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Over the past number of seasons, we have seen a growing number of milk fevers at farm level. Milk fever is a gateway disorder. Cows that suffer from milk fever are at multiple times greater risk of suffering from retained cleansing, displaced abomasum, mastitis etc.
For example, a cow that has a milk fever is 3 times more likely to have a retained afterbirth and 8 times more likely to get mastitis.
Times more likely with Clinical or Sub-clinical Milk Fever
To control milk fever at farm level we need to feed our cows high levels of magnesium and vitamin D
while controlling cow body condition score (fat cows are 4 times more likely to suffer from milk fever than cows in the correct body condition score). To date, to overcome issues we have been advising a top up of 10 grams of magnesium before calving.
For the coming season we will increase the level of magnesium as standard within our pre-calver gold range from 31 grams per day to 40 grams per day, while also increasing our vitamin A, D and E levels. This should eliminate the need to top up with magnesium, decrease the incidences of milk fever, retained cleansings and mastitis while improving colostrum quality and SCC levels.