You may have heard Kelly Clarkson sing, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." However, Julia Ridpath, of the National Animal Disease Center/ARS/USDA staff, reminded dairy producers that in the case...
On a decent number of dairy operations, migrant workers comprise a portion or the majority of the labor force. These are people we have come to depend on day to day to successfully run our dairies
You may be facing challenges with the availability and expense of common bedding sources such as sawdust or the management of sand bedding. In recent years recycled manure solids have become a more prevalent...
Use pictures to catch the eye and use your words to catch the mind To build trust, farmers know they must become a familiar face to their customers. From coffee shops to hay sales, farmers have used these...
Parmesan. Provolone. Feta. These words are as common as terms like tenderloin, peanut butter, and applesauce. However, if the European Union's trade negotiation team gets its way, these before-mentioned...
Economist Herbert Stein (1916-1999) had a keen wit and ability to sum up complex financial concepts in simple ways. A former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, he is best remembered...
If the milk prices didn't already tell you, you should know that there's a lot of milk being produced in the U.S. today. Year-over-year, January through April have averaged 767,000 pounds more per month...
A recent visit to the Chino, Calif., milk shed was a sad sight. What once was is no more, and what remains doesn't have much left. A visit to the Chino, Calif., dairy area this week found only fragments...
You shred bills, rarely give out credit card information, and have an anti-virus program installed on your computer. Your smartphone, though, can communicate more than you would like. If a smartphone is...
The jargon in our industry can overwhelm the ordinary urbanite. The words we choose when talking to our dairy neighbor at the feed mill are different than the vocabulary used to talk to the teacher at...
South Dakota State University student becomes the 24th Hoard's Dairyman Editorial Intern. For the past 24 years, the Hoard's Dairyman editorial team has looked forward to welcoming our editorial intern...
"Many retailers understand the science behind food production practices, but their customers do not," noted Charlie Arnot with the Center for Food Integrity (CFI), at the 2012 North American Strategy Conference...
Subsurface drainage often is called "tile drainage," but as practiced today, that's a misnomer since very few drainage installations in farm fields still are done with clay tiles. Modern drainage systems...
Growth doesn't stop in her second lactation. When facilities and space allow, most dairy farmers will separate their first-lactation cows from the cows in their second lactation or greater, recognizing...
These pdfs compliment an article, "Will robots make or break the bank?", by Larry Tranel, in our May 25, 2012 issue of Hoard's Dairyman on page 363. The Economics of Automatic Milking Systems The Economics...
It's going to happen! That was the attitude of senior staff from the House and Senate Agriculture at the Animal Agriculture Alliance's Stakeholders Summit in Arlington, Va. Anne Hazlett, chief counsel...
Did your herd's average somatic cell count drop a little in 2011? Chances are it did, according to USDA and the National Dairy Herd Improvement Association. The annual report by the Animal Improvement...
Within farm nutrient variation, estimates are needed to determine feed sampling and ration re-formulation schedules. by Hoard's Dairyman staff "Good ration formulation is a form of risk management. Diets...
