Foot health impacts reproduction, production and early culling. Nigel Cook presented theHoard's Dairyman monthly webinar on Monday, May 13, 2013, entitled "No more lame excuses." Lameness prevalence has...
Cows will sacrifice feeding time in order to lie down when both resources are limited. There are a variety of reasons that can lead to overstocking in our freestalls. While it may be a short-term solution,...
Having a heifer enterprise won't make sense for every operation. Most dairies have three enterprises on-farm: cows, cropping and heifers. Within this subset, the cost of raising replacements also accounts...
My travels in Australia last month included a visit to a dairy farm and milk processing facility. One-hundred-twenty Guernsey cows grazed the pastured hills in Maleny, in the state of Queensland, Australia,...
Spreaders and other implements are beginning to hit fields across the country as we begin the 2013 cropping season. But have you taken the time to evaluate your nutrient recording keeping system lately?
Dairy cows struggle to maintain normal blood calcium levels at the start of each lactation. Colostrum and milk both use a large amount of calcium, and the cow must suddenly adjust for this rapid nutrient...
Few things can irritate a person like finding out they overpaid for a product or did not sell their own for its true value. In the April 8 Hoard's Dairyman "Reviewing forage and feed costs – What's...
In the past few years, it seems as if agricultural majors have received a great deal of flack. In 2011, The Daily Beast (an online news information site) listed "agriculture" as their third most useless...
The dairy industry is a global industry, and the U.S. is a key player. India actually produces more Energy Corrected Milk (ECM) than the U.S, but for countries that only count cows milk, U.S. is the top...
Ev Thomas of the William H. Miner Agricultural Research Institute shared his experience with growing forages, especially alfalfa, on the March 11 Hoard's Dairyman webinar, "ABCs of alfalfa harvest."
The weather changes every day, there's no way around it. But is it a trend? Factors outside meteorologists, hurricanes and snowstorms can be offered as proof. I'm giving up on "climate consistency." That's...
Milk Income Loss Contracts (MILC) were automatically extended through September 30, 2013, under the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. There is no need for producers to re-enroll in MILC
When all is said and done, the farm bill basically was extended for one year. That is because language to renew most of its old components was inserted into legislation passed on New Year's Day to avert...
A funny thing happened on the way to the new Chobani Greek Yogurt manufacturing plant that the company announced a year ago it would build in Twin Falls, Idaho. It got a LOT bigger
For some time, dairy producers and other industry specialists who closely follow genetic evaluations have agreed that productive life estimates - a measure of how long a cow lives - have been somewhat...
Technological advancements have streamlined many day-to-day tasks on farms. They enable us to keep better records, more accurately identify cattle and track production through a lactation
Compared with the most recent August genetic evaluations, and even last December for that matter, the dizzying pace of escalating breeding values has seemed to slow to a more traditional pace as the top...
What are children in schools being taught about agriculture? The number of teachers with agriculture backgrounds continues to decline. And, teaching about a topic that is not familiar to an instructor...
Utah veterinarian and dairy consultant Bob Corbett (pictured) doesn't look like a rabble-rouser, but he's a real militant when it comes to blowing up long-held ideas about feeding calves and heifers
A report last month from a major dairy lender confirmed what many producers already knew: the long era of mostly gradual ebbs and flows in U.S. milk prices and production costs is over
