A successful reproduction program on a farm keeps milk production running steady. As all dairy farmers know, a cow must have a calf regularly to keep in milk. That’s why reproduction or repro programs are so important for dairies. Tracking each part of the repro program is key to making sure milk numbers stay up, and money isn’t lost. Using a milk sample is one way to help with keeping costs down in your repro program. Check out the following sections to learn why confirming pregnancy via a milk sample is great for your farm.
Using a Milk Test for a Health Screen
Regularly testing your milk gives you a look into the health of your herd. A single milk sample can show you the component levels and somatic cell count (SCC) for each cow in your herd. That’s why it’s important to test your herd each month. If you’re noticing an uptick in your SCC it’s easier to see it cow by cow rather than trying to figure out what to do based on a bulk milk tank sample.
Plus, collecting milk samples is minimally invasive for a cow. As more dairies become the focus of animal welfare groups, educating consumers about how health screening tests are done on cows is a hot topic. When farms can reduce the number of tests being done on a cow, it’s a big bonus. Giving milk is part of the natural process for a cow, which means collecting this sample from her won’t interrupt her resting and eating time. It’s just taken while she’s being milked. She hardly even notices.
Performing a Pregnancy Check
Once a milk sample is taken, submitting it to a lab for analysis will give you the results of what’s going on with your herd’s milk production. That’s where the pregnancy test can happen. At Dairy One’s Animal Health Diagnostic Lab, a milk sample can be screened for whether a cow is pregnant or not, while also getting tested in the Milk Lab for component levels. Results are sent directly to the farm via email to help herd managers quickly see if a cow is pregnant and determine the next steps.
While veterinarians can visit your farm to perform pregnancy checks, a milk test can happen faster. In addition, a milk sample test can be submitted multiple times at a low cost. Rather than having a vet check, collecting a new milk sample and submitting it will take minimal time. The costs will be lower for the milk pregnancy check when combined with regular milk testing too.
Reasoning for a Milk Pregnancy Test
Confirming pregnancy via milk has many different benefits aside from being minimally invasive. It will tell you quicker if a cow is pregnant, which will save you money. It saves you on the feed she will eat if you accidentally dry her off, and she sits and eats for 30 days. It saves you money on running another round of your repro program. Finally, it saves you the loss of milk production when a cow isn’t pregnant and takes longer to get back into milk.
As mentioned earlier, a milk pregnancy test is also a boost for animal care programs. More dairies are looking at options that reduce interruptions on a cow’s schedule. Vet checks require sorting, and time away from resting and eating, all of which could possibly cause less milk production from that cow. Why bother a cow twice when you can just collect a sample when she’s being milked?
Keeping a reproduction program on track takes a lot of work. And it can easily be derailed by a missed pregnancy. That’s where milk pregnancy testing can step in to make sure things don’t go sideways. As a minimally invasive way to confirm if a cow is pregnant, milk pregnancy testing uses a milk sample to test rather than a vet visit or blood draw.
Working with Dairy One, you can get a DHI Field Technician to collect a milk sample or you can submit a sample to the Animal Health Diagnostic Lab. If you have any questions, you can contact them at [email protected].