Week 1: In the beginning… It’s true. When the student is ready the teacher appears. I’d “failed” again. I had ventured down the E-Commerce path, dreaming of fame and fortune, only to realize that doing it with a shop centered on French Bulldogs wasn’t going to get me there....
Becoming a Data Scientist/Veterinarian at 67 years young.
Palm Kernel Extract..Villain or Hero?
There has been a lot of debate about Palm Kernel Extract. I expect you have your own thoughts on it too. Some dairy companies see Palm Kernel Extract as a villain. It’s high in lauric acid which is a saturated fatty acid with a much higher melting point than...
Make More Money With Fibre
A little long fibre in a cows diet goes a long way. After all, fermenting complex carbohydrates is what a ruminant does best. Try giving them some and see for yourself. And it can be a profitable exercise. Through gains in feed conversion and better animal health. So how...
How To Reduce Nitrogen Leaching From Cows
Cows recycle the nitrogen they eat and share it with us in their milk as true milk protein. As well as other N containing compounds like milk urea, which has this molecular formula …CH4N2O Nitrogen is also excreted from their bodies in their urine, again as urea. This represents...
Efficiency…Five Truths That Will Surprise You
Efficiency is a quality that most people don’t have an argument with. To me the word conjures up a vision of a conveyor belt with components getting added sequentially until the finished product rolls off the production line and into it’s final package. How could anyone argue against efficiency?...
3 Reasons Why Ketosis in N.Z. Does Deserve Attention
Clinical and sub clinical ketosis in dairy cows does deserve attention here. In the latest N.Z. trial even the scientists were surprised by how common it was to find ketone bodies in the blood of cows at levels higher than 1.2 mmol/litre….especially in the month just before calving and...
How To Fix Low Milk Protein
There are many reasons why your cows could be producing less milk protein than you would like. Your cows are like high performance cars. Unlike a car though you can’t lift up the bonnet and take a look inside. That’s where our imagination comes in. And the brainstorming. ...
Your Methane Emission Questions Answered
Given the choice of the smell of methane in a cows burp or a kiss from my dog after he’s eaten a sun dried fish carcass scavenged from the beach, I’d pick the burp hands down. Nowadays though there’s a growing awareness of the impact of greenhouse gases...
Five Ways To Keep a Cow and Her Liver Healthy This Autumn
When you stop to think about it a cows liver is an amazing thing, and a huge asset for her. An important function of this organ is to take short chain fatty acids from the rumen and transform them into glucose and energy. Not only that, it has the...
Five Surprising Things About Metabolisable Energy
“Metabolisable energy” has been in the news again this week. Specifically an item about the High Metabolisable Energy ryegrass cultivars that are being developed by Ag Research Scientist Greg Bryan and his team. To help increase productivity AND reduce environmental footprint. The field trials are going to be done...