Dairy And Livestock

Access the latest UW-Madison Division of Extension dairy cattle research during the upcoming Badger Dairy Insight Webinar Series

January 10^th: Optimizing Use of Sexed Semen in Dairy Herds

Paul Fricke, Dairy Cattle Reproduction Extension Specialist, and Ryan Sterry, Regional Dairy Educator, will discuss the latest trends in how farms are using sexed and beef semen in dairy herds in Wisconsin and the upper Midwest. Paul will then present the latest data from UW-Madison on how to maximize fertility when using sexed semen to inseminate nonlactating dairy heifers, primiparous Holstein cows, and lactating Jersey cows.

January 24^th: Factors Impacting Fertility from Genomics to Aspirin

Lyssa Seefeldt, Dairy Educator, will talk about how a successful transition period sets up a dairy cow for stress-free lactation and better conception rates. She will highlight a few things producers can think about to create that successful transition. Francisco Peñagaricano, Assistant Professor-Quantitative Genomics, will focus on how the advent of genomics in the last 15 years has revolutionized dairy cattle breeding, enabling more rapid genetic progress. Genomics facilitates the selection of novel traits that are important but too difficult or expensive to measure on the entire population. This could allow the selection of new fertility traits that more closely describe cows’ reproductive physiology and ultimately benefit the improvement of fertility in dairy cows. Rounding out the day, Heather Schlesser, Dairy Educator, will touch on aspirin after calving. Does aspirin, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug benefit a cow when given during calving? Her presentation will seek to answer this question.

January 31^st: Tools for Your Toolkit to Keep Animals Healthy

Neslihan Akdeniz Onuki, Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist, will focus on proper fan selection and maintenance to reduce ventilation costs and ventilation-related greenhouse gas emissions from dairy buildings. She will provide a few examples of supplemental cooling systems, which can save energy while maintaining healthy building conditions for cattle. Victor Cabrera, Dairy Systems Management Specialist, and Tadeu da Silva, a Postdoctoral Researcher, will launch The EZ Dairy Enviro-Money. This is a highly user-friendly, whole farm, environmental and economic assessment tool for dairy farmers and other stakeholders. They will explain the tool, demonstrate its use, and show how to build scenarios to answer what-if questions.

February 7^th: Milk Quality and Production: Opportunities and Threats

Laura Hernandez, Professor of Lactation Physiology and Affiliate Professor of Obstetrics & Gynecology, recently completed research aimed to determine if increased cisternal milk impacted milk yield given that in traditional milking systems, take-offs are set according to the fastest milking quarters. Are the possible negative effects on quarters that are not completely milked out? Don Sockett, Epidemiologist/Microbiologist at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, participates in research, consultation and education to meet the needs of many. He will give an update on the work being done in the lab and the challenges he sees emerging in the dairy industry. One of the topics he will present on is the emerging threat of Prototheca Bovis Mastitis.