Also extreme weather variations.
If it goes from being quite cold to being warm and humid,
that also affects our bedded pack, it makes it wet.
And it's just another added responsibility to the dairy farmer to keep that dry for
his cows.
And then different type of health events that occur when we have these
weather shifts.
If we have a cold bedded pack, that's not the best for the health of our animals.
So we could have some health events that occur when we
have these different changes in the cow environment.
The last system I'd like to cover is grazing type systems.
These were extremely popular back in the 1950s, at least in the United States, and
it still is globally and they had a resurgence in the 1980s.
In these types of grazing strategies were enveloped because
what it did is essentially decrease the input costs of the diary.
So feed costs and housing was made cheaper.
The ability to graze really determines on your geographic location,
because that determines the season which you can graze.
So for example, in the Midwest or the Northeast United States,
you can really graze your animals six to seven month out of the year.
What that does is it also means you have five, six, seven months, where you
have to house your animals inside because they can't be outside grazing,
because there's lack of feed, and because of the weather.
It requires a high quality pasture to support milk production, and
then the farmer also has to be trained in the management of those pastures.
So we can support the maintenance level of the cow, and
then milk production above that.
Some opportunities when you go to a grazing type system,
it's very similar to loose housing.
Cow comfort can be improved if the pasture' is nice.
Now, if it's full of rocks or is really uneven,
the cows won't move around the pasture as much.
But they do have this freedom of movement.
And then the manure handling, when they're outside moving around,
the cows essentially haul their own manure.
So the diary farmer is not responsible for removing that.
And there's an economic benefit.
If you could maintain good production and use a grazing type system,
you've decreased your feed cost and decreased your building cost.
So there's an economic benefit to doing some grazing.
Some challenges is it still requires, when you go to a grazing system, some type of
housing for those animals in the winter, late fall winter and the spring months.
You still have to have some type of adequate, acceptable housing for
these animals.
There are feeding challenges when you go to a grazing type system.
So if you have poor grass quality, or the cows just simply don't want to
eat the type of grass that you have, you're going to have to supplement that.
So that can increase your feed cost essentially negating on the benefits
that you gain from going to a grazing type system.
And then a lot of times what we have when we graze is the cows move a lot.
So they are going to lose weight and you have as a dairy farm,
you have to be more in tuned to watching for those body condition changes and
supplementing some of those cows when they need it.
When later in the growing season the grass quality declines, you have to pick up
on that and then start supplementing them with some type of other feed.
And when you move to a grazing design, there is a period of adjustment for
the producer as they learn how to manage grass fields and pastures, and
also for the cow if they haven't been used to being in a type of grazing system.