Dam-rearing of dairy calves: Lessons from practice for future research & development

Interest in dam-rearing of dairy calves is growing among researchers, advisors and farmers. This internal project report collates, synthesizes and conveys scientific evidence and information on systems for dam-rearing as practiced by farmers in northern Europe. We hope this report will serve as inspiration for researchers planning experiments on dam-rearing as well as advisors and farmers developing and implementing systems for dam-rearing in practice

Expansion of Agriculture in Northern Cold-Climate Regions: A Cross-Sectoral Perspective on Opportunities and Challenges

Agriculture in the boreal and Arctic regions is perceived as marginal, low intensity and inadequate to satisfy the needs of local communities, but another perspective is that northern agriculture has untapped potential to increase the local supply of food and even contribute to the global food system. Policies across northern jurisdictions target the expansion and intensification of agriculture, contextualized for the diverse social settings and market foci in the north. However, the rapid pace of climate change means that traditional methods of adapting cropping systems and developing infrastructure and regulations for this region cannot keep up with climate change impacts. Moreover, the anticipated conversion of northern cold-climate natural lands to agriculture risks a loss of up to 76% of the carbon stored in vegetation and soils, leading to further environmental impacts. The sustainable development of northern agriculture requires local solutions supported by locally relevant policies. There is an obvious need for the rapid development of a transdisciplinary, cross-jurisdictional, long-term knowledge development, and dissemination program to best serve food needs and an agricultural economy in the boreal and Arctic regions while minimizing the risks to global climate, northern ecosystems and communities

Extended lactation may improve cow health and productivity and reduce greenhouse gas emission from organic dairy cows

The concept of extended lactation is supposed to improve cow health and productivity and at the same time reduce greenhouse emission from high-yielding organic dairy cows in a product perspective. This effect is achieved through fewer calvings per year and hence a production of fewer replacement heifers, which then reduces the annual herd requirement for feed. We believe that the average milk yield per feeding day – days lactating plus days dry – per cow will be unchanged. However, this requires that the average cow will have to produce milk for a longer timeframe, and thus they will become older before being culled. We believe this will be a derived effect of the improved cow health as the majority of disease incidences occur around the time of calving. An on-going project at Aarhus University aims at characterising those cows, which can, and those cows which cannot produce milk for extended period of time before estimating the overall herd effect on farm economy and greenhouse gas emissions

Carcass weight of Greenlandic lambs in relation to grazing area biomass

This study set out to investigate possible relationships between lamb carcass weight and quality with feed availability during the main growing season in southern Greenland where farms are sparsely distributed over a large area. In early May, ewes and new-born lambs are let out to graze permanent nature areas until slaughter towards the end of September. In our study, we used data from 157,477 lambs slaughtered between 2010 and 2017 as well as the Normalized Differentiated Vegetation Index (NDVI) as an indicator of biomass growth. Mean carcass weight of lambs ranged from 13.4 kg in 2015 to 16.5 kg in 2010 where 70.5% of all lambs scored well for conformation and fat. Both farm, year, and NDVI significantly correlated with carcass weight and quality. Lambs raised in the northern and the southern grazing areas generally were smaller than lambs raised in the central part. Finally, NDVI explained between 0 and 74% of the variation in mean carcass weight across years within each grazing area. Our work exemplifies the use of satellite-derived data to attempt an explanation of spatial variation in productivity, which in the future could be coupled with other spatial variables such as soil quality, vegetation, and topography