Charmany Dairy Herd Newsletter April 7th - April 13th

Transcription

1 Charmany Dairy Herd Newsletter April 7th - April 13th Daily Events Monday: Chet Thomas s Microbiology laboratory will be doing whole herd composite milk sampling for Mycoplasma cultures on each cow & heifer. Racheal Francis, Rachel Klos, Kerry Hagen, & Sarah Kalstrup, with some assistance from David Gietzel & Bill Goodger will be taking samples. History, Physical Examination, & Restraint course for 80 students from the first year class; Instructors - Sheila McGuirk; Ase Riesberg; Bill Goodger; Alfonso Lago. Tuesday: 4 th year Theriogenology rotation Herd Check - Dr. Momont & 4 th Year Students. Bleeding opportunity to tail bleed cows for Chuck Czuprynski s and Gary Splitter s laboratory. Wednesday: LAIM (a.k.a. - Laura Lien) will be sending a 4 th year student to tail bleed and examine any sick cows. Thursday: Friday: 7:30am - Management meeting for Teaching herd management team. Posilac injections given to eligible cows, opportunity for students. Whole Herd Vaccination (The whole herd will receive IBR/BVD/PI3/BRSV with half of them also receiving 5 strains of lepto) and tail bleeding for serum samples. The samples will be used for vaccination titers as well as Johnes testing. Sara Colopy and Gretchen Glose will be heading it up with help from any veterinary students who might be available. Ron Schultz will discuss applied vaccinology before administration and Simon Peek will teach vaccine administration and tail bleeding.

2 Charmany Dairy Herd Newsletter April 7th-April 13th Weekly Events Cows due to calve: There is a lull until Brian calves. COW Calving result/due date Griffey Bull (1/14/03) Julie Heifer (1/25/03) Judy Tootsie Bull (1/25/03) Merry Bull (1/29/03) Cookie Heifer (1/29/03) Crackers Violet Bull (2/12/03) Snoflake (Sparkle s daughter) Heifer (2/15/03) Snoball Martha (Matti s daughter) Bull (2/14/03) Martin Sandra (Sandy s daughter) Bull (2/15/03) Valentino Marie (Morgan s daughter) Bull (2/22/03) Sadie (Sarah s daughter) Heifer (2/21/03) Sapphire Carmen (Cindy s daughter) Heifer (2/20/03) - Born dead Luann (Sweetlou s daughter) Bull (2/24/03) - Born dead Ace Bull (3/2/03) Penny (Pearl s daughter) Bull (3/22/03) Brian (Norman s daughter) DUE: 4/24/03 Morgan DUE: 5/23/03 Presto (Swoosh s daughter) DUE: 6/1/03 Production and Milk Quality summary: The herd continues to milk an average of 88lbs/cow of Adjusted Corrected Milk (ACM). ACM is a calculation that standardizes milk to 3.5% fat content, produced by a 3 rd lactation cow at 150 DIM. Approximately 45 cows are producing 4150 lbs/day or 92lbs/cow/day. This is approximately 90 lbs/stall, which is much better than our breakeven production level of 68 lbs/stall. The herd s butterfat has averaged 3.7 % and the protein has averaged 3.0 %. Dry Matter intake is at 53lbs/cow. Bulk tank SCC is at 190,000 cells/ml, with a SPC of 4000 colonies/ml for March. Sick Cows/Treatments/breedings/Patient Care: Jessica We are committed to getting her pregnant, so we dried her up as per Milo Wiltbank (Dairy Science professor), who said that heifer and dry cows have similar conception rates. We will breed her per Dr. Harry Momont recommendation, probably using an Ovnsynch protocol. Penny - Thanks to all student workers for the fine job done on Penny - she is adjusting well to her new stanchion home, enjoys being milked, and is Ina s favorite heifer. It shows what can be done with a concerted effort by many people to be patient and train a heifer how to be a cow. Remembering this is usually done by 1 person in the commercial dairy setting.

