Have you tipped any cows lately? Cow tipping has become quite the rage. Yes, I said cow tipping! If you type “cow tipping” into Google.com, you will find at least 200,000 different websites that deal directly with cow tipping. Unfortunately, after sifting through all 200,000 sites, I did not find one site that referred to cow tipping as a way to reward a cow for a job well done. I’m sure you’ve tipped a waitress for a job well done. Right? But are you rewarding your cows for a job well done?

Editor’s note: The following is the first of a three-part series of articles – “Estate and Farm Transition Planning for Agricultural Producers”

Observation 1: Two hours before milking, are less than 20 percent of your cows standing in their stalls?

Lameness is recognized as a problem in most dairy herds throughout the world. Producers and herd managers agree it is an ever-present challenge and that with modern dairy management practices, lameness rates continue to rise. A recent University of Minnesota study observed 5,626 cows housed in 50 freestall barns. The average lameness rate was 24.6 percent. Surprisingly, this rate averaged 3.1 times greater than estimated by the herd managers.

How would you feel if your doctor informed you he or she had a brand-new product, that when ingested or injected would relieve your arthritis. Then, to assuage your conscience, he or she assured you that it was never tested on animals.

As I turn the wall calendar over to January, the days left here in a war zone are on one page – a single page. I can, as often as I want, look up on the wall and visually see a day when I will likely leave Bagram Air Field (BAF), the day I will probably leave Kabul and the day I will arrive in East Lansing, then an hour later, in Alma, Michigan.

Enlightening the darkened corners If it weren’t for four hijacked planes and 19 heinous men, this issue’s theme probably wouldn’t be an annual discussion. We’d probably discuss biosecurity every two or three years. Before terrorists proved five years ago they were willing to massacre innocent people to voice their opinions, biosecurity was known under many different names, including risk management, disease control, visitor protocols, etc.

Anyone who is even remotely familiar with automobile racing knows that the pit crew is an important part of the racing team. No matter how good the driver, successes or failures in the pit area can have a significant impact on the outcome of the race. The crew is constantly making adjustments and operates as a team to accomplish all of the necessary tasks as efficiently as possible. Seconds or fractions of seconds count and may be the difference between winning or finishing second or worse.

Jerry Gonterman understands security. He installs and maintains security systems for school districts, Intermountain convenience stores and state liquor stores. In addition to protecting kids, gasoline and alcohol, Gonterman watches over milk tanks and parlors. “A dairyman’s worst fear is a hot tank of milk,” Gonterman says.

I recently chatted with Dr. Danelle Bickett-Weddle of the Center for Food Security and Public Health in Ames, Iowa. Bickett-Weddle helped develop a questionnaire for dairy producers to assess the biosecurity risks on their operations. Her current doctoral research is looking for correlations between risk management practices and production parameters. She hopes her current research will help dairy producers identify risk areas that, when improved, lead to increased profitability. The following is a portion of my interview with her.