Imagine the header clinging to the rack on the back of a flat-bed, chasing a cow across the High Plains of Colorado with the hazer banging along beside him in a quarter-ton Ranger with a vet-box in the bed. Cowboy stories are about wrecks; horse wrecks, cow wrecks, dog wrecks, financial wrecks, Tyrannosaurus Wrex, and flat-bed, mad cow, Ranger-with-a-vet-box-in-the-bed wrecks! Rancher Tom had Dr. Stan-the-Man out to his place. Whilst there, they spotted a cow with a big lump on her jaw.

Herd health morning ... cows are lined up and the vet is putting on a palpation sleeve. In your hand, a clipboard with the list of bred cows to check ... and off you go down the alley. “1520, 41 days ... ”

Traditionally, corn has been the major energy source for dairy rations because of the high starch content. The starch provides energy needed for high milk production; however, when too much starch is added at the expense of forage, rumen pH decreases. When rumen pH falls, intake decreases, as does fiber digestion and milk fat concentration.

Most of us remember the medical emergency system commercials from the 1990s with the elderly lady calling out “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.” Would you ever receive these types of calls from within your freestall barns if your cows had some type of medical emergency system from which they could call you? Unfortunately, in many older freestall barns, these calls would probably be fairly frequent. Generally, cows prefer to lunge forward when rising from a resting position. Think about how a cow gets up when she is on pasture. Their behavior in freestalls should be similar to this.

Calving season means different things to different cattle producers. Some producers bring every heifer and cow to a calving shed. Others only bring in their heifers. Our ranch has enough winter ground that we are able to calve our cows outside. This has allowed calving to be relatively low-stress for us. We pasture breed our first-calf heifers to low birth weight bulls and check them periodically throughout the day during calving season. It works beautifully.

Recommended concentrations of dietary phosphorus (P) for lactating dairy cows have been reduced in recent years in order to reduce the excretion of P in manure. This reduction in manure P has resulted in less P spread on dairy farmland, thus reducing the amount of P moving with water to adjacent land and streams.

Say you were climbing Mount Everest with your co-ed bowling team. You cover the last hundred yards to the summit. It takes five hours. After everyone has touched the flag pole, they begin looking around and finally spot the official Tibetan Parks & Recreation A-One chemical toilet! “Whew!” says one of the climbers, “I never thought we’d get here!” as she raced down the well-worn path, shoving a sherpa out of her way! All of us know the feeling. At the county fair, tractor show, outdoor concert, rodeo, or construction worksite, it’s one of the first things we scout out when on location.

It’s New Year’s Day. Here is a story of entering the field, which all field scientists do. What we see is but a fraction of what is there. So here is a photo-essay of what I see and what I imagine. I am here at the National Agricultural Research Center. I have visited many such centers all over the world. But here, in a flood of blue and red colors, on inscribed rolls of paper, are the words of a mandate.

When you drive onto a farm yard, the golden rule is to always park so that you do not have to back up. If at all possible, you want to always drive forward. This is one of the first rules most companies will teach new employees that visit farms. Even before learning about products, margins and sales skills, employees are taught about safety. No company wants an employee to mistakenly back up over a favorite pet, or even worse, a small child.