Handy Hint: August 10, 2014 Makes great footing for cows I made this grooving bull float to create good traction on the concrete in our dry cow yard. I bought a 4-foot magnesium bull float for $90 and...
Flies become a nuisance in the summer, especially for our cattle. An unmanaged fly population can reduce milk production 10 to 30 percent and decreases feed efficiency
If one California is already too much for some people, would six be a nightmare? The idea of breaking the Golden State into several nuggets has been proposed hundreds of times since the 1850s, but has...
by Corey Geiger, Managing Editor "The future of dairy is data and managing that data." That insightful quote from Dan Bolin was just one of many thoughtful ideas shared by five young dairy producers at...
Before there was 4-H and FFA, there was the Hoard's Dairyman Juniors. In addition to launching the Young Dairyman page for farm youth in 1915, Hoard created the Juniors, which was the forerunner of the...
I have a response to two of the letters you received on cloned milk. 1) The letter writer opposed to clones tells us to trust him. "Reader Response: Disagree on milk from clones." Why should we? How is...
The Commercial Herd Award recognizes the top herd in the nation for Energy Corrected Milk. The herd must complete over 50 lactations during the year. Hoard's Dairyman Farm completed 147 records in 2013...
it may not be the leading cause of improved milk production, but behavioral research in Europe has shown that cows that listen to music produce more milk. While it remains a relatively unstudied field,...
The Class III futures market expects $18 prices in early 2015. May's Class III price announcement of $22.67 per hundredweight was just the start of what is likely to be more cuts. Announcement of the $1.74...
Cloned milk is very much different from the milk it is replacing, as reported in your July 7 Hoard's Dairyman Intel "Consumer Reports offers poor advice on milk." Trust me! (I know that deep down inside,...
by Corey Geiger, Managing Editor are predicting prices closer to the $4 mark . . . more on those predictions in a few paragraphs. In either case, dairy farm managers who have dealt with high commodity...
Irish dairy production has been at a standstill since the imposition of quotas in 1984. As April 2015 looms on the horizon, producers are quickly preparing for this production veil to lift
Dozens, if not hundreds, of variables make a single precise answer impossible for all farms, but there is one statement that applies to everyone: It was expensive. According to income and cost data for...
In Japan, not only are people enjoying a treat from Starbucks, some cows are, too. Starbucks purchases somewhere around 400 million pounds of coffee globally each year, according to Bloomberg Businessweek
Gone are the days where every youth at a dairy event resides on a farm. There was a time when nearly every youth showing at a fair, competing in dairy judging or competing in quiz bowl lived and worked...
In an ideal world, every calving would happen unassisted and result in a perfectly healthy, active calf. However, as all dairy producers know, that sometimes is not the case. "We can have a critical impact...
A third year of drought with no end in sight, household wells going dry, and suburban water shortages are turning public sentiment against farmers in the country's biggest agricultural state. Hot and dry...
For an organization that prides itself on science-based research, the Consumers Union and its widely read Consumer Reports and ShopSmart publications have gotten dairy wrong on a number of occasions over...
If robots are the next evolution of milking cows on a large scale, then the future is here already. Except it is happening slowly and not at all in the U.S. . . . yet
