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Northern Valley Dairy Production Medicine Center
Our Services
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Office Hours:
Monday-Friday
7:30 AM-5:00 PM
Saturday
8:00 AM-12:00 PM
Sunday-Closed
24-hour Emergency Service
900 N. Wabasha, Plainview, Minnesota 55964 (507) 534-4356
Bovine Medicine and Surgery
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Even with good management and preventative medicine practices, some animals are going to get sick, become injured, transition into lactation poorly, or need help calving. Our doctors are experienced in diagnosis, medical treatment, surgery, and obstetrics, utilizing the latest methods and tools. Our commitment to continuing education keeps us updated. All surgeries are performed on-farm. We have a full-service in-house laboratory for microbiology, parasitology, and clinical pathology. We send tissue, blood, fecal, and urine samples to outside diagnostic laboratories as needed. Performing a necropsy (postmortem examination) on deceased animals is also a great tool, not only for determining why an animal died, but for monitoring herd-level disease incidence. A necropsy also allows for collection of tissues to submit to a laboratory for more detailed diagnostic testing. We strive to not only address problems as they occur, but to determine their cause and the contributing risk factors. Then we work with the client to implement management changes aimed at preventing or reducing future cases.
Dr. Kevin Nigon and Kristin Willer, Iowa State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Class of 2013, performing an LDA surgery.
Reproductive Management
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Reproductive losses are the number one loss on most dairies. In spite of much effort by everyone in the industry, calving intervals across the country are increasing. This trend has been in effect for more than thirty years. As we ask for more and more production from our cows we find it harder to get and keep cows pregnant in a timely manner. We utilize the latest reproductive technologies to help improve your herd’s reproductive performance. All of our doctors carry portable ultrasound machines to help accurately diagnose pregnancy, ovarian structures, and uterine or ovarian pathology. We use target breeding programs in many herds, including prostaglandin programs, CIDR programs, Ovsynch, Presynch, G6G, and others. We can help you design the best program for your herd.
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Regularly scheduled reproductive herd visits are the core of any veterinary reproductive program. We visit herds weekly, biweekly, or monthly. We can help you determine what interval is best for your herd and which cows should be examined each time. The day before each herd check, our staff will call you with a reminder.
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Portable trans-rectal ultrasound can diagnose pregnancy as early as 24 days in heifers, or 28 days in cows. We can see the heartbeat of the embryo to determine if it is alive. We can also diagnose twins so you can manage these cows differently before calving. Ultrasound Page
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Monitoring of reproductive performance is necessary to see how your programs are working. We understand that if you can’t measure it, you can’t monitor it, and if you can’t monitor it, you don’t know how you’re doing. We help determine which parameters to monitor, whether it is pregnancy rate, conception rate, heat detection rate, or others.
Milk Quality and Mastitis Prevention
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We provide services to prevent the problem where it starts, whether it is the cow, the environment, the equipment, or the person doing the milking. We perform milking system analyses using the National Mastitis Council protocol. We do time and motion studies during milking to measure udder preparation time, prep-lag time, unit-on time, and parlor throughput. Other tools such as teat-end scoring are also utilized. Milk Quality Page
Our mastitis laboratory uses standardized methods to accurately identify pathogens. We perform individual cow cultures, bulk tank cultures, bedding cultures, towel cultures, water cultures, and other tests. Laboratory Page
Youngstock Management and Reproduction
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Over 10% of dairy heifers born alive in the United States will die before their first calving. Most of these die within the first 30 days of life. We utilize a variety of tools to assess calf management, including testing total proteins of baby calves for failure of passive transfer, colostrum cultures, and calf milk cultures. We can help you improve your colostrum management, troubleshoot pasteurizer problems, create calf treatment and vaccination protocols, design proper calf-raising facilities, and more. We understand how important calf health and growth rates are to future milk production, and how important it is to get heifers pregnant quickly once they have reached the appropriate size and age. We can help you monitor your heifer-raising program and design a heifer reproductive program to achieve your goals. Youngstock Page
Record Analysis and Trouble-shooting
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What are the bottlenecks in your operation? Where should you focus your efforts to improve? We can help by looking at the whole enterprise. We spend our days on dairies, and have experience in all areas of dairy production. Record analysis is often very valuable to help you find problems. We have been using computers to help determine bottlenecks on dairies for over 20 years. We are competent in the use of DairyComp 305, and were one of the first, if not the first, veterinary clinic to use this program regularly in Minnesota. We also use a variety of spreadsheets to help identify problems and opportunities. Looking at your records on a regular basis helps identify problems before they become large. Often it is useful to compare your performance with other dairies or groups of dairies, anonymously of course, to help you find areas to improve.
