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Dairy farm Spriet: "My wife calls me a perfectionist... I see it differently: I just want as little misery as
possible!"

Customer Story,
Health
3 min

"Strong and highly productive cows, that is the goal"

About 5 years ago Davy took the step to start milking cows. It soon became clear that he had
mastered the trade. Shortly afterwards, he decided to build a new barn with a focus on cow comfort, equipped with 2 Lely robots and an automatic feeding system. He runs the business alone, with the help of his father, therefore labor is definitely a limiting factor. The focus here is clearly on milking cows with good roughage, strong resistance and as few problems as possible.

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Production on the rise, but...

Since Davy started milking, production has been on the rise... started at 25 kg milk, after a year the
30kg came quickly into sight. Once the new barn and all associated systems were put into service,
the cows quickly gave an average of 35kg, Davy advised : “The cows did well, but I had the feeling that in general there was too little resilience in my cows, which held back the real top production and caused just a little too much trouble”.
These results were also reflected in the milk control. 2020 became the first year to achieve an annual average BSK of 50.

 

 

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“With the summer approaching, I also thought this was the perfect time to test the product.”
Davy Spriet

Why OmniGen if the results were already on the rise?

“As I just said, I had the feeling that my cows were not yet performing to their full potential.
OmniGen actually crossed my path with the summer of 2021 in sight. I already worked with Phibro in advance to ensure that the dry period runs smoothly by using Animate anionic salts. During a followup visit, we discussed the features and benefits of using OmniGen was discussed, where the benefits to both pathogen resistance and heat stress matched the needs of my company. It is better to prevent than to cure, especially when you’re asking more and more from your cows.”

 

Can you briefly describe the results since you started OmniGen in the spring of 2021?

“Since the spring of '21, we have succeeded in continuing the growth of recent years. In other
words, the feeling that the cows were being inhibited is greatly reduced. I still sometimes have a cow with the afterbirth, or an unsightly udder infection, but the number has fallen dramatically and their resilience has clearly improved. Where I used to treat the majority of udder infections with
antibiotics, I see that I hardly needed antibiotics in the past year. The combination of OmniGen
together with alternative treatments has led to a reduction in udder tubes of almost 90% for me. In
other words, instead of 10 cows before, I now only treat 1 with antibiotics.”
Production has also increased further! Since the start with OmniGen in April ’21, the cows gave an
average of 36.6 kgm in the last 12 months with an average BSK of 55.1.

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WANT TO KNOW MORE?

Witness the OmniGen effect!

Request product information to discover to benefits for your farm.
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REQUEST MORE INFORMATION

What are your goals for the coming period?

I hope the cows can keep up with these results. The heifer group and 2nd lactation cows are doing
better year on year than the older cows, so there is definitely potential in the herd and in the next
generation. My wife will soon open a farm butchery. This makes work all the more a limiting factor,
so preventing problems and making work easy remains the focus here.

 

Another anecdote to close?

Well, we had some setbacks this fall. A pit of silage seemed to be contaminated with mycotoxins...
At first we were not sure what to do, some cows were completely destroyed and production also
dropped. Although, we did see the the cows recovering quickly and the litres came back pretty
quickly. Only then do you realize that strong, healthy and resilient cows are essential. This was of
course disproportionate, but I assume that there are constantly small factors that slow down the
cows, and that is exactly what I want to protect them against, or call it “insure against”.
Request a no-obligation on farm health assessment here or for more information on how OmniGen
can help your herd. Call us on 0800 1930244