Forage and feed costs may soon exceed 70 percent of the operational costs of your dairy. Considering the feed portion of a dairy’s operating budget was in the mid-40 to 50 percent range just two years ...
Bruce and Brad Scott of Scott Brothers Dairy located in San Jacinto, California, have big plans this fall. They are planning to reduce their energy bills, help the environment, decrease their carbon footprint ...
Years ago, Don Carlos Vargas ran his dairy like most everyone else in Costa Rica. He owned shares in a wholesale milk cooperative and accepted the price he was paid for milk and the occasional restrictions ...
Red Barn Family Farms in Wisconsin introduced a new brand of milk this spring that was the first of its kind. Since then, the company has been promoting a product that is labeled as “Farmer Certified rBGH ...
The Federal Milk Marketing Orders are a collective enterprise designed to work for the benefit of the whole, not a few. But in recent years, it is the few who are succeeding and, in the process, undermining ...
Editor’s note: This is the first in a two-part series of articles that discuss milk pricing. As most dairy producers are well aware, there are few agricultural commodity pricing systems that are more complex ...
The [CowSigns] program helps monitor key parameters more accurately by compiling data on specific management areas and comparing current data and trends to optimal values (input versus output metrics) ...
Throughout the world, there is abundant interest in sex-sorted semen. Unfortunately, the separation of X- and Y-chromosome-bearing sperm by flow cytometry (cell sorting) is an inefficient process as approximately ...
Dairy producers and industry professionals boarded buses July 10 and 11 to see first-hand the growth and innovation taking place in the booming I-29 corridor. The tour, put on by the Central Plains Dairy ...
Nutritionist Barry Visser likes to be proactive when discussing rising rations costs and increasing byproduct commodity costs with his clients. “I want to bring it up before the producer does,” Visser ...
Key points
- When evaluating cost-effective feed ingredients remember we are feeding two animals; first the rumen bugs and then the cow. Rumen-efficient use of starch, sugars and fiber to make volatile ...
Several years ago, I taught, “Writing your Life History” for Northland Pioneer College. It was a rich rewarding experience to help people search through the years of their lives trying to piece together ...
Ah, what a tangled web we weave in our search for market niches. What has caught my eye is the USDA-AG Marketing Services’ solicitation of comments regarding changing the requirements for livestock to ...
Modern dairy herd management practices have increased the frequency with which animals must be handled. Animals must be isolated and restrained for physical examination, vaccination, artificial insemination, ...
Amazing progress has been made in the nutrition and management of dairy cattle during the last 20 years. The average milk production for Holstein cows is now greater than 20,000 pounds. We now take an ...
There has been much made of the adaptation of machinery to handling cattle. Four-wheelers, jet boats, pickups, duallys, helicopters, ultra-lights and even motorcycles have encroached themselves into the ...
Dear editor,
I’m writing in regards to a column/article in the June 17 issue by Ladd Siebert titled: “Are we trimming our dairy cows correctly?” As you likely know, Zinpro has done extensive work both ...
When our fields are green, I enter them and search for myself. In 16 years of writing this column, I am often drawn to write about my field visits. And so I do again.
The cornfield is northwest of our ...
Created on 15 August 2008
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