3 Thank you to PM3 students Erika Langfoss, Cathie Morrow, Jessica Pagenkopf, and Jim Roodzant for doing such a fine job on the nutrition investigation, which identified that selenium was not at the proper levels in our grain mix. Dr. Oetzel is in the process of developing a method to combine our protein and grain mix, which could save us money. He is also developing a cottonseed feeding plan which will feed whole cottonseed to each cow based on production level. This would also save money and could even increase production. Thanks to Judith Goelkel for her excellent presentation on Milk Fever at FAPM rounds. Her presentation included how to recognize, monitor, and treat Milk Fever, and she also discussed the progress of the protocol developed by Dr. Oetzel. Brent Cousin is next - May 2, Thanks to Gretchen Glose and Lincoln Mumford for their Infectious Disease Recitation project concerning the calf protocol and biosecurity. The project emphasized calving in the box stall, using the dry cow area as an isolation facility for new springing heifers (if we are able to get funds to build 4 stalls in the box stall room), and building calf hutches to house calves for a minimum of 10 days before shipping to Stateline Heifers. We will review these recommendations with our management team. Lincoln! Brenda is contributing to Brent Cousin s education by being superovulated to collect eggs for an embryo transfer project he is doing with Dr. Harry Momont. Thanks to Pm2 students Lisa Hansen, Mark Pipkorn, Jim Roodzant, Sarah Steenlage & Faye Hartmann (Supervisor, Clinical Pathology Laboratory) for doing a thorough job in discovering Mycoplasma in a bulk tank sample. Faye found no colonies on the Brenda!! original plate but the culture was positive from the broth subculture. Thus it pays to do a quality job. We have just had 8 heifers enter the herd and freshen since , so we have to prevent further spread of this contagious organism and identify the heifer that is affected. Remember we are not a closed herd, as all our calves are sold to Stateline heifers which are co-mingled with 9 other herd s - we repurchase the springing heifer 2 years later. The 10 herds do repeated bulk tank cultures throughout the year in order to ID possible Mycoplasma organisms. However, Mycoplasma can be shed at low rates so one may miss the organism. We did have a protocol in place to do bulk tank screenings at least weekly during entry of heifer milk into the tank, but it has not been used due to financial constraints. Dairy farming is an activity that involves economic choices which make you a little better off or a little worse off (51-49 game) lets hope in this case we are only a little worse off.

4 SO, What to do?? All milking crews are on alert to focus on a milking order which will milk the adult herd first, then recent clinicals (cookie and sasha) and then the heifers (there are 8) with Martha being milked last. Then on we will take a milk sample from each cow/heifer in the herd for mycoplasma culture to find the culprit (hopefully only 1) and cull her immediately. The most likely candidate is Martha, who has had mastitis in 2 quarters, not responding to treatment, with a 5 million SCC at the March test. She has also had a swollen and painful right pastern joint. The other candidate would be Sandra who had 2 quarters affected with mastitis. They did respond to therapy, however recently she has had some soreness in both pastern joints. Then, there is Cookie, but I will leave it there as it is already painful enough with Martha being our only cow out of Matti, Sandra s mother is Sandy, and we all know what Cookie s potential in production is. Martha entering her stall at the veterinary school last week. Noteworthy items: Thanks to Chuck Hendrickson and the Bovine Club for the Saturday Enrichment Program on Veterinary students Keith Poulsen, Kurt Riemer, Mike Russell, Jamie DeSpirito, Becky Krull, and Sara Gilbertson demonstrated cow feeding, cow milking, and physical examination of cows for 32 kids who ranged from 5th to 8th grade. We are also actively looking for about 6 more students to work this summer to complete our pool of workers who will carry us through to the Fall. In the past, this has generally come from first and second year students who want some experience with dairy cattle, both in management and health care while they are holding other jobs. This results in 1 2 shifts per week. What is better than working with great cows in the summer? See below in employment opportunities for more details. Projects: We give our Posilac injections on Friday mornings. Come give Keith Poulsen a hand, as their can be up to 24 cows to inject. Feel free to show up any time between 6:00-7:30am. We have cows to vaccinate (J-5 and Scourgard) see Sara Colopy for the schedule. Rachel Klos continues to run the Nutrition monitoring project and always needs help. Sara Gilbertson is now doing the body condition scoring and always could use some help. Sarah Braeske is entering our financial data. Sara Colopy and Rachel Klos are editing the newsletter. Future Veterinarian!

