Hello and Happy New Year’s from southwestern Virginia! I am Lance Phillips, and I’m pleased to be sharing some of my favorite old tractors and haying equipment through this column. I’ve been a pharmacist for almost nine years for a local grocery store chain that serves parts of four states in our area, and I do a little farming when time allows.

After a long season of making hay, preparing your hay and forage equipment for winter storage can seem to be a tedious and even needless chore. After all, what could possibly happen to a round baler or trailed mower as it hibernates in your machine shed?

The fall of 2016 was an extraordinary season in the stretch of country in south-central Idaho that I call home. After a dry summer, where we saw nary a drop of rain from the first of June through September, the heavens opened and we got nearly a year’s worth of moisture in the months of October and November.

During these short and frigid days, producers should think about winter management for optimal udder health. By now a plan should be in place, but revisiting best practices from time to time is always a good idea. The consequences of freezing weather to cows can be devastating and, in the case of Staphylococcus aureus infections, potentially last throughout the rest of the year.

This month’s VAS DC305 tip is on parlor performance. Using the parlor performance reports in DC305 helps you take advantage of many of the benefits of daily milk meters plus look for cows that fail to produce the expected amount of milk.

Beginning in January, representatives of the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) will visit dairy farms across the nation, as the agency begins collecting data for the final phase of the 2016 Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS).

The Douthit families of St. Francis, Kansas, represented by Douthit Herefords and 4V Ranch Douthit Herefords, will be recognized in January as the 2017 Friend of the National Western by the Red Meat Club of Denver. A perennial fixture as yard exhibitors, 2017 will mark the families’ 74th year exhibiting purebred Hereford cattle at the National Western.

How to manage heifers that don’t mother calves Sometimes a heifer is indifferent toward her newborn calf.

Regardless of the affiliated production phase, cattlemen nationwide will feel the financial stress of low cattle markets. 

The 2016 corn crop was record-breaking in many regions, phenomenal, in fact. However, that yield came with a price: mold growth and associated mycotoxins.