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Dublin, VA | My wife does most of our herd health and has been checking blood levels of BHB. It is s precursor of ketones and is supposed to be more accurate and a urine testing with keto strips. It will show less false positives when a cow becomes more energy balanced also. She checks them about 7-10 DIM and the meter is just a Precision extra for people but you need a special model for ketone testing. The test strips are about $25 per 10 and she had developed a range of results for treatment. IE low nothing .. med polypropylene glycol ... high drench with aas and further evaluation. I think this pays off to check them before they become too energy deficient.
Now back to your question. If you are trying to track down a problem, it might be worth testing while figuring it out. But if everything else (nutrition, environment, ect) are good, I'm not sure if it would be worth it. But if your like us it takes a lot of hard work to make things flow well in older facilities. Some one once told me "great management can overcome poor facilities but great facilities can't overcome poor management"
Scott | |
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blood testing fresh cows
