Across the country, milk processors and co-ops are calling for dairy farms to reduce the amount of milk they ship, in some cases by as much as 20% of their current volume.

It’s not out of the ordinary for milk production and components to vary by season; in fact, Dr. Kevin Harvatine believes it’s a natural response to seasonal changes.

It’s every dairy producer’s goal: Get more milk out of homegrown forages and spend less on purchased feeds. It sounds so easy but, in reality, getting more milk out of our homegrown forages is accomplished in many small steps rather than giant technological leaps.

Climbing a mountain is no easy task. It takes preparation, planning and hard work to reach the summit. And there’s added value in the rewarding trip back down.

As more dairy farms adopt electronic monitoring technologies, managers find sensor-driven data goes well beyond activity monitoring, rumination monitoring, health status and milk measurement.

With all the things going on around your dairy, have you ever thought about whether cows actually like being milked? How would you know if they were happy or unhappy with the milking process?

Advanced milking technology provides more data points than many dairies are able to use in their day-to-day routines and management decisions.

Of all the performance indicators you can monitor on the dairy, fresh cow performance ranks near the top, since the start of the lactation really determines the rest of the lactation.

Over the years I’ve had the privilege of working with and visiting a number of herds across the country that were producing 100 pounds of milk or more per cow per day. What are the secrets of these herds with a bulk tank average that mirrors high-group production levels for many herds?

“Doc, when you come to visit next week, I want to talk about what I can do to get my cows to produce 20 more pounds of milk per day by the year 2020,” said a dairyman. On the day the producer called, his cows averaged 104 pounds of milk in the tank.