I have mentioned that I attend the University of Maine for Animal Science and settled on a microbiology minor in my junior year. Well, I did not realize just how much I was going to appreciate this decision and today we received such an exciting new tool at the farm I cannot wait to discuss... probiotics for cows! Gut health is a major factor to the development and well-being of our cows, especially at a young age our calves are at a high risk to diseases such as pneumonia and scours. The idea is that feeding 1/8 of a teaspoon of the probiotic to our calves at each feeding will encourage the establishment of commensal bacteria. I am super excited as I recognize many of these species as bacterial species that we can purchase through probiotic yogurts at the grocery store. Many of the bacterial species associated with gut health include various Lactobacillus species. For now, we are going to feed this probiotic to all of our newborn Jersey calves to hopefully give them an even stronger first start at life. I wonder if probiotics will become part of everyday practice in the future for dairy...
Today we shipped 5,061 gallons of milk.
Today we had 1 new calves.
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