Managing the challenges in transition dairy cows

Abstract

The transition from late gestation to lactation is a period of many physiological changes, and a critical time to ensure cows are well prepared for a profitable and healthy lactation. There are many opportunity areas to implement management practices mitigating the risk of early lactation catabolic armageddon. Most dynamic activities will be better implemented if they are consistently measured and monitored. While comparison to external benchmarks is inherently dangerous to sound decision making, we aim to provide a framework such that a dairy can begin to internally calibrate its management metrics. Monitoring performance metrics that have little momentum, bias, and lag will help dairy farms reach their goals.