Last month was a very special time for Dr. V. She was invited to give a conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, by afimilk®, the company that developed state-of-the-art technology that is used for telemetric monitoring of dairy cattle all around the world. The conference gathered 86 attendants from 37 countries — all five continents. Dr. V’s presentation was very well received, and started some interesting conversations. During the conference, she had the opportunity to connect with veterinarians, farmers and other people who are as enthusiastic about the system as she is. Great connections were established that will enable collaborations in the future with places as diverse as Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Australia and Russia.
During the conference, participants were invited to some sightseeing of the old town of Jaffa and Tel Aviv. Every day included delicacies typical from this country that revealed its multicultural background; lots of olives typical of Mediterranean countries, lots of types of cheese and fish, desserts and of course hummus, shawarma and falafel.
After three great days of conference, Dr. Alon Arazi, a veterinarian working with afimilk®, graciously hosted Dr. V through several days of visits to industry-related organizations. First was a visit to the Dairy Center of the Volcani Institute of Agricultural Research in Bet Dagan, dependent of the Israel Ministry of Agriculture. There, Dr. V had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Uzi Moallem and discuss some common interests in dairy cattle herd health. After this, it was off to visit the Koret School of Veterinary Medicine at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She met with the school Director, Prof. Shimon Harrus. He was very interested in learning about our program at the College of Veterinary Medicine at OSU. Multiple similarities were found: a similar class size that allows us to know the students personally and interact with them all through vet school, few students interested in working with food animals compared to those interested in working with companion animals, as well as logistic and economic limitations to allow students to interact with large animals (especially food animals).
Next was a visit with the epidemiologist group led by Dr. Nahum-Yehuda Shpigel, along with Dr. Eyal Klement and Dr. Michael van Straten, part-time epidemiologist and part-time clinical veterinarian. There was an interesting discussion about how veterinary medicine is provided to dairy cattle in Israel, and some of the diseases they are investigating in the unit. Some of the diseases are similar to those that all dairy cattle veterinarians in the world deal with: mastitis, metritis, and infectious diseases such as BVD and Johne’s disease. Other diseases are specific to Israel, like an infectious vaginitis that develops in first-lactation heifers and epizootic hemorrhagic disease.
Dr. V was then invited to experience some traditions of an Israeli kibbutz in Gadot over the Israeli weekend (Friday and Saturday). This is a small kibbutz of approximately 400 people that works similar to a co-op. Most rent the houses, but over time some kibbutz have allowed houses to be purchased. Most kibbutz are located in rural areas, so that they attract people from the city during the weekend. There is a common mess hall where people have breakfast and lunch. Visitors organize barbeques with multiple family members after spending the day touring surrounding areas such as the Jordan River and the Saar waterfalls, located in the beautiful Golan Heights.
They have their own petting zoo that is available to visit almost any time and has lots of guinea pigs, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, peacocks, goats and even donkeys. She had the opportunity to take part of the Saturday night Kaffee, where most of the kibbutz inhabitants sat outside the common mess hall after dinner in big groups and talked about the weekly happenings; obviously, there was coffee, hot chocolate and cake.
Visits during the following week included the headquarters of the afimilk® company, Kibbutz Afikim, by the Sea of Galilee, where Dr. V gave another presentation on how the system is being used at the OSU Dairy Research Center and preliminary research findings. Visiting researchers from Mexico, Brazil and Israel attended the conference and shared some of their findings, as well. Other visits took them to a couple of dairy farms that use the AfiMilk® system, including one where Dr. V was allowed to sit in at the annual post-audit conference for one of the farms performed by Dr. Oded Nir, consultant to Hachaklait Veterinary Sevrices, LTD and founder of their Herd Health program.
The name Hachaklait (pronounced HA-KLA-‘IT, and not an odd form of “hot chocolate”) is a nod to the word for agricultural union (hahaklai). It employs 50 veterinarians that take care of approximately 90% of the 110,000 dairy cows there are in Israel, along with some goat and sheep farms. These cows are distributed in 969 farms, at an average farm size of about 200 cows (some farms are in the 300-500 cow range and just 1% have more than 1000 cows). Most are family farms located in Moshavs (villages), and about 20% are located in Kibbutz (co-op), usually the larger ones. In truth, the veterinarians are employees of the farmers, as the service is owned by the farmers, who created it in the year 1919 as a way to give care to their animals. The farmers pay a monthly fee per female animal on the farm (all ages), which pays for all veterinary services, breeder association services and milk laboratory services. Veterinary services include scheduled herd health visits that occur 2-3 times per week depending on farm size, as well as emergency visits and herd health data collection and analysis. Breeder Association services include production data collection and analysis. National Service for Udder Health & Milk Quality laboratory services include culture of mastitic cows’ milk and bulk tank analyses. Data from all three organizations are uploaded to a central database that they all can access and integrate with each other’s results. This allows integrating analysis of herd health and genetic performance, which among other things has permitted Israel to be the world leader in dairy cattle production in spite of their warm weather (25,637 lbs of milk per cow, at 3.20% protein and 3.62% fat and 200K SCC).
More information about the Israeli dairy farms can be found at the Israel Dairy Board website, http://www.israeldairy.com/info/dairy-farming
Dr. V would like to thank everybody who made her visit in Israel such a great experience, especially Dr. Alon Arazi.
afimilk®
