Dairy Handling

Cattle are sensitive to noise and can become agitated if they hear sounds but can't see their source.
Effective management requires consideration of their senses, especially sound and smell.
- Sense of Smell: Important for avoiding poisonous plants, as it allows animals to learn which plants are safe to consume based on previous experiences.
- Grazing species often learn to avoid bitter-tasting and malodorous plants, which are often toxic.
- Animals also tend to avoid areas contaminated by stressed animals' urine or manure, which is crucial in managing feedlots and slaughter processes.

Handling in Slaughter: Keeping animals in a low-stress environment during handling is critical.
- This impacts subsequent animals positively as stress can cause avoidance behaviors in livestock.
- Animals avoid eating in areas that have been contaminated, impacting their feeding behavior in feedlot situations.
The process known as High Pressure Rotational Grazing helps manage grazing to minimize parasite loads while allowing natural grazing behaviors.

Grazing Mechanisms:
- Cattle and sheep differ in how they graze: cattle use their tongues to wrap around and grasp grass, while sheep use incisors to bite closely to the ground.
- This leads to different ecological impacts on pastures.
- Example: Sheep tend to graze the ground closely, which can lead to soil erosion, unlike cattle, which leave some plant material.

Cattle also explore their environment through licking, which may include tasting salt or other minerals.
They find certain grasses based on taste and smell, which influences their grazing choices.

Dairy Cattle Udders:
- Comprised of four distinct glands, each with its own duct system, referred to in quarters (fore and hind quarters).
- Alveoli are the basic structures responsible for milk production within the udder.
- Proper suspension of the udder is vital to accommodate the weight of milk (approximately 80 pounds).
- Building strong suspensory and lateral ligaments is essential to avoid complications during milking.

Purification Dairy Cattle Association offers a scorecard for evaluating dairy cattle based on several traits: volume of milk production, udder formation, and teat placement.
- Ideal Udder Traits:
- Depth, height, width, and square teat placement are critical in assessment.
- Cattle with poorly formed u udders may be sold off due to inefficiencies in their milk production capacities.

Dairy Cattle: Are accustomed to human interaction due to close and regular handling for milk production.
- Raised in environments without their mothers, they become reliant on humans for sustenance.
- Have smaller flight zones due to their exposure to people.
- Tend not to group together as they are less social due to their rearing conditions

Calves are typically removed from their mothers shortly after birth and housed in individual hutches to minimize disease transmission.
The importance of giving each calf their mother's milk, as opposed to artificial colostrum, is emphasized for better immunity.

Sex Semen: Utilized to enhance the probability of female calves (90% accuracy), which allows the dairy industry to maintain heifer populations for milk production.
The technique includes sorting sperm based on their DNA weight (X vs. Y chromosomes), where X sperm are heavier, allowing separation before artificial insemination.

Machinery in modern dairies enhances efficiency:
- Robotic milking systems have been implemented that automatically recognize cows and record their milk production data.
Automation Benefits: Increases accuracy in monitoring animal health and production while reducing labor needs in the milking process.

Initiating Milking: Milk ejection is mediated by Oxytocin, a hormone released when the teats are stimulated.
Factors such as cleanliness and calm environments contribute to successful milking sessions.
Cows are trained to associate the milking parlor with positive experiences, which encourages them to enter willingly.

Body Condition Scoring: A measurement from 1-5, focusing on keeping dairy cattle on the thinner side.
- A leaner cow is more productive and better at converting feed into milk than one that is overweight.
Environments should be conducive to keeping dairy cattle comfortable, as discomfort can influence milk production.
Lameness and Downer Cattle: Addressing mobility and overall health is essential as it affects production; downer cattle cannot be sold for meat and require humane treatment.

Dairy farming practices, animal handling, and welfare are intertwined with production efficiency, highlighting the necessity for humane treatment and understanding animal behavior in livestock management.