Even though it presents many challenges, including poor infrastructure, a harsh climate and low farm-gate prices, Mexico appears to be on the threshold of an agricultural revolution.

Growing up on Aghaloma Farms in Knox, Maine, Cheryl Carson never thought she’d stay on the family farm. After graduating high school, she left for college to pursue an education first as a vet tech – and later as a paralegal.

When Karagen Stone started working at Keene Dairy in Belfast, Maine, in sixth grade, she enjoyed it – but it wasn’t until the breeder showed up that she really became interested.

At World Dairy Expo in October, Marilyn Hershey, a dairy farmer from Pennsylvania, was selected as the 2017 Dairy Woman of the Year.

Have you ever stood by a large pile of steaming dairy manure and asked yourself: How much heat energy is contained in that manure? Can that heat be captured, or are there commercially viable technologies to capture that heat?

Driving 5 miles down the road may seem like a short trip, but when it comes to hauling manure, costs go up exponentially at the 5-mile mark and increase every additional mile.

Calf scours is one of the most important and costly calf health issues affecting dairy operations in North America. According to the USDA, scours, diarrhea and other digestive problems are responsible for more than half of all pre-weaned heifer calf deaths.

A strong heifer nutrition program is a multi-phase process geared toward optimizing animal growth and development. While there’s no one-size-fits-all program every farm or calf ranch must adopt, the most successful heifer raisers have a few things in common, including:

A fast time is crucial to winning a race. Newborn calf care is a lot like a race: The faster you get quality colostrum in calves, the sooner they’ll start to build immunity through antibodies known as immunoglobulins.

Current regulations, which went into effect in January 2017, require a prescription to feed calves certain antibiotics in milk replacer. Prior to the change in regulations, some calf growers fed certain antibiotics in milk replacer for the entire pre-weaning period.