The members of Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin (PDPW) elected one new individual to the board of directors and re-elected two individuals to the board. Linda White, Reedsburg, Wisconsin, was elected to a three-year term on the board while Walter Meinholz, DeForest, Wisconsin, and Keith York, Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, were re-elected to their second three-year term.

Kubota introduces the new gas-powered RTV400Ci utility vehicle that features the agility and reliability of a mid-sized utility vehicle, but is compact enough to fit in the bed of a full-size, long-bed pickup truck. At 54.7 inches wide and 72 inches tall, the new four-wheel drive RTV400Ci gets the job done with its fuel-injected six horsepower, air-cooled, single-cylinder gas engine.

This article was #2 of the Top 25 most well-read articles on www.progressivedairy.com in 2012. to jump to the article. It was published in the March 30, 2012 Extra e-newsletter. Click here for the full list of the Top 25. This article was quite a learning experience for the PD staff. In addition to plenty of pageviews, the article received three online comments and even spurred some Twitter discussion:

ITW Agricultural Solutions announces a new product with the potential to revolutionize the way dairy cattle are identified in North America. The ITW DairyCUFF, a radio frequency ID (RFID) device, is labor efficient – allowing for reading from the back end of the cow where all work is performed – and the only method of ID that is animal friendly. Traditional ID tags, attached to the ear of the cattle, require a puncture wound to the animal, leaving her open to infection. In addition, ear tags are not visually strategic from the perspective of where most of the work on the cow is done. The maximum range for reading an RFID chip is only 24 inches. So with an operator working at the rear of a cow, ear tags are not visible by eye nor can they be read by a hand-held reader.