Nearly all Wisconsin and Minnesota producers whose existing marketing contracts were terminated on May 1 have collectively breathed a sigh of relief: There’s a home for their milk, at least temporarily.

Midwestern U.S. milk marketing cooperative Family Dairies USA implemented a temporary “base” program, effective May 1, to help manage growing milk supplies.

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is seeking public comments regarding both the proposed California Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO), and procedures to be used if the proposal goes to a producer referendum.

With lower milk prices and tightening income margins, early spring provided more clouds than sunshine in the 2017 dairy picture.

The University of Kentucky team of graduate students is currently looking for herds willing to participate in a research study looking at eating time, rumination, activity and lying time in the prefresh and postfresh period.

The 36th National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments (NCIMS) is scheduled for May 12-17, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. At least one proposal calls for lowering the maximum allowable somatic cell count (SCC) in milk to 400,000 cells per milliliter (cells/mL).

With his confirmation coming more than three months after President Donald Trump was inaugurated, Sonny Perdue has a lot of catching up to do.

USDA’s monthly report estimated that March 2017 U.S. milk production was up 1.8 percent compared to the same month a year earlier, the smallest year-over-year increase since August 2016. But despite the slowdown, increasing cow numbers in most major dairy states would indicate dairy farmers started spring with both feet on the accelerator. It was winter weather-related problems in the West that reduced the overall speed of growth.

Forty-four Wisconsin dairy farms producing about 500,000 pounds of milk per day are still hunting for a market home for their milk, with their current market access closing on May 1, according to Ben Brancel, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP).

Editor's note: CEO Corners are editors' compilations of business news from top publications, which they have tailored for the dairy industry. Given current dairy labor shortages, many producers are looking to automation to decrease their labor needs. But the dairy industry isn’t the only industry that finds automation attractive. McKinsey & Company, a global research and consulting firm, just released its top 10 list of the most popular business articles for the first quarter of 2017. Guess what topped the list? Automation.