We always have shoe booties (shoe covers) for visitors at the entrance door of our barn for biosecurity reasons. We made a wooden box that is 2 feet long, 1-foot wide, and 1-foot deep

One thing my husband, Duane, and I have noticed over the years is the significant impact of a state university. We especially see it when there is a group of farmers gathered

Canada and Japan largely stand alone with supply control systems governing, and at times protecting, their respective dairy industries. Realizing supply controls hinder both internal and external comp

When President Biden tapped former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State John Kerry as the United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the newly elected President issued a clear signal that mi

Dairy product sales, both at home and abroad, have changed more in the past 12 months than in any previous five- or 10-year time frame

I routinely paint measurements on forage and feed bags and piles to track disappearance of feeds and help monitor forage inventories

If anything good has come from 2020, it is that essential workers finally had a spotlight shined on them

Many of us pride ourselves in owning and operating multigenerational businesses

In 2019, nearly 11 billion pounds of fluid milk, 683 million pounds of cheese, and 662 million pounds of yogurt and other dairy foods moved through federal food assistance programs

Maintaining adequate financial liquidity has become a greater issue for dairy producers in recent years because of the more intense volatility of both earnings and cash flow

To move the newborn calves to the calf barn, I built this wagon. I used an old wagon and welded four corner posts to it

Soon after Duane and I started our farming career, we had a great opportunity to take a financial class that was organized through our church

There are about 100 organisms that can cause infections in the udders of dairy cows. Selecting the best path of management for an individual case of mastitis starts with knowing what type of bacteria

Coming out of graduate school over a decade ago, I had sound academic training from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I needed a few years of experience in the fields and agriculture industry to begin...

So many of us have overflowing work plates, and we seldom stop to consider the value of the product we are producing for consumers. The simple answer is that beverage milk is among the biggest bargains

We often fail to take the time to fully appreciate the most important crop raised on our farms. It isn’t corn, cotton, or even cows . . . it’s children. As it turns out, those children don’t...

often, we do the same thing time and time again out of habit. We can get comfortable with familiar treatments and be reluctant to change, or perhaps we don’t even assess how well they are working

About this time last year, I had the notion that if I just made it to 2020, life would be so much better. I was anxious to turn the page and put 2019 behind us

We buy calf pellets in bags and transfer the pellets into 32 gallon garbage barrels for storage. Each barrel easily holds 100 pounds of pellets. The lid securely snaps on, keeping the pellets fresher

it was a beautiful fall day. Earlier that morning we had started covering the bunker silo first, and then a stack of corn silage, with plastic and tires

I am an open book. Or at least my life is an open book, or so I have been told. Through this column and in my blogs, followers get an open glimpse of my dairy farm life