A new dairy herd health package has been launched by Dugdale Nutrition to complement its Management for More than Milk, M3 programme and help farmers combat the three most common issues, fertility, lameness and mastitis. These combined with the associated loss of milk yield can be worth over £60,000 on a 100 cow herd.

Called Healthy Herd Planner, the initiative encourages farmers in the first instance to adopt a proactive approach by introducing the University of Edinburgh’s Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Service to monitor herd fertility, together with a computerized production and health recording system, essential to provide UK dairy farmers with an accurate management tool to achieve both herd performance and maximize profitability.

The package also introduces to diets Availa4, a protected mineral developed in the USA for high yielding herds, which contains a combination of zinc, copper, manganese and cobalt complexes essential to prevent lameness, encourage fertility, reduce mastitis incidence improve yield. In addition, Healthy Herd Planner urges producers to tackle lameness by adopting a focused footbath programme and introducing locomotion scoring, while mastitis can be curbed by including drying off treatments along with other timely measures.

“Attempting to maximize herd margin by exploiting yield potential is putting more and more herds under pressure and consequently increasing their vulnerability to fertility, lameness and mastitis,” says Dugdale Nutrition’s Donald Macleod. “Introducing Healthy Herd Planner along with M3 will focus farmers’ minds on how to prevent each of these issues by fine tuning day to day management to subsequently maximize herd health and productivity and improve overall herd margins.”

Further information on M3 and Healthy Herd Planner can be obtained from Dugdale Nutrition on 01200 420200.

Campaign for a Sustainable Dairy Industry Gathers Pace
Dugdale Nutrition's M3 Beef for More than Meat
Beef Shorthorns Ideal for Organic Farm