Dairy Veterinary & Management Services

12/11/2023

05/05/2023

Congratulations to a great client, Nor-Bert Farm, on this awesome achievement!

Meet Nor-Bert Colby Connie, the new Lifetime Milk Production record holder. Connie is a Registered Holstein cow owned by Nor-Bert Farm, located in Bremen, Indiana. The farm is run by Roger and Deb Dankert, along with their son Jeremy Dankert and daughter and son-in-law Jennifer and Monty Freeman.

Connie is fourteen years old, classified EX-94 3E, and has achieved a remarkable production record of 486,300 pounds of milk in her latest completed lactation. But that's not all - Connie has calved again and is still adding to her lifetime milk production record!

This new record comes in quick succession to the one set by Chrome-View Charles 3044, who achieved the record earlier this year with a total of 478,200 pounds of lifetime milk, 14,447 pounds of fat, and 12,576 pounds of protein. Having two cows break the lifetime milk production record within a matter of a few months is a testament to all that’s possible with U.S. Registered Holstein cows. 🧀🐄🥛

To find more information on Nor-Bert Colby Connie click here: https://www.holsteinusa.com/news/press_release2023.html

01/23/2023

It’s been a while since we posted anything…turns out having an infant at home changes your priorities. However, to our followers - who we can only assume love all things weird when it comes to veterinary medicine - boy do we have a case for you.

A dystocia (difficult calving/lambing/etc) is a physical and mental challenge as a veterinarian - you need to be prepared for anything - even if that thing is the calf having two heads. Which just so happened to us last week. We ended up delivering this (stillborn) calf via C-Section and thought our followers would enjoy the weirdness

12/01/2022

🐄 Interra Agribusiness team members attended the Dairy Veterinary & Management Services annual meeting this morning in Goshen. From left to right: Kyle Revella, Business Lender, Chase Snyder, Agribusiness Lender, and Jason Golden, VP, Senior Agribusiness Lender.

03/27/2022

This is pretty big news on the animal agriculture front!

Several months ago I attended a conference where leaders in bovine genetics voiced their opinion that we are less than 10 years away from all cattle being born gene-edited in some capacity. They largely agreed it would start with being polled (i.e. without horns), eliminating our need to dehorn.

Ultimately it will be the consumer who decides how this technology is adopted, because as the customer, they are always "right." But there are aspects of this technology that just make sense when we aim to increase animal welfare and animal productivity for food production.

Worth a read!

To salmon and pigs and numerous crops like corn and soybeans, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has added beef from gene-edited cattle as safe food

12/02/2021

We recently did some minor eye surgery to help this heifer feel more comfortable. Born with a congenital defect called an ocular dermoid, this mass grew larger with time and caused constant epiphora (tearing) and began to pull ventrally on the lower conjunctiva (eyelid) more and more. Ocular dermoids can look quite crazy and even be attached to the cornea itself. The hair of the dermoid is often was causes issues causing constant irritation of the cornea that may lead to ulceration.

We sedated and numbed the eye and did a quick excision. The dermoid itself was attached to the third eyelid (nictitating membrane). The eyelids were sutured closed with an absorbable suture to allow for quicker healing and to keep debris out of the eye while the 3rd eyelid healed.

Two weeks post-op the eye is looking great besides still dissolving a suture. The heifer hasn’t missed a beat.

10/02/2021

Congratulations to all clients showing this week at World Dairy Expo!

The cow shown below is an animal who defied the odds in order to make it onto those colored shavings. Her name is Miracle, and to this day I still don’t know exactly what happened…

As a calf only a few days old, she started to scour profusely. She became dehydrated so quickly her owners called us to come IV fluids because oral fluids were simply not going to cut it. During my exam of the near comatose animal, I noticed severe cardiac arrhythmias due to electrolyte imbalances. I moved quickly to warm fluids, but when I turned her head to the side to clip and prep the jugular, her head went limp and her eyes were set. I listened to her heart…no beats. I was simply too late.

I laid her head on my leg and we started talking cows, trying to ease the emotion of the moment. It seemed like minutes had gone by when I noticed some shallow breaths. I listened to her heart again, two beats followed by a long pause, three beats, one beat, no rhythm at all but there was a pulse. I don’t think I even said anything but I stuck that needle in and started running fluids as quickly as I could move. Bottle after bottle of sodium bicarbonate followed by isotonic fluids, I kept grabbing more bottles. With every new bottle, there was more life. By the time I removed my needle, she was holding her head up and attempting to stand up.

Her recovery wasn’t without incident, but here she is as a first calf heifer walking those colored shavings. To this day that client calls me Dr. Jesus despite my inability to explain the unexplainable. You take the wins when you can as a veterinarian, and this is just one of those times.

09/06/2021

Happy Labor Day to the hard working dairymen of our country! Your work ethic puts food on the table for all of us and are vastly underpaid for the hours that you put in.

Growing up on a dairy, I always found Labor Day to be ironically placed on the first Monday of September as it’s often the busiest time of year putting up corn silage. We hope you find time to rest in the midst of the busyness this week.

07/26/2021

“Vets have the coolest job…”

During the day-to-day, it’s easy to forget how lucky you are - and sometimes it takes an outside perspective to help remind you.

I can still remember when I was 8 years old, clinging to the gate to watch a DA surgery on my family’s dairy. That veterinarian looked at me and told me “I have this feeling you’re going to be doing this yourself some day…” That veterinarian probably doesn’t even remember saying those words, but they have never left my mind.

My audience today brought that memory screaming back to life. And at the end of surgery, the oldest saying “vets have the coolest job,” made me realize it’s an important perspective to never lose.

07/20/2021

Transformation Tuesday

Remember this case? Born with an extra leg that wasn’t exactly functional, we performed our first (and only) 5th leg amputation. Now at 13 months old, you can barely pick her out of the group.

We suggested breeding her to a 3-legged bull. The owner didn’t seem to find that funny.

07/09/2021

Hot off the press…our summer newsletter!

To any client wanting to be added to our newsletter listserv, please add your email below.

06/10/2021

Can you spot the strong swimmers?

Breeding soundness exams of bulls entail thorough physical exams, measurement of their scrotal circumference, and evaluation of their s***matozoa motility and morphology. Those are just fancy words for how fast their s***m move and how well they’re put together. All of these findings allow us to pass or fail a bull on whether or not they would make a good/adequate breeder.

There is one trait however that can’t be evaluated on a breeding soundness exam...can you name that trait?

Shown at 400x magnification is a stained slide of some s***matozoa collected from a 16 month old Holstein bull.

02/10/2021

We’ve been slacking on our weird case posts, but this one will more than make up for it!

Dr. Dupor had a dystocia call last week to help deliver this FREAK. Because of the size of the head & mass together, this calf (which was DOA) was delivered via C-Section.

Biology sometimes makes mistakes, this one just looks more bizarre than most.

01/31/2021

Farmers buy everything at retail, sell their product at wholesale, and pay for trucking both ways. Margins are always narrow, which is assumed when producing a product considered a commodity.

While we don’t usually promote other products on this page, this app is a great way to track risk throughout the year. Check it out...it’s free!

Download today and see for yourself!
www.ziskapp.com