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Symposium: Large Herd Management¹

Department of Animal Sciences, Purdue University, Lafayette, Indiana

ABSTRACT

Introduction

When does the owner-operator have a large herd? Within reason, the following definitions fit most areas of the United States:

1. When he manages resources such as feed, labor, and capital.

2. The manager handles and thinks of cows in terms of groups rather than as individuals. The individual cow has identity at the time of parturition, when she is sick or in heat, when checking milk records for potential animals to be culled, and when she enters the dry period.

3. He no longer milks his own cows.

4. If he raises most of the feed for his herd and owns at least twice the average number of cows enrolled in his state DHIA program.

5. In general, he has 100 or more cows in milk at one location.

There are many unresolved problems to consider in the evolution toward larger herds. Most educators have followed the axiom, "Get good before you get big."

¹ Presented at the Sixty-second Annual Meeting of the American Dairy Science Association, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. June 1967.