Organizers have spent the past several months planning the first annual Gunnison Valley Dairy Days. They are inviting the public to "come have an 'udderly' amazing time in small town Gunnison, Utah." Dairy Days will take place May 31 through June 2 on the Gunnison Valley High School football fields. Events include an antique tractor show, petting zoo, cow milking games, softball and archery tournament, concert, dance and fireworks. Youth are invited to participate in a dairy cattle judging contest. A dairy ambassador – Miss Gunnison Valley Dairy Days – will be crowned and receive a $650 scholarship.

Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont business, will sell its soybean products by seed count per unit, rather than by weight. The change begins this fall for varieties sold throughout Canada and the U.S. for the 2013 planting season. The number of soybean seeds sold per unit by Pioneer will be 140,000.

This spring, cattle genetics organization Genex Cooperative, Inc., retired equity from 1988, 1989 and 1990 to member patrons throughout the contiguous U.S. “The cooperative’s board of directors, supported by producer delegates, authorized the retirement of this patronage originally issued for $4,798,178,” explains Larry Romuald, Genex treasurer. “The benefits are being distributed to our member-owners on the basis of the amount of business they conducted with the cooperative during each of those years.”

Multimin USA is sponsoring DocTalk with Dr. Dan Thomson as part of its effort to bring producers and veterinarians closer together to benefit future beef and dairy production. Thomson and his guests will discuss livestock management and current animal ag research every Monday on RFD-TV, 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. DocTalk topics include trichomoniasis in cattle, milk supply safety, injectable trace mineral pre-treatment of cattle, and breeding soundness exams for bulls.

Destination Imagination (DI), a non-profit, after school program where students work as teams to solve open-ended challenges, is having Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) provide milk daily for the 8,000 youth participants in DI's Global Finals. The event takes place on the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville, May 23-26. In addition to DFA, milk sponsors include Dairy MAX, Southeast United Dairy Industries Association, Inc., and Western Dairy Association.

Producers will soon have a way to contact custom manure applicators, said Dale Baird, working with the University of Illinois Extension Certified Livestock Manager program. “Extension is developing a new resource, the Illinois Custom Manure Applicators Directory. A significant amount of livestock manure from large-scale livestock operations is custom applied in Illinois.

Elanco Animal Health recently launched Dairy Source, which offers real-time market prices, industry news, local weather and product information. It can be downloaded for free on iPhone and Android devices. Merck Animal Health has released Dairy Market Central. The app features brief summaries of dairy commodity markets with more detailed information available by selecting the commodity.

The California Milk Advisory Board (CMAB), representing California’s dairy families, announced the award of more than $1.4 million in cash, books and school supply prizes to elementary schools in southern California as part of the Real Seal Appeal! sweepstakes drawing. Elementary schools in 10 southern California counties participated in the sweepstakes, which reached more than 42,000 teachers in 99 districts with information about healthy eating for students and families. Participants collected Real California Milk seals from milk and dairy products to enter the drawing.