5 Employment opportunities: If you are interested in gaining experience with dairy cows, we have the opportunity for you. You can join the milking crew at the Charmany Teaching Facility and work the AM or PM milking shifts. Weekday shifts are from 5:00 am to 7:00 am and from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm. Weekend shifts are from 5:00 am to 12:00 pm and from 4:30 pm to 8:30 pm. Interested students should contact Dr. Bill Goodger at Further note on employment is that we can save 50% of our expenses for student salaries about $20,000 per year if student apply for work study which about 90% of veterinary students are probably eligible for. These added funds would allow more students access to the herd but would also provide support for clinics, projects, and clinical upgrades to our facility that would enhance the experience for all students. Below is information about work study from the CAMPUS work study office in financial aid. The Work-Study program does not determine where you work. It is up to you to determine where you'd like to work and what type of work you'd be interested in. The Federal Work-Study Program (FWSP) employee's will be glad to discuss with you what your interests are and what employment options are available to you but you will need to contact the employers directly to inquire about job availabilities. Having accepted Work-Study will benefit you primarily in two ways: first, since employers only pay.50 cents of every dollar earned by a student, work-study students are highly sought after employees and second, any work-study monies earned are not counted and considered as earned income when you apply for next year's financial aid. Normally a student's earnings are considered as earned income and your next year's financial aid award is reduced by that amount. If you decide to work On-Campus,ANY job at the UW automatically qualifies as a work-study position. You should always let a UW-employer know that you have accepted a work-study award, because again, it makes you an even more desirable hire to them. Having said this, some UW employers require that you have work-study. These listing can be found under the "UWWR" section. If you need to contact someone at the UW-SVM Teaching Herd Barn, call (608) Please direct correspondence regarding the Charmany Teaching Herd or the newsletter to: William J. Goodger, DVM, PhD cellular wgoodger@facstaff.wisc.edu

6 Charmany Dairy Herd Newsletter April 7, April 13, 2003 SPECIAL FEATURE OF THE WEEK!!! Meet Jodi Woods and Swoosh! Swoosh! Born: 3/2/96 Lactation: 5th Repro Status: Pregnant DIM: 308 SCC: 53,000 cells/ml Production: 74 lbs/day, 4.1% fat Lifetime Total: 130,830 lbs

7 Jodi D. Woods Year in School: 2006 When did you start working with the herd? And did you have prior dairy farm experience? 1 ST day: February 15, 2003!! No prior dairy experience, or large animal experience of any kind for that matter. Why did you take a job with the herd? Knowing that I will be working exclusively with small animals after I graduate, I thought it important that I gain as much experience as possible working with large animals while I m a student. What is the best part of your job? So far just being there. Working at the dairy is such a completely different environment from the small animal clinical experience I have it s exciting to consider everything I have to learn and how much this experience is going to help broaden my education. How does you job enhance your veterinary medical education? It s always exciting when I can make a connection between something I experience in the hospital (or the dairy in this case) and something I learned in the classroom. I find it particularly enjoyable when I can apply my practical hands-on experience to material that is being covered in a class. Experiences like these are very motivating for me. They make me excited about my job, and make all of the hard work and the many hours of studying all the more valuable. What skills have you learned/improved while working with the herd? My first time at the dairy the only thing I knew was what I learned in my undergraduate animal sciences class and my first semester of veterinary school. The learning has only begun! Do you have a favorite cow? If so, who? Why? Not yet. :-) Although I do love the fact that Swoosh enjoys having her head rubbed, and I adore Melody s facial expressions when she sees her grain and protein coming. What are your career interests? Have those interests changed or been influenced by your job with the herd? If so, how? My career interests are in small animal exclusive. Although I love the time I spend with the herd, I foresee my future within the confines of four hospital walls. Would you recommend this job to other students? Why? Absolutely! Because it would suck to graduate veterinary school (especially in Wisconsin) without having the experience of working at the dairy! (Even if you are planning on practicing small animal exclusive like myself!) What do you like to do in your spare time (i.e. non-animal interests)? Thinking back to a LONG time ago (before veterinary school) I used to: backpack/climb/mountaineer, train for triathlon, and just generally spend my time being active and healthy outside, in the sun (as opposed to basking under the glow of fluorescents in the reading room).