On occasion, growers ask for advice on forage seed mixtures. When growers are considering new alfalfa seedings, their questions focus on what other legume or grass species to add with alfalfa, and how...

There is growing global demand for grass-fed dairy products. Consumers are becoming more concerned about the origins of food, and grass-fed dairy and organic dairy provide alternative products for consumers

The history of preserving bovine semen goes back more than 75 years. If you are past retirement age, you’ll remember semen being packaged in 1 cc glass ampules

ThIs year’s 11th annual Dairy Cattle Reproduction Council (DCRC) award winners prove that constant improvement is a must

What do you consider a successful transition for a dairy cow? Is success measured by the absence of disease? A cow’s ability to ramp up milk production? Breeding back with relative ease?

Do you know how much lameness is costing your farm? Some of the expenses associated with lameness are obvious, like the cost of treatment

Heat stress poses significant problems for the lactating cow. The extra heat produced due to greater feed consumption and metabolism makes it difficult for a cow to maintain normal body temperature

Over the last few years, we have seen a number of farms that we work with start milking some or all of their herd four times a day (4x)

There is some good news and some not so good news when it comes to calf feeding. Let’s look at the good news first

A calf is born with a sterile rumen environment void of bacteria, protozoa, and fungi. The calf is first inoculated with microbes during the birthing process and in its new external environment

Most producers can recite how they successfully manage colostrum on their farms, yet accomplishing this protocol consistently can be a major challenge

Transition cow success has improved on many dairies in the last 20 years. Many dairy producers have effectively focused on improved cow comfort during the transition period

I’ve recently read Charles Dickens’ last novel, Our Mutual Friend, published in 1865. It opens with a section titled, “The cup and the lip.”

Fats are added to diets to raise energy density. During hot weather, they may be included in rations as a way to combat heat stress

Our industry is increasingly global on many levels, yet we often do not grasp what is happening (or what we could learn) outside of our driveway, state, or region

Weaning is the most important transition a calf has to go through before she enters the milking herd, and it is a nutritionally and socially stressful time

Tree bark and wood are robust analogies for the impact that lignin has within plant cell walls. Lignin is a structural component of plant cell walls, nested within both acid detergent (ADF) and neutral...

The prevalence of bovine leukemia virus (BLV) in U.S. dairy cattle was about 10 percent in the 1970s. Since then, that number has slowly climbed to approximately 45 percent of all dairy cattle infected

Unfortunately, Klebsiella mastitis has become more common in the U.S., and it can now be considered a widespread mastitis pathogen in the environment

in a previous column, I discussed a project that was developed to explore genetic diversity and to re-establish two lost Holstein paternal lineages