If there was one job I truly despised as a kid growing up on a dairy farm, it was helping bed the calf barn, which housed our calves from 3 months of age to around 500 pounds. I just never found a way...
Mastitis threatens your young ladies – and your bottom line – long before they reach the milking parlor. Heifer mastitis is real, it is costly, and dairy scientists say it is more common than...
Prevent problems before they cause early culling. Mike Hutjens presented "Feeding cows for transition success" during the January Hoard's Dairyman webinar. He shared 10 Key Performance Indicators (KPI)....
As a Holstein steer gets bigger, its ADG (average daily gain) and feed efficiency go down. However, they left out the facts that, with a proper implant and high energy, no forage feeding program, you can...
by Abby Bauer, Associate Editor Farms with high milk production do many things right, but a lot of it comes down to the four feet a cow walks on. "A sore foot impacts everything she does," said University...
USDA announced this morning that over 23,000 dairy producers signed up for the farm bill's new Margin Protection Program for Dairy or MPP-Dairy. That represents a brisk sign-up given that the nation's...
Hoard's Dairyman Webinar Archives January 12, 2015: "Feeding cows for transition success" presented by Mike Hutjens, University of Illinois "Feeding cows for transition success" was presented by Mike Hutjens,...
Handy Hint: January 10, 2015 A way to better track colostrum After collecting colostrum from fresh cows at Caroncrest Farms in Caronport, Saskatchewan, Canada, each container is given a tracking tag. The...
"One of the most important events on a dairy is calving," said Mark Thomas, D.V.M., a New York veterinarian and consultant with Dairy Health and Management Services, LLC
Coffee-making guru Starbucks is kicking off the new year with newly updated animal-friendly welfare practices. The restaurant chain is most well known for its caffeinated beverages, but an array of pastries,...
The board of directors of California's largest dairy producer lobbying and advocacy organization has dismissed its Chief Executive Officer. The surprise move on December 19 by Western United Dairymen (WUD),...
Print or digital, it's the same contest . . . with the same cows . . . and the same judges. The only difference . . . You can view the five classes and enter electronically. For 85 years the Hoard's Dairyman...
Up, up and up. That's been the trend for U.S. beef prices following market conditions that have seen the nation's beef herd dwindle to a 62-year low. That event was spurred by a long run of high feed prices...
Continued drought in California produced a host of takeaway messages at the 2014 Alfalfa, Forage and Grains Symposium, December 10-12 in Long Beach, Calif., including: Huge improvements in alfalfa irrigation...
Coping with last year's extreme temperatures wasn't easy. In our December issue, we caught up with four dairy producers from among North America's coldest dairy regions to see how they kept their farms...
Today's dairy producers use the lactation curve to schedule milk harvest from a cow. Her milk production level dictates ration changes, housing group and may push up or move back her dry-off date
"We have a tendency to have a disastrous year in agriculture every 19 years, on average," noted Elwynn Taylor, an agricultural meteorologist with Iowa State University. Weather can make or break in agriculture....
The combination of more cows, more milk and lower international product prices could place downward pressure on U.S. milk prices. However, lower feed costs should buffer margins on producing milk. by Scott...
Global warming or not, the world's climate is changing. In the United States, greater variability in precipitation patterns, more pronounced differences in weather between regions, and rising average temperatures...
