I told you last month about our great sale. Well, one thing leads to another, and you never know what that will bring most of the time.

Plant density and yield of any stand of alfalfa will eventually decline, but rate of decline will be influenced by multiple factors including harvest or grazing management, irrigation practices, precipitation, soil fertility, soil type, weeds, insects, diseases and, in some instances, variety of alfalfa.

On September 28th, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued a memorandum concerning the transportation of baled hay and straw.

“How old are you, Grandpa?” asked Ashton, my ten-year-old grandson. I had just shared a newspaper article with Ashton’s grandmother, mother and father.

We all face our own addictions – to chocolate, horse training clinics or chewing tobacco.

In fifth grade, I thought Atari computers were cool. Typing my report in green letters on a black screen and printing to a tractor feed printer seemed so advanced. My teachers said they were a blessing for students; they complained about typewriters.

Editor’s note: California dairy producer Randy Mouw gave the following statement to the House of Representative’s Agriculture Committee regarding the labor needs of agriculture in the U.S. Mouw testified on behalf of Western United Dairymen, Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) and National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF).

Transformations go on around us every day on the dairy – heifers become cows, grass becomes hay and fall weather quickly turns to the bitter cold of winter. But, over the last year, we’ve seen even bigger changes in the dairy industry.

Editor’s note: Jim Tillison submitted the following response after Progressive Dairyman invited him to respond to an open letter from Gary Genske printed in the magazine in September (see Issue 9, page 17). Both the producer-led CWT committee and the staff of CWT have been charged with the responsibility of utilizing, as effectively as possible, the investment made by dairy farmers across America who produce nearly 70 percent of America’s milk. Both groups take this responsibility very seriously, and this “effectiveness” mandate is the main reason why CWT has always been a multi-faceted program.

Getting cows pregnant is one of the most important functions on a progressive dairy, perhaps the most important one. The degree of profitability is highly correlated with the velocity of pregnancy creation on a given dairy. This is mainly because a pregnancy is the source of a new lactation and a genetically superior heifer replacement.