One of our prize milkers, called Kisumu, was calving for the sixth time, a couple of years ago.  The delivery was fine, smooth, with no complications for a cow her age.  After her morning milking, she went to rest before going out to the pasture.  By 0800hrs she had not gotten up.  All efforts to get her to go with the rest of the herd were futile.  The vet was called and he confirmed the farm manager’s diagnosis of milk fever. In my time on the farm (4 years) I had never seen the likes of hypocalcaemia!  The vet injected Kisumu with some calciject and ordered for more which he said he’d administer over the next three days and she would have to have as much mineral salt as she could stand per day with loads of water.  In the mean time we needed to help Kisumu stand up and move as much as possible so as to prevent her from getting ‘bedsores’.  She had to be milked in the laying down position and her calf suckled her from the same position.  Needless to say, I feared that mastitis would set in since all the milk was not being removed from the udder.  The calf had hay days as she could drink milk at will unlike the other calves which only got to have milk twice a day.

We had a big job on our hands which soon became evident the first time we helped Kisumu stand.  She was HEAVY! It took 6-9 men and me (a woman) to get Kisumu up on her feet.  We had to use two poles, one at her ‘armpits’ and one by the udder, a person at the tail and one at the head to get her up on her feet.  All this was done with much noise in the name of encouraging Kisumu to get up; yes our cows have individual names and they actually respond to being called.  Wow, now the real work came when we helped her walk to a different location of the dairy paddock.  This we did daily in the morning and the evening for two weeks.  Just as we were getting fatigued, Kisumu began to show signs of being able to get up on her own with some help from us. A whooop of joy rang out when we noted this and it gave us the moral not to give up on her.  Three days later she was getting up on her own and walking short distances.  Five days later Kisumu decided to go to the watering point, which is about 500 meters from the paddock and collapsed with fatigue.  We let her rest for half an hour, helped her up and slowly assisted her back to the paddock.  She rested in the paddock for the following two days and had an ample supply of water, though I think her mates tried to get her to go to pasture with them.  Come the fourth week she was well on the mend and has been well since that time.  The lesson learned was that the mineral intake of cows has to be incresed when pregnant and after calving until the calf is weened.  This is so much more economical than having to nurse a cow affected with hypocalcaemia back to health!

Dry2Fresh can now be recognized by this colourful design. Dutch farmers can look at www.gezondekoe.nl (healthy cow) for more information on Dry2Fresh.

On the road to more healthy cows!

How do farmers deal with milk fever in different parts of the world? This is the personal story of a farmer in Kenia.

“Hypocalcaemia is common in dairy cows during the dry season when pasture is at a premium.  I was talking with a fellow farmer who has high milk producing cows.  The difference between his method and ours is that his girls are managed under zero grazing.  Our cows go out to pasture and walk to the watering point twice a day.  We had been talking about maintaining the milk production and even increasing it during the dry season.  He suggested adding dried shredded maize stalks to the feed when milking the cows as well as mineral suppliments and increase the molasses so as to really make the meal appetizing for the cow. Since we had harvested our crop of maize in December… there were stalks in plenty in the field.

The stalks were shredded and added to the milking feed.  Now, our cows are very particular about their feed and baulked at this new blend!  The milk production dropped, and they became fussy at the time of milking.  Needless to say, our milker, we manually milk our cows, was not a happy camper.  We persisted and they got used to the new taste and the milk production began to increase.  After two weeks, I began to notice that some of the cows that were being milked were laying down more than usual and having difficulty getting up.  I called in our vet and his diagnosis was hypocalcaemia!  I heaved a sigh of relief as my thoughts had jumped to East Coast Fever.  He suggested that I increase the mineral intake of the cows and have their mineral block lick available for them to consume at will.  This we did and the affected cows slowly began to regain their strength.

This was very alarming for me and I went back to my friend to watch him making their feed; this taking information in bits almost cost me my cows. He had three varieties of mineral supplements, potash (lye), sunflower husks, the shredded maize stalks, alfalfa, molasses, dairy meal and a couple of other ingredients thus making a really powerful feed!  He would give the cows this feed four times a day and the quantities, in kilogrammes, depended on each cow’s production.  Then I understood why he had not mentioned anything about milk fever.  The cows had more than adequate amounts of calcium and magnesium in their diet.  Really, one cannot go wrong there.  This is where I had slipped as I had not increased the mineral suppliments to ensure that the calcium used in the cow for milk production was being replaced.  Experience is really a hard teacher. Her test comes first and the lesson later.”

Now, we realize that an enormous problem is arising around us and that we can take up a bigger challenge than envisioned in 2008.

The world faces an unprecedented challenge as food demands grow rapidly on a planet with shrinking resources. We need to ask ourselves how we can create a sustainable balance between feeding the ballooning population and maintaining our natural habitat. This will ensure that we do not wipe out the natural flora and fauna in an attempt to produce more food to meet the needs of the population.

Next to the increase in population from 7.2 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050, the welfare of the earth’s population is growing rapidly. We can afford increasingly ‘better’ food. The dairy industry is expected to grow in the coming years. The meat and dairy production will be intensified, but limited resources will provide a huge challenge for the industry. Preventing disease and increasing the life expectancy of dairy cows, will be one of the few ways to produce more food in a sustainable way.

Western society demands an increase in animal welfare and a decrease in the use of antibiotics. Furthermore, the risks of diseases transmitted from animals to humans need to be minimized. This can only be achieved by preventing health problems, not just in individual animals, but in the complete herd.

Now, 4 years after starting Blue4Green, we realize that we can contribute more than ever to creating a better world. We expect that better insight at the point of animal care to prevent animal health problems will be crucial to create a more sustainable world. Therefore we will continue with even more dedication to make the relevant information available @point of animal care. We will increase the number of elements that can be detected by our products and put more effort in making the detection of viruses and bacteria possible @point of animal care.

 We connect to give the right insight