2018 Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) coverage election period is delayed until Sept. 1. May milk prices and margins were steady, but should start to improve. Cull cow and organic milk prices listed. Find a summary of these and other news here.

I’ve heard it said that there are two kinds of people that grow up on a farm: those who can’t wait to leave and those who never leave.

Digest Highlights: Upstate Niagara to buy Kraft-Heinze cheese facility. California heat wave results in heavy cow losses. French companies agree to Stonyfield sale. Find a summary of these and other news here.

Corn and soybeans garnered most of the attention following the USDA’s June 30 Acreage and Grain Stocks reports, with little change forecast in hay acreage. Implications for feed prices are highly dependent on weather and crop yields.

It’s kind of an old hat to constantly dwell on getting the next 5 pounds of milk per cow. It’s easy to talk about, but how do you actually achieve it? Not very many people are brave enough to take you by the hand and show you exactly what it will take to get that next 5 pounds. That’s especially true if you are already making quite a bit of milk per cow.

On June 30 in Beijing, the U.S. Meat Export Federation (USMEF) participated in a media reception marking the return of U.S. beef to China.

Fly control in concentrated animal feeding operations such as dairies is a challenge, especially as the weather heats up and there is abundant moisture and organic matter available.

At a time when prices for inputs are uncertain and markets waiver significantly, there is one incredibly important way to increase the profitability of any cattle enterprise – by using genetic improvement.

Recently I was reading a novel set in Great Britain during the time of the Viking invasions. At one point, a peasant was trying to hoist his pregnant cow out of a mud bog. When the cow emerged, with a broken leg, the devastated peasant went into his hut, retrieved a knife and cut a live calf out of the cow. The loss of the cow – representative of his family’s worldly wealth – was bad enough, and the man would save the calf if at all possible.