Robotic milking, automated calf feeding, daily body condition scoring, in-line sensors and monitors for just about every function of a dairy cow’s day and more were covered at Precision Dairy 2015.

Two years ago, I wrote an article about a challenge to the federal marketing order for raisins. Then, the Supreme Court held that raisin growers who had a portion of their crop seized for “reserve marketing” could challenge the legality of the regulations the USDA utilized to establish these reserve marketing pools.

Today, almost all packaged fluid milk, as well as many other dairy products sold to consumers, has the following or something similar printed on the product’s package: “This milk is produced from cows not treated with artificial growth hormone or BGH.”

For the U.S. dairy farmer, global food security may seem irrelevant or idealistic, but as 10 college interns are discovering this summer, this issue affects everyone, especially farmers.

Yeast-derived carbohydrates (YDCs) indirectly act through a number of mechanisms to alleviate production issues. YDCs block the entrance to the gut subway, preventing pathogens from boarding trains and traveling to destinations within the calf-cow.