Shade, ventilation and water are critical for them. Record heat across the West in recent weeks has driven home a sad and expensive reminder for some dairies: heat stress can kill calves. For those that...
Owning a farm is a dream for many young farmers, but it might not be a reality due to financing that is hard to obtain. Farming may be considered a young man's job in regards to physical demands, long...
High feed costs force heavier culling. Frazer Certified Public Accountants and Consultants, LLP prepare accounting records for dairy operations in seven western states – Washington, Oregon, California...
Mastitis occurs in individual cows. Our control programs are designed for the whole herd. "The ideal system for recording clinical mastitis will allow the practitioner to evaluate important cow factors...
Transition cows need more than just a separate pen during this time of weakened immune response. On dairy farms, we tend to group our animals in an attempt to offer more specialized care. For example,...
We aren't dealing with salmon or deer. It's much more difficult to get our cows pregnant. "If dairy cows were like salmon, it would be easy to get them bred. Salmon turn red before they ovulate. If dairy...
Overstocking boosts a cow's risk for health problems, low milk yield and poor reproductive performance. The majority of work exploring the consequences of overstocking has focused on the behavioral changes...
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...
