In this episode, we hear from 22-year-old dairy farmer Anna Hinchley. Her desire to return to her family’s dairy in Cambridge, Wisconsin, after graduating prompted her parents to move forward with expanding the herd and upgrading to automated milking. Anna has been involved in every step of the barn design process. Hear about the key features of her robot barn here.

In this episode, we talk with dairywoman Melissa Traiser. She is the owner-operator of THF Jerseys, a 45-cow dairy in Somerset, Wisconsin. We talk about how COVID-19 has affected her and her farm. She tells us about an act of kindness from her milk hauler that was specifically meaningful to her and her local dairy community.  

This episode is with regular Progressive Dairy columnist Tim Moffett. Tim is a dairy-farmer comedian. You can find his humor in every issue of the magazine on the inside back cover. Tim has had some time on his hands due to COVID-19 and its prohibition on large gatherings. Thus, many of his scheduled performances have been canceled. He’s itching to get back on stage. During this episode, Tim talks about his upbringing on the farm and brought a few humorous clips from his live performances. He tells the back stories of those jokes. 

Canadian dairyman Ben Loewith milks 450 cows in Ontario, Canada. He’s about two hours west of Buffalo, New York, or just a bit southwest of Toronto between Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. Loewith’s cows are 100-plus-pound producers. 

Dairy Management Inc. CEO Tom Gallagher joins Editor Walt Cooley for a discussion about how the dairy checkoff has navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. Gallagher talks about where dairy promotion may go in the future, as well as the changing landscape for fluid milk processing and promotion. 

This episode’s guest is Dr. Tom Earleywine. He is the milk replacer director of nutritional services at Land O'Lakes. He joins Progressive Dairy Editor Walt Cooley to talk about weaning and how it’s changed over the last several years. 

Vir-Clar Farms near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin has elevated the accuracy of feed storage, mixing and delivery with an innovative feed center featuring an automated kitchen and on-site grain storage that saves them time and money. 

When prepartum cows are fed a negative DCAD diet, inducing a mild compensated metabolic acidosis, calcium status is improved, resulting in healthier, more productive cows. Recently, some nutritionist have been feeding even lower-DCAD diets (more anions) to acidify cows more deeply than the majority of published research. At these higher, more extreme levels of acidification, cows may walk a fine line between being OK and being overwhelmed by uncompensated metabolic acidosis. Progressive Dairy Editor Audrey Schmitz spoke with Tim Brown to hear more about DCAD myths and the optimum level for negative DCAD diets. 

Today’s episode provides summaries of three different articles we’ve published this past year on manure management. Listen in to find out how to improve nitrogen efficiency from farm to field, what can be done to get the most value from manure and which manure system will make a good addition to your farm.

Ray Bohacz of the Idle Chatter podcast and farmmachinerydigest.com joins Editor Walt Cooley to introduce himself to readers and share three tips for preventative maintenance that will help avoid machinery breakdowns. Bohacz has published more than 3,000 technical articles about machinery in his career. His columns recently began appearing regularly in Progressive Dairy magazine.