How to reduce the use of antibiotics in your herd?

Health problems not only cause pain and distress for dairy cattle, but they also have a huge impact on the economics of dairy and beef farms.

Generally, when we address the issue of how much a certain disease costs, we tend to think mainly of veterinarian and medication expenses but forget a crucial part - the indirect costs. Some of these indirect costs that can be overlooked include:

• Extra time and labour costs
• Fertility problems
• Costs of preventive measures
• Lost milk production
• Culling costs
• Genetic impact from losing the potentially best performing daughters.
• Bigger risk of having another disease.

Therefore, when calculating the economic impact of a disease on your herd, it is crucial to consider the whole picture.

Improving the health of your herd does matter a lot

Is it possible to improve the health of your livestock, and therefore animal welfare, and maintain high production levels?

Yes, it is possible to accomplish when you breed for healthier animals. When you get fewer disease cases for each generation, your investment will pay off more for each time you reproduce your cows.

When breeding for improved health, do you worry to compromise your milk production? Well, there is no need to give up on improving your milk yield, as production and health traits are taken into consideration in the NTM scale.

With data and science-driven genetics, you get the lowest use of antibiotics and hormones and the highest lifetime production per cow.

Choose our innovative breeding programmes that foster healthy, efficient, trouble-free cows with high production of milk and solids. They also have excellent fertility and a natural defence against disease.

Solution to reduce antibiotics use

At a time when the world is facing increased global concern about the use of antibiotics in livestock and the rise in antibiotic-resistant infections in humans, we are taking our responsibility by offering our innovative breeding on the three major cattle breeding programs: Holstein, Jersey, and Red Cattle Breeding.

Only by acting jointly on a global scale, can we tackle this problem and avoid the excessive and unnecessary use of antibiotics. Rising usage of antibiotics leads to more medicine resistant bacteria and the treatment of different illnesses becomes harder.