Marilyn Hershey When we give water to the pens in our calf barn, we do this by filling a 30-gallon tub using a hose. On days when that is my task, I end up tucking the water hose into the tub, le

A fundamental rule in business is that “The customer is always right.” If customers’ needs are not being met, they will look elsewhere for goods or services

I have a handy hint every person is going to love. It involves keeping your vehicle clean when transporting animals, feed, or other supplies

A few days ago I was feeling overwhelmed with an endless workload facing me and a dirty house screaming at me

The bills were pouring in. From the hospital, I received a bill for over $92,000, the anesthesiologist charged $7,000, radiology came next and was almost that high

Determining a cow’s due date is an imprecise science. We can predict the date for most cows within a day or two, but the sex of the calf, season of year, and geographic region all play a role

Change appears to come slow or seems not even to exist in the business of milking cows at times

We made this bucket carrier to easily transport our calf feeding pails to our calf hutches. The carrier holds 24, 2-gallon pails and six, 5-gallon pails. It can also hold 18 bottles between the pails

The first colostrum feeding not only helps calves establish passive immunity, it also populates the intestinal tract with bacteria needed for digestion

Starch leads a storied life on the modern dairy farm. It begins in the cornfields where sunlight converts water and carbon dioxide to sugars, and these sugars are stored as starch in the grain

A year ago, the combined milk output in the key exporting regions — Argentina, Brazil, the European Union (EU), Oceania, and the United States — trailed the prior year

Marilyn Hershey I was told several times in my youth to “dream big.” I do not remember having a ton of aspirations, but I know that one of my childhood dreams came true

We came up with a new way to clean water tanks. We put an old propane tank on a buggy to hold the water. We attached a used surge vacuum pump that is run by a Honda motor. The pump builds up vacuum in

Karen Bohnert My now second grade son, Jacob, came home last year with homework — for his mom! I was asked to write one short story to describe Jacob. Where do I even begin?

Katie grinstead founded the Fond du Lac County Fair Ag Birthing Center in 2014, which draws an annual crowd of 20,000 attendees.The majority of today’s food conversations are among consumers who...

Many changes we make to dairy cows through genetic selection are easy to see or quantify. Our cows are much taller, thinner, and have far better udders than cows from past eras. We’ve also doubled...

Marilyn HersheyDuane’s father stops by the farm several times a week, just to check up on what we are doing that day and to see if there is anything new happening

In 2000, the first pair of milking robots, known to bureaucrats as Automated Milking Systems (AMS), began milking cows on a commercial dairy farm in the U.S. But don’t tell the Food and Drug A

It all began with a thoughtful phone call by an Ohio dairyman who wanted to learn more about his milk check

When dairyman Hank Choate saw the “unavailable” number pop up on his cell phone screen late one Thursday afternoon in April, he assumed it was not a call he wanted to take

Some days, we have multiple fresh cows. Since we want all the calves to receive colostrum from their own dam, we needed an easy way for the calf feeder to know which milk came from what cow