Visited farms in North Cork today. One noticeable feature is with large herd sizes in excess of 150 cows per unit. The stress lvels are too high and this in impacting on overall health reproductive performance.of the herds. This whole issue needs to be addressed as the advice from both popular press & research suggest increasing herd sizes to maintain a profitable dairy unit. The impact of this in terms of farm level in Ireland where fragmentation is a major issue,creates major problems in terms of feasibility. One one large unit in North Cork today, the client in question is faced with a large outbreak of BVD & IBR and the total impact of this financially both short term and long term is phenomenal. The stress was very evident in the client's face today. This should not be the case in a business as one is not in control with high stress levels as seen here today.
Dr Dan
www.cows365.com