A practical guide for dairy farm management in New Zealand (Spring 2015)!
Dutch vet and cow enthousiast Jan Hulsen has drawn on his expertise and wide experience to write Cow Signals: a richly illustrated farmer’s guide on how to interpret the behaviour, posture and physical characteristics of groups of cows and individual animals.
Experience Vetvice
When observing cows it is important not to jump to conclusions immediately, but always to ask yourself three questions: What do I see? Why has this happened? What does this mean? What signals can you get from rumen, gut and body condition? They give you specific information on the feed intake of respectively today, last week and last month. In seasonal calving systems cows utilize grass in a simple and low cost way. But this also requires special management. You have to focus on other issues than in farming systems where the cows are housed at least part of the day. Fertility management, feed availability, water supply, cow monitoring are very different. But also herding requires specific skill and special attention has to be given to cow tracks.
If you know what to look for, you can pick up the signals everywhere and any time. Cow Signals will show you how (Spring 2015). See www.roodbont.nl for more information.
