The Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania and the Center for Dairy Excellence worked in conjunction to host the seventh Pennsylvania Dairy Summit February 6-7, 2013. The summit offered encouraging and inspirational workshops and presentations to dairy producers across the state. Keith Spicher, vice president of PDMP, welcomed visitors to the opening session and outlined a brief overview of the morning’s festivities.

Editor's note: Dr. Roy “Mike” Watkins passed away March 3, 2013. This is the last article he submitted for publication during a decades-long career. Hot, dry, drought conditions in the summer of 2012 set the tone for crops across the Corn Belt and beyond. Corn yields were significantly reduced as noted in the continual decline in USDA crop yield projections.

As the producer of a product you know is safer and less expensive than (and superior to) its closest competitors, a dairyman or woman must find it frustrating to lose market share to slick-marketed beverages, inferior dairy products and milk copycats.

The new Congress has brought with it a rather significant shift in political attitudes toward a comprehensive immigration reform package. Before the November elections, immigration was not on the radar screen. Targeted bills were receiving little attention, and comprehensive solutions were more or less dead on arrival. But in the wake of the President’s re-election, there were open discussions about the margins by which Hispanic voters supported Democrats. Going back to the election of 2000, President Bush received 31 percent of the Hispanic vote.

The other day, after addressing a large agricultural group in St. Cloud, Minnesota, a young producer stated that the livestock cycle is still alive and well, despite comments from other attendees to the contrary. I agree that cycles exist in livestock, as well as weather and economics. Many segments of agriculture have recently been in a supersized super cycle which extends to much of rural America.

Respiratory disease in calves continues to be an issue dairy producers across the country are dealing with. According to the National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS) Dairy 2007 study, respiratory disease was the second leading cause of death in unweaned heifers and the single-largest cause of weaned heifer deaths. And, more often than not, poor ventilation is the root cause of the respiratory issue.

The following information was presented at the National Mastitis Council Annual Meeting in January 2013. Click here to visit NMC online. To assert that dairy farming is a rapidly changing business in today’s world is an understatement. Not only is technology driving change on the farm at a never-before-seen pace, it is driving change with cooperatives, processors, retailers and consumers alike. None of us can afford to do business in the same manner we did in the past. This particularly applies to animal agriculture.

The milk quality premium has long been the standard in the U.S. dairy system. Producers are rewarded for producing milk with lower somatic cell counts with dollars that are over and above the flat price per hundredweight (cwt). This system has been around for a long time for good reason: It works.

When making the decision to use a modified-live vaccine (MLV) or a killed vaccine specifically for infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR) and bovine viral diarrhea (BVD), it’s important to balance risk with achieving the greatest benefit from a vaccination protocol.