What are the common problems with intensive dairy cattle farming

    [Zhifujing Network]: Traditional dairy cattle farming is mostly done by individual households, but this method results in low efficiency and cannot form effective competitiveness and self-protection capacity. Therefore, intensive dairy cattle farming is urgently needed.

    Nadamude, Secretary-General of the Inner Mongolia Dairy Association, had just finished a survey conducted in Inner Mongolia, covering 22 intensively managed pastures. In conversation, he did not hide his satisfaction with this survey.

    After the melamine incident, Inner Mongolia's dairy industry fell into decline, but the pastures were in a much better position. “The highest milk price was 3.5 yuan per kilogram, and the lowest was 3.2 yuan.” Yet the price received by free-range dairy farmers was only just over 2 yuan, and in the past few years the highest price for free-range raw milk was no more than 3 yuan per kilogram. The gap between the two is very obvious.

    Initially, to solve the difficult situation of dairy farmers, the government of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region issued documents several times, but with little effect. The initiative over whether milk prices were high or low remained in the hands of enterprises rather than dairy farmers. “There is no other way; it still depends on the strength of the dairy farmers.” Nadamude reached this conclusion. Relying solely on the level of corporate social responsibility and government regulation cannot guarantee the interests of dairy farmers. For dairy farmers, joining together through intensive farming, as reported by China Cattle Network, is the only path to stand up to enterprises.

    In Nadamude's survey, one pasture that controlled 80% of the local dairy cattle left a deep impression on him: “When enterprises come to the local area to collect milk, they have to go to him first, not the government.”

    Intensive farming can also bring about an improvement in raw milk quality. The large number of dairy cattle makes previously empty slogans such as unified epidemic prevention, unified feed, and animal welfare feasible. According to the "China Raw Milk Research Report" by Professor Li Shengli of the Sino-American Research Center and the College of Animal Science and Technology at China Agricultural University, the milk fat rate of raw milk produced by intensive cattle farms can reach 3.62%, while that of free-range households is only 3.29%; the milk protein rate of large-scale cattle pastures is 2.94%, while that of free-range households is 2.89%; and the gap in somatic cell count is even larger.

    Under large-scale pasture conditions, the problem of antibiotic-contaminated milk may also be readily solved.

    In free-range farming, if the several dozen jin of antibiotic-contaminated milk produced by one cow is thrown away, the profit from raising cattle will be greatly reduced. But on a large-scale pasture, the milk of thousands of cattle will absolutely not be allowed to be contaminated by the antibiotic-contaminated milk produced by one cow, because everyone understands such losses.

    In Inner Mongolia and even across the country, sheep farming currently has five types of intensive farming methods: standardized farming communities, dairy cooperatives, dairy farmer cooperatives, cattle boarding houses, and large-scale pastures.