This on-farm course is designed to teach principles of dairy evaluation without using test equipment. An emphasis will be directed toward milk quality but also look at areas that can be modified to improve the productivity of the dairy operation.

Too often mastitis consultants look specifically at the milking facility and ignore the other important aspects of dairies that have large effects on cow health, milk quality, and productivity. Dairy producers and herdspersons fail to identify these issues because they work around them 365 days a year. The focus of this course will be the honing of the individuals observation techniques with a whole dairy focus. This course will develop your ability to recognize when the abnormal becomes normal, and to offer common sense advice to dairies.

The class will be split into two evaluation teams of no more than nine people each. Participants will have the opportunity to observe all areas of a dairy. Time will be spent visually appraising the milking equipment and its overall installation and maintenance. An assessment of the overall cow comfort, cow handling techniques and cow traffic patterns will also be made during the complete farm walkthrough. After performing a thorough evaluation of the facilities, each team will interpret what they see and relate their observations to the overall milk quality of the dairy. Additionally, the groups will be given guidance on how to prioritize and present their findings to decision makers. The goal of this seminar is for participants to leave with a better understanding of how all areas of the dairy are interrelated to both the milk quality and overall dairy profitability, and to appreciate how to begin to better "see" what's actually happening on a real dairy.

This course is targeted toward people with some experience in evaluating dairies. If you enjoy a challenge and an opportunity to advance your skills, this is where the manure meets the alley scraper!

Lunch and transportation to and from the dairy will be provided.

It is evident that not all clinical mastitis cases may benefit from treatment with intramammary antibiotics. On-farm culture systems may represent a useful on-farm tool to allow producers to rapidly diagnose the bacterial cause of mastitis infections, thus allowing us to make more rational treatment decisions.

This program will begin by reviewing the rationale for making strategic antibiotic treatment decisions for clinical mastitis cases. We will then discuss how on-farm culture systems work and how they may be integrated into the mastitis treatment decision protocols on farms. We will review results from previous and ongoing studies investigating the efficacy and potential benefits of using on-farm culture systems to guide mastitis treatment decisions.

Emphasis will be placed on how to set up and successfully operate an on-farm culture system on a commercial dairy farm. A wet-lab will allow participants to practice milk plating techniques as well as interpretation of mastitis culture results. This applied course is targeted toward dairy veterinarians and producers interested in setting up on-farm culture systems on dairies. No previous experience is necessary.

Successfully managing a milking parlor must start with specific goals defined by management to be achieved and maintained in place. Monitoring performance indicators specific to these goals makes it possible to measure success or need for improvement. This course is specifically geared to parlor managers implementing and evaluating processes, monitoring performance indicators, and managing equipment maintenance.

The program will review evaluation tools for monitoring performance such as milk quality data, parlor performance, routines, teat cleanliness, udder hygiene and teat condition. How to measure success or failure with the tools available will be discussed. Establishing and implementing protocols to show your employees the rules of the game, training and coaching your team, evaluating performance of people, processes, equipment, udder health and hygiene and managing equipment maintenance will also be covered.

Experience with maintaining the milking parlor and implementing parlor procedures is preferred for participants enrolling in this intermediate-level course. Handouts include course presentation and evaluation tools for monitoring performance indicators.

This course will focus on using somatic cell counts, clinical mastitis data, culture results and differential bacteria counts to troubleshoot mastitis and milk quality problems on dairies. Case studies from actual herds will be used, in an interactive approach, to review cow health and management data that are available to farm managers and consultants, and to develop strategies for targeted troubleshooting and prevention/therapy strategies.

Determining how to best use the data as well as how to look at other areas besides numbers will be covered. Participants will learn how to capture and manage information before making recommendations. This course will benefit rookies and challenge seasoned veterans.