[[{“value”:”FarmProgress: With a closed herd and all his heifers artificially inseminated — no outside bulls needed — Nathan Brearley was confident his 500-cow dairy farm in Portland, Mich., would be spared from the avian flu strain that’s affecting dairies. He was wrong. Nearly six months later after an infection on his farm, milk production still
The post Avian Flu is Bad for Cows appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.”}]]
FarmProgress: With a closed herd and all his heifers artificially inseminated — no outside bulls needed — Nathan Brearley was confident his 500-cow dairy farm in Portland, Mich., would be spared from the avian flu strain that’s affecting dairies.
He was wrong. Nearly six months later after an infection on his farm, milk production still hasn’t recovered.
“I was quite surprised. I never saw any other disease this widespread affect the cattle like it did,” Brearley said during a recent webinar on dairy avian flu, put on by the Pennsylvania Center for Dairy Excellence.
…Brearley said the first signs of problems were in April when the SmaxTec boluses in his cows, which keep track of temperature and other health parameters, started sending high-temperature alarms to his phone and computer. Half the herd looked like it was getting sick.
“Looking at data, the average temperature rise was 5.1 degrees above normal,” he said. “Outlying cows were even higher with temperature.”
The cows were lethargic and didn’t move. Water consumption dropped from 40 gallons to 5 gallons a day. He gave his cows aspirin twice a day, increased the amount of water they were getting and gave injections of vitamins for three days.
Five percent of the herd had to be culled.
“They didn’t want to get up, they didn’t want to drink, and they got very dehydrated,” Brearley said, adding that his crew worked around the clock to treat nearly 300 cows twice a day. “There is no time to think about testing when it hits. You have to treat it. You have sick cows, and that’s our job is to take care of them.”
Testing eventually revealed that his cows did indeed contract H5N1. But how they contracted it, he said, is still a mystery.
Brearley said an egg-laying facility a mile and a half away tested positive for H5N1 and had to depopulate millions of birds. The birds were composted in windrows outside the facility, “and I could smell that process.”
The farm averaged 95-100 pounds of milk per head with 4.0% butterfat and strong solids before the outbreak. During the first three weeks of infection, milk production fell to 75 pounds a head and has been slow to recover.
“Honestly, we haven’t recovered since, though my forages have been stable,” Brearley said. “I cannot get back to our baseline again.”
Reproduction was also challenged. Right off the bat, his cows aborted their calves.
And how about this kicker:
He didn’t test his cows until two weeks after the first high temperatures entered his herd, fearing that his milk processor wouldn’t accept his farm’s milk.
Why do I get the feeling that we are sleepwalking?
The post Avian Flu is Bad for Cows appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.
Economics, Food and Drink, Science
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