Ozarks Farm & Neighbor Newspaper – written for, by & about farmers

Preventing disease is a main concern for many dairy farmers. Because mastitis is among the most common infection in the dairy industry, producers should be aware of the danger it poses to the health of their animals and the safety of their milk.
Mastitis, an inflammation in the mammary gland, is caused when pathogenic bacteria enters a cow’s udder through the teat orifice, moves into the teat canal and causes an infection. 

Ozarks sheep and goat producers know that spring is the time to gear up for a never ending battle against parasites.  While the external varieties; ticks, lice, flies and mosquitoes, are summertime skirmishes, internal parasites wage their war secretly, almost invisible until their damage begins to surface. 

Cattle producers across the Ozarks can usually guarantee rain will be in the forecast through these spring months.  This is a good thing most of the time, but there are a few downfalls to all that rainfall.  Foot rot is one of them.

According to the National Cattlemen’s magazine, CattleFax® analyst Mike Miller has projected that in the next year the price per pound for a 550 pound calf will move towards that of the 750 pound yearling due to high corn prices.  The response to this is cow/calf producers are considering keeping calves longer and putting additional pounds on them using pasture based forage systems.  But, will the extra time the animals spend on the operation present producers with unique challenges from an animal health standpoint?

Proactively improving wellness is the most important function of a herd health program.
“If our goal is to prevent fetal infections, we’d like immunity to be the highest when the threat is the greatest,” said Gerald Stokka, a Pfizer Animal Health veterinarian.

Fertilizer and excess nutrients in water make it possible to point fingers at farmers, processors  and agriculturalists. Southwest Missouri's US Congressman, Roy Blunt, at a Public Hearing on Water Quality March 19 at College of the Ozarks, cautioned, “I am really sensitive to making sure our friends in agriculture don’t become villains when we begin discussing water quality problems and issues.”