OK, I’ll admit it … I’ve been listening to Christmas songs online since the weekend after Thanksgiving. What can I say? I’m a huge fan of Christmas music and all of the memories that come with it. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a lot of favorite Christmas songs. But lately the one that’s really stood out for me is “The Little Drummer Boy.”

It has been long said that the cure for high prices is high prices. This wisdom can generally be applied to about any market one looks at. When crude oil prices spiked to $147 per barrel in 2008, it was only a short time later that prices were back below $50 per barrel.

Recent trends across the U.S. suggest that while the number of dairies has been decreasing steadily, those remaining are increasing in size. Although this presents new challenges in relation to herd management, it also means new challenges in regards to human-resource management.

Jerry Kozak joined National Milk Producers Federation in 1997 as its CEO after previous work for the New Jersey Health Department, the Federal Food and Drug Administration and the International Dairy Foods Association. At the end of the year, he will retire and turn over leadership to incoming CEO Jim Mulhern. Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley interviewed Kozak about his decade-and-a-half tenure as leader of the Arlington, Virginia-based trade association.

In November, Jeremy Natzke of Wayside Dairy LLC in Wayside, Wisconsin, and Doug Block of Hunter Haven Farms, Inc. in Pearl City, Illinois, were panelists for a seminar titled “Feeding the 40,000-Pound Cow” at the PDPW Feed and Nutrition Conference. The two dairymen compared notes on how they have exceeded 90-pound-per-day averages and how they believe they will capture the next 10 pounds of milk.

The 2013 weather continued the forage woes of U.S. dairy producers. The late-March warm-up in the upper Midwest, followed by freezing rain and then a major cold snap in early April, led to winterkill of alfalfa and ryegrass across large sections of central Iowa, through southern Minnesota, central Wisconsin and into central Michigan.

The foundation of dairy cow nutrition is forage. Forage is the primary source of effective fiber in a cow’s diet and is essential for optimal rumen fermentation. Forage quality impacts feed intakes, cow health and, ultimately, milk production. In order for a forage be considered high-quality, it must be palatable and the fiber must be highly digestible.