Barns & Equipment

When you wake up in the morning, you have two jobs that must be done regardless of everything else – you need to get your cows milked, and you must get them fed. Everything else can be put on hold to ensure these two activities are completed.

Nathan Oakman from Deer Run Dairy in Adams, New York, has come up with a cost-effective solution for drying off and warming up baby calves in cold weather.

Good help is hard to find … and those words are true in just about any industry you can imagine. Whether you are looking for a farm mechanic or a high-school basketball referee, a qualified person who is skilled, punctual and affordable is an elusive creature indeed.

Dairy cows spend 12 to 14 hours a day lying down. Ensuring they have adequate space and comfort for lying leads to healthier, cleaner cows producing higher-quality milk. Dairy farmers can achieve this by focusing on goals related to cows, management and comfort:

We all know how expensive equipment is today. I often think back to the economic boom that was the 1970s in the dairy industry. One of my professors at Virginia Tech, the late William Etgen, called the ’70s the “Golden Age of Dairying,” and part of the outward signs of the truth of that term was the expansion of our equipment line on my home farm.

No one seems to think much these days about the role the milk filter plays in producing high-quality milk. It’s probably fair to say most farmers don’t think about it at all.