1. Approach financial tough times head-on With ongoing struggles in our country’s economy, the livestock industry faces the continuing threat of tough times ahead. Now is the time to take charge of your operation’s financial success and learn how to thrive in today’s harsh economic climate. For more information on taking charge of your organization’s financial future in our current economy, go to http://www.extension.iastate.edu/DisasterRecovery/livestockconcerns.htm

Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley interviews CWT management staff — Jim Tillison, Chief Operating Officer of Cooperatives Working Together, and Chris Galen, Vice President of Communications of National Milk Producers Federation — about the program's shift toward funding export assistance instead of herd retirements. Q. How and why did CWT first start an export assistance program? A. GALEN: You have to go back to 2003 when CWT was first created to answer this question. There were actually three different elements to CWT in its first year. One of the three, which lasted only a year and was dropped, was paying producers for reducing their milk output, but that didn’t prove to be cost-effective or easy to manage. What we ended up with was a two-sided coin –one being the herd retirement program and the other being the export assistance program. And the reason that we had the export program was, and still is, because it has a more immediate impact than the herd retirement program.

The late Ed Klessig and his wife, Margaret, ran a conventional dairy farm for decades, just as three generations of his family had done before on the same piece of land in eastern Wisconsin. In 1989, at the urging of their two sons and son-in-law, they made the switch to rotational grazing and let their cows out of the barn.

The decision to use pasture as a major source of nutrients for milking cows must be accompanied by a strong commitment to properly managing the pasture. Determining soil fertility status, choosing a fertilization program, selecting appropriate forage species and controlling grazing are important elements of a pasture management program.

Because state governments are hard-pressed for revenue, state tax authorities are getting more aggressive in audits, and this has an impact on the horse and ranching industries. In a new case, the Minnesota Tax Court ruled against the taxpayers who operated a horse and cattle ranch [Molnar v. Commissioner of Revenue, Docket No. 8039-R].

Each calving season brings a special set of challenges for cow-calf producers. However, the primary goal remains the same every year – get as many calves as possible on the ground and off to a healthy start. One obstacle that virtually all producers will face at some point during calving season is scours.