The current issue of Progressive Dairyman contains recaps of several prominent dairy reform plans. The issue should be in mailboxes very soon. (My copy arrived in the mail today.) This morning we received the following comment/question from David Brand in Waterloo, Indiana, through Twitter regarding all of the dairy reform plans and our current poll question. BrandFarms:@PDmag No dairy reform plan allows for already existing internal herd growth. We have 200+ hfrs < a yr old from R own cows. What do we do?

Holstein Association USA is excited to honor 10 breeders who have qualified for the 2010 Herd of Excellence recognition.

Nutritionist Deb Wilks has been formulating “well-balanced, high-forage, healthy rations” for her clients in Washington for the past nine years. While other dairies struggled last year to make the right changes, some of them drastic, to their rations in order to account for lower milk prices, Wilks advised Bartelheimer Brothers Dairy, a 900-cow dairy and one of her 30 clients, to stick with ingredients that provide the best income over feed cost.

This article was #4 in PDmag's Top 5 most-well read New Technology articles in 2010. Summary: Ron Fritsch designed the Push Away Grapple to penetrate feed in silage bags and pull away with a full load. An adjustable hydraulic valve allows the grapple to “push away” from the feed with 12 tons of force. When the grapple cylinders reach the end of their stroke, another set of cylinders automatically push against the pile, separating the feed in the bucket from the pile. A bucket equipped with this grapple can load in half the time, twice as much feed as a bucket alone, Fritsch says. Tests show it can grab a full bucket of haylage in less than 10 seconds from a silage bag. Because this article was so popular, we asked Fritsch some follow-up questions:

Are you doing the “little things” at your dairy to take your bulk tank from 70 to 80, 80 to 90, or 90 to 95 pounds of high-quality milk per cow per day? Cows and their environment Milk quality starts with providing a clean, dry, comfortable environment. When was the last time you did a cow comfort audit? When was the last time you stopped, looked and listened to your cows in their resting place? While spending time watching and listening to your cows get up in the stalls, do we see cows standing idle (standing with all four feet in the stall)? Do we see cows “perching” (two feet in the stall and two feet in the alley) or cows lying diagonally in the stall? A cow comfort audit should include an assessment of the facility for meeting the behavioral and safety needs of the cow, including signs of injury, lameness or behavioral abnormalities.

Milking equipment cleanliness and proper functionality play a big role in achieving peak milk quality. Often when producers attempt to correct problems related to high standard plate count (SPC) or protein, fat and mineral buildup in their pipeline and inflations, they find a variety of issues to blame. Such was the case with a Progressive Dairyman reader who wrote to us in search of answers.

Barbara Martin, aka Dairy Goddess, is a dairy producer in Lemoore, California. She has been promoting the dairy industry’s culture through her blog, http://dairygoddess.wordpress.com, and through Facebook and Twitter. We asked her what five things make her most effective when she is trying to spread the word through social media.