Vaccination Programs and Biosecurity
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There are more cattle vaccines available today than any time in history. This is fantastic, because vaccines can prevent or reduce disease and production losses. However, the plethora of products available makes it difficult to choose which diseases to vaccinate for, which products to use, which animals to vaccinate, and when to vaccinate them. We understand the science behind the various products as well as the risk factors and mechanisms for each disease. This enables us to design precise vaccination protocols for your farm, taking into consideration the environmental conditions and past disease history of your herd. But preventative medicine is much more than just vaccination. We can help you design biosecurity and management programs for each group of cattle on your operation, whether home-raised or purchased, in order to minimize the risk of disease.
Nutrition
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We are what we eat. Your cows are what they eat too (and sometimes, what we eat). We balance rations for dairy herds using computer software. We are familiar with nutrient requirements of lactating and non-lactating cows and heifers. We also understand the relationships between nutrition and animal health. Many of the diseases we see are in part, caused by nutrition. Feed is the largest single cost to a dairy and typically amounts to about one-half of the cost of producing milk. We can balance diets, evaluate diets, evaluate feed bunk management, and work together with your nutritionist. Other nutrition-related services we provide include: shaker box testing (chop length), dry matter testing, rumenocentesis (collection of rumen fluid samples from cows) to check for subclinical ruminal acidosis, collecting liver biopsies from live cows (to assess mineral levels), blood BHBA (ketone) testing, and sample collection for serum NEFA testing.
Environment and Housing
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Housing and environmental conditions contribute to many of the diseases that we commonly see today. We understand the current recommendations for calf, heifer, and adult cow housing, for all stages of the production cycle. We can consult with you and your builder on many aspects of new building design or remodeling projects, including pen sizes, bunk space, bedding management, cow movement and restraint, freestall dimensions, ventilation, heat abatement strategies, pen layouts, and manure management.
Total Quality Management
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Consistency is the key to success. Total quality management strives to help you produce a consistent product consistently. To make a TQM program work on your dairy, you need to identify potential problem areas, design processes and systems, monitor results from those systems, and offer feedback to the teams involved in each process. We can help design processes and monitoring systems for your dairy. TQM Page
Education and Training
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We have put on numerous educational seminars. We can help to train you or your employees on the dairy. Increasingly a middle manager rather than an owner is doing herdsman-type work on dairies. Milking procedures, physical examinations, treatment administration, calving assistance, milk culturing, drug residue avoidance, and use of computers are common topics for on-farm training.
Speakers Bureau
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We can provide speakers for a variety of dairy topics. Dr. Bennett has given over 100 seminars to dairy producers, veterinarians, and other industry professionals in several states and internationally.
Consultation to the Industry
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Most of our services listed are offered to producers and industry in other areas of Minnesota and other states. We are willing to travel to help you improve your operation or the operation of one of your clients.
Pharmaceutical Trials
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We frequently help pharmaceutical companies perform drug trials to test new treatments or vaccines in some of our clients’ herds. We work with these clients to conduct the trials. Trials are important to develop new products and can be another source of income for a dairy.
Regulatory Work
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All four of our veterinarians are accredited to perform routine regulatory work, such as writing health certificates, blood testing, vaccinating for Brucellosis (calfhood/Bangs), and TB testing cattle. Dr. Nigon and Dr. Bennett are also certified to TB test cervidae (deer and elk). Dr. Bennett, Dr. Nigon, and Dr. Gardner are certified to perform Johne’s risk assessments.
Other Species
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While we are a bovine practice, we do see some other ruminant species. We have experience with goats, sheep, cervidae (deer and elk), and camelids (llamas and alpacas).
Beef Cattle Services
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Although our focus is dairy, veterinary services for beef cattle are also available. These include: reproductive services, disease control and treatment, vaccination protocols, implant strategies, and more.