At the end of the school year last year, Tucker and Cassidy pulled me into an aisle during our weekly Theisen’s trip. “Mommy, we want a drone,” Tucker said. “I have tons of money in my savings account. Can we get it?”

Taking risks out of federal milk marketing order (FMMO) Class I (fluid) milk marketing could benefit processors and farmers, and stem the tide of declining fluid milk sales, according to John Newton, Market Intelligence director with the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF).

Change is never easy, and the shift from milking in a parlor to robotic milking is anything but simple, but for Dan Barnes of Barnes Black and White Farm in Shoreham, Vermont, the addition of robotic milking to his dairy operation has come with big rewards.

Cold temperatures are here and winter is quickly approaching. As the temperatures drop, calf barns are closed up and the ventilation rates are turned down. As an industry we do this reflexively, but is it what's best for the calves?

Most grazing school programs focus on measuring, monitoring and managing the forage produced above the soil surface. But the Advanced Grazing School program put on by the University of Georgia (UGA) Extension taught the forage growers in attendance to dig deeper.

When I meet readers in person, they often ask me: “What are you seeing out there? What’s new?” One of the things I’m seeing frequently is an emphasis on training and employee development.

As an older Nevada gentleman thumbed through a dusty stack of faded photographs from yesteryears, he asked me what I noticed about the photos. “Is it the lack of fences in the backgrounds?” “Nope.”

Most Progressive Cattleman readers attend livestock production sales in both the spring and the fall.

We wax poetic about dairy farming – it’s among the most iconic images of life in North America. But let’s not kid ourselves: it is a business. Complex. Unlike other businesses, it’s a 24-hour-a-day exercise in precision and intelligence. Technology solutions have become commonplace to help identify and control those variables, but the “intelligence” from these solutions is often not able to drive a corresponding reaction until hours or days later. And the person collecting the data often has to interpret the data on their own by comparing numerous different spreadsheets.