AHV as a solution for udder health challenges on Idaho dairy farm

Wilhelm Oppedyke is the third generation dairy farmer who helps run his family dairy, Oppedyke Dairy, in Mountain Home, Idaho. Operating at this location since 2004, they currently milk around 2200 cows.

AHV helps with efficiency and prevention

Oppedyke Dairy is trying to stay at the status quo and not grow, since in Idaho, there is a cap on production, so the goal is to make the production limit with as few cows as possible and increase efficiency. AHV has helped them to that. Wilhelm says his grandfather and father have the practical knowledge, but he got his degree in ag business, so he’s bringing new ideas with technology and animal health to the operation.

A year and a half ago, Wilhelm says they started using meters to gather data on the cows, which allowed them to see health traits with the cattle much faster. He says “we were really looking at udder health challenges, because it was flagging all these cows before we actually could see it. And we didn’t know what to give them, because they weren’t that sick YET. That is where AHV was the perfect fit. We could prevent them from getting sick and keep them in their home pens and keep the milk in the tank.”

The cow fights bacterial infiltration herself

“We found AHV over a year ago and we’ve been using it ever since. Along with our meters, it just makes our lives easier.” Oppedyke says when a cow flags on the meter, they check her out and decide if they want to give her a bolus or pull her from the pen, but with the success they have had with AHV, it makes sense to work with those protocols and leave the with her herd. He mentions “the nice thing about the AHV protocol is the cows get to stay in the pen and that minimalizes the stress of udder health challenges. Because when you pull a cow out of her group that she’s been acclimated to and put her in a new group, where now she’s getting milked at a different time, the feed’s a little bit different, it causes stress on her. And the more you can keep stress down, the better the cow can fight the bacterial infiltration herself.”

Another thing Wilhem likes about AHV protocols is he shares “it’s also good to use less traditional methods. Using this is scary, because mistakes can happen and it contaminates the whole tank.” He says that the labor for AHV protocols is similar to traditional methods, but it’s a lot easier on the cow and “we are about a 95% success rate using AHV and the meters together.”

Oppedyke uses multiple AHV protocols

The dairy uses Aspi and Extra on their udder health protocol cows, and Metri on their retained placenta cows 24 hours after birth. If they still haven’t dropped it the next day they will give a Metri and Quick together with an Aspi. Previously, Wilhelm says they were having to doctor the RP cows multiple times and his employees were not always able to do that consistently. He says “with AHV, its combined with employee happiness and cow health. It also helps economically because the less time a cow is stressed, the better.”