The History of Dairy Farming

Humans have been drinking milk from cows for thousands of years. Modern dairy farming began in the early 1900’s after pasteurization was developed and utilized widely. Pasteurization allows for a safer product and extends milk’s shelf life by eradicating spoilage-causing bacteria through the application of heat. This process allows milk to last longer and be shipped further.

Dairy farms have become more efficient over time, and this has helped farmers reduce their environmental impact.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is Dairy Farming Intensive or Extensive?

Image
Dairy farming is largely and increasingly intensive and mechanized, or industrial. Most cows on dairy farms in the United States are kept confined to a stall where they are delivered food, rather than being allowed to graze for their own food on a pasture. They are artificially inseminated and produce enormous, unnatural quantities of milk.
Read more

Please don't help me

Image
One issue that can be difficult is when you have friends or neighbors helping, handling cattle in a manner that you don’t want them handled.  Don’t hesitate to say something.  Even though you might offend that person, these cattle are your livelihood and paycheck, and you can’t afford to have them made wild by the way someone else is handling them.”  You don’t want the cattle more difficult to handle in the future, or become a safety risk for you or anyone else.
Read more

Typical feed efficiency values for calves and heifers

Image
Typical feed efficiency values for calves and heifers (feed to gain; DMI to ADG) Calves on milk 2:1 to 2.5:1 Weaned calves (25% forage) 3:1 to 4:1 Young heifers (50% high quality forage) 4:1 Heifers on TMR 6:1 to 7:1 Older heifers (poor forage) 8:1 or more (has been shown to be 15:1 in some cases) Yearling heifers on high quality feeds and forages can easily have a 5:1 ratio of feed to gain, but this can decrease to 8:1 or more for less digestible, high forage diets. One example of allowing feedstuffs to digest longer in the rumen by not having animals on full feed was demonstrated in Wisconsin research. In this study heifers fed a controlled amount, 80% of ad-lib intakes, showed a 29% improvement in feed efficiency compared to heifers that were allowed to eat as much as they wanted. In addition, heifers fed a controlled amount produced approximately 2 pounds less manure (on a dry matter basis) each day than heifers fed ad-lib. A last point is that a few feed additives that improve rum...
Read more