeding management focusing on such topics as: their definition and economic measurements of feeding/bunk management, use of on-farm feeding software, feed refusal goals and use of refusals, handling weather (rain and snow) events and their impact on bunk management and feeding economics, managing/tracking/measuring shrink in both forages and grains, forage bunk face management, timing of feeding and feed push-ups, feed personnel training and monitoring, feeding equipment maintenance programs.

Presentation: Energy and Protein Interactions - Protein (i.e., amino acids) and energy are the two nutrients most likely to limit milk production, but because they are so interrelated it is difficult to separate their effects. This session will discuss how dietary protein affect energy supply (independent of dry matter intake) and how changes in energy supply affect how cows respond to changes in protein supply. The effect of stage of lactation on the interaction between protein and energy will also be discussed