Growing Forages to Prevent Milk Fever

KEMPTVILLE— Researcher Dr, Gaëtan Tremblay offered farmers at Eastern Ontario Dairy Days in Kemptville, a farm-grown forage alternative to adding unpalatable anionic salts to rations during the transition period.

To prevent milk fever it isn’t enough to simply set aside old fields of hay to feed today’s high production cows in the weeks leading up to calving, farmers at the W.B. George Centre were told on Feb. 11.

Milk fever is characterized by paralysis shortly after freshening when demand for calcium quadruples at the start of lactation. This high and sudden demand can significantly drop calcium levels in cows not properly prepared before calving. According to Tremblay, a Quebec researcher with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, it is estimated that the economic loss in Quebec alone is about $9-million a year.