In June 2014, Saputo was attacked. Someone started a petition on The world's platform for change. It had 130,000 signatures and encouraged people to stop buying Saputo products until the company did the right thing.

Growing and storing forage is something people have been doing since the beginning of agriculture. Many practices and beliefs have been passed from one generation to the next, leading to common misconceptions in the industry.

China has been the elephant in the dairy barn for the past 20 years. However, much of the reporting has been a manipulation of numbers and commentaries on reports generated at the governmental level. While statistics can tell part of a story and China’s population alone generates massive numbers, what’s the view from inside the country?

Editor’s note: The full version of this article is available in a downloadable ebook format.

Each year, many thousands of tons of forages – corn and hay crops – are harvested and put up into bunkers, silos and piles for silage. A crop of ensiled forage represents a sizable investment in time and money for dairy farms as it’s being stored for future use.

Editor’s note: This is the third part of a three-part series. Management practices related to cropping and feeding can be major factors affecting the animal performance to maintain a sustainable profit margin.

This and last year’s cool, wet springs added to the challenge of making high-quality forage. With higher moistures than desired, low sugar content and higher ash levels sometimes resulted in poor fermentation and the production of butyric acid. Butyric acid is a strong acid that overrides the production of the preferred lactic acid, which gives good fermented silage that well-preserved smell.

“Mycotoxin” is a general term used for secondary metabolites, which have been shown to have some associated toxicity issues and are produced quite naturally by some fungi (molds). Mycotoxin production is sometimes stimulated by certain stressors.

Corn silage kernel processors are referred to as “crackers” by many in South America, where less than one-third of dairies feed corn silage that has had the kernels processed. Kernel processing is much more popular in the U.S. because roughly ten years ago, researchers helped us understand what impact processed corn silage grain really had on rumen digestion in cattle.

Dairy farmers are facing a financial challenge as milk prices have dropped more than 40 percent since 2014. Future milk price increases may be several months away with excess milk production from the European Union, New Zealand and the United States, low oil prices limiting several countries from buying dairy products and Russia’s import ban.