Center for Animal Health and Productivity

Purpose: Visual analytics is a new format to present analytical problems commonly occuring on dairy herds.

• Economic Summary
• Heifer Number to Ensure Full Capacity
• Milk Debt evaluations

Introduction

David Galligan
University of Pennsylvania

As component pricing based on solids not fat and/or protein becomes more a standard in the industry, production of milk components, particularly protein, will receive more emphasis. In addtion, methods of measuring and reporting milk protein will also become more important. The average composition of milk from Holstein cows is presented in Table 1 (4,7).

What is Urea

Urea is a small organic molecule composed of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen. Urea is a common constituent of blood and other body fluids. Urea is formed from ammonia in the kidney and liver. Ammonia is produced by the breakdown of protein during tissue metabolism. Ammonia is very toxic. Urea is very non-toxic and can be at very high levels without causing any problems. If urea was not produced from ammonia we would very quickly become ill every time we ate a meal containing protein.