A broken piece of equipment, a visit from a neighbor, or simply losing track of time while completing a single task can wreak havoc on your to-do list. Some days we leave the barn with what seems like...
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...
Over the years, nothing has repeatedly brought out the spirit of cooperation between dairy cooperatives like low milk prices and tough times. Adversarial attitudes arrive when times are good, but working...
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
On Friday June 15, the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding released its road map for operational and financial aspects of how U.S. genetic evaluations might be carried out once USDA takes a step back from...
In the brief period that the number of licensed U.S. dairies has been tracked (19 years), the trend is as frightening as it is obvious: the total gets smaller every year. That trend is a warning for every...
Do you enjoy money, knowledge or friends? This is not a multiple-choice question, as you can have all three through a prominent dairy charity. National Dairy Shrine is a 17,000-member nonprofit charity...
It took a ground swell of support in rural America to finally convince the Obama Administration's Department of Labor to withdraw its proposed rule further regulating children under the age of 16 who work...
Idaho and Oregon will become the leaders in U.S. raw milk quality in coming months, when maximum somatic cell count limits for farm milk shipments in those states drop to 400,000 and 500,000, respectively
How does $3 milk sound? Ridiculous of course, yet the effective buying power that U.S. dairy producers have had for over 20 years has been even less when Class III prices are adjusted for inflation back...
Big changes and much stricter rules are looking very likely. Enormous change appears to be coming in the way dairies and other livestock operations are accustomed to using pharmaceuticals on their animals,...
A number of dairy processors have implemented or reconfirmed delivery constraints. U.S. milk production is heading up, up, and up with milk flow growing 2.5, 3.4, and 4.3 percent nationally in December,...
We have some bonus coverage from our February 25 Round Table, "Forage and tillage practices that work for them." The dairy producers discuss more on controlling weeds and insects
After losing over 80,028 dairy farms since 1992, it appears the reductions in licensed dairy operations are moderating. In the last four years, losses have ranged from 1,651 to 2,195 with the watermark...
Slowly but surely, word is sinking in with consumers about a different and much less noble image of Humane Society of the United States. The result is a backlash that is hitting them where it hurts the...
I saw a story a several years ago about the America Needs Farmers campaign launched by the University of Iowa in 1985. At the time, Iowa was ranked number one in college football, beat number two Michigan...
In 2011 the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced it was working on a local emphasis program (LEP) for inspecting Wisconsin dairy farms
Twenty years ago, a room full of farmers talking about land prices wouldn't have surprised anyone. But what about a room full of investors? On November 15, we attended the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's...
For the first eight months of 2011, the average somatic cell count (SCC), for all months, has remained under 260,000. Traditionally, the highest SCC month is August. This year, August came in at 260,000
Dairy prices for October forecasted lower than September but stay above 2010 levels. Beef production remains strong. The milk production forecast for the remainder of 2011 has been raised. September production...
