Watch Dr. Alex Bach, ICREA Spain, to speak on "Rearing Calves and Heifers for Maximum Production and Health" and"Successfully Transitioning the Dry Cow From the End to the Beginning of Lactation".
Welcome to the Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference
Location
The conference will be held June 12-13, 2019 at:
The Grand River Center
500 Bell Street
Dubuque, Iowa 52001
(563) 690-4500
This conference is a collaborative effort of Iowa State University Extension and Outreach, University of Illinois Extension, University of Minnesota Extension and University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Future Conference Dates:
June 10-11, 2020June 9-10, 2021
Four-State Dairy Nutrition & Management Conference
Dedicated to Dr. Randy Shaver
The 2019 Four State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference is dedicating these proceedings to Professor Randy Shaver, Department of Dairy Science, University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Randy retired in 2019 after 31 years of outstanding service to Wisconsin and the national dairy industry. A Pennsylvania native, Dr. Shaver has dedicated himself to translating complex nutrition research results into practical feeding recommendations for the dairy industry.
Professor Shaver was key in starting the current Four State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference. Randy, as an UW Assistant Professor with encouragement and cooperation of nutritionist Rod Martin now with Vita Plus Corporation, started the Wisconsin Veterinary Nutrition Symposium in Madison, WI in 1989. Around the same time, Ron Orth of Iowa State coordinated the Tri-State (IA, IL and WI Extension) Professional Dairymen's Management Seminar in Dubuque IA. Eventually Minnesota joined the group and these events were hosted by the four dairy extension services. Until 2003 when the Grand River Conference Center opened in Dubuque, the conferences operated in alternating years as the Four-State Applied Nutrition & Management Conference in Lacrosse, WI in the odd years and as the Professional Dairy Management Seminar held in Dubuque, IA in the even years. In addition, Randy was a valued speaker every year.
Randy is recognized worldwide for his commitment to improving corn silage utilization by dairy cattle. His research program focused on applied nutrition of lactating dairy cows with the major emphasis in research being corn silage and starch utilization, nutritional effects on reproduction and B-Vitamin nutrition. In his extension program, Randy focused on forage, fiber and starch utilization, transition cow feeding and management, and nutritional effects on metabolic disorders with a focus on subacute rumen acidosis and displaced abomasum.
A few major career outcomes include: improved corn silage hybrid evaluation, silage maturity and moisture content at harvest, corn silage kernel processing and improvements, optimizing forage length of chop guidelines, reducing phosphorus feeding to lactating dairy cows, better understanding starch in dairy cattle diets, the use of fecal starch as a dairy farm diagnostic tool, supplementing the B-Vitamin Biotin to dairy cows, and using rumen-protected methionine in dairy cattle diets to improve performance.
