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It’s finally that time of year again ... trade show season. It seems that once everyone realized how slow the months of February and March are, every company and organization in the dairy industry started scheduling their meetings, seminars and conferences to fill in all the open dates. Now, it turns out that February and March are just as busy as the spring and fall.
Dairy farmers aren’t the only people struggling with tougher regulations these days.
Just ask your banker or commodities broker.
Better yet, allow the topic to come up naturally during a conversation.
In recent years, higher and more volatile feed prices have made it difficult for producers to predict their profitability by looking at milk price alone.
While the milk price trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has historically been a good indicator, it only shows part of the picture.
A farmer commented about how each year he is amazed how the seed plunked in the ground comes up in a beautiful carpet of green.
He recalled the day that his then-3-year-old son was digging in the dirt with his dad, and he “got it” that the seeds were sprouting to turn into a grain crop.
In January, a group of 11 farmer and farm worker organizations announced a new coalition, the Agricultural Workforce Coalition, to lobby for immigration reform in Congress.
Progressive Dairyman spoke with representatives for two members of the coalition – via phone with Ken Barbic, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist for Western Growers, and via news conference with Jerry Kozak, CEO of National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF); and Mike McCloskey, chairman of NMPF’s immigration task force. Their comments have been combined together in this Q&A format.
Lameness is a common on-farm reason for culling cows.
About 20 to 30 percent of cows in a herd are expected to become lame in any given lactation.
A cow that is lame may not immediately show symptoms but eventually lies down longer, eats less and consequently produces less milk.
Commingling, or mixing cattle from multiple sources, occurs every day in the U.S. at livestock auctions, through direct cattle purchases, at shows and fairs and through contract rearing.
In fact, almost 40 percent of dairy operations brought on new additions and commingled cattle in 2006, and about 70 percent of dairy heifer-raising operations commingled heifers or allowed nose-to-nose contact among heifers from multiple sources during 2010.
The drought of 2012 left most farms, in a large part of the county, short on forage inventory either because they harvested less tonnage or their forage supplier has less tons to sell.
Record-high replacement forage cost makes purchasing unpalatable or decreases already thin profit margins with higher feed cost.
This article was #21 of the Top 25 most well-read articles on www.progressivedairy.com in 2013. It was published in the Feb. 11, 2013 print issue.
Click here for the full list of the Top 25.
A common question when setting up a robotic milking facility is: “Which is best – free traffic or directed-cow traffic?” In this article, Jan Hulsen with Vetvice explains his preference towards a free-traffic system.
Even though the snow and ice may have mostly melted, we can’t forget that calves can experience cold stress at temperatures well above freezing and, therefore, will be susceptible to cold stress for months to come.
