Editor’s note: The following article is the first in a series of articles from the author after a recent trip to observe China’s dairy industry. Click here to read the second of the two part series Chinese milk quality: A question mark may be appropriate.

A new automated washer for ground-mounted solar panels will be available to California dairymen via service contract soon.

Danny Klinefelter has been leading the Executive Program for Agricultural Producers for the past 25 years and will share his insight on best management practices producers can and should adopt during the 2016 Pennsylvania Dairy Summit, which will be held Feb. 10-11 at the Penn State Conference Center in State College, Pennsylvania.

While the refractometer only started gaining popularity in the dairy industry in recent years, the technology itself dates back to 1869. It has been used since in chemistry and food sciences to analyze solutions and purity of substances. On today’s dairies, we use refractometers in three main ways:

How much progress have we really made? One of the more anticipated pieces of forthcoming data in the USDA’s National Animal Health Monitoring System’s 2014 dairy survey is information on the current use of analgesics and anesthetics at dehorning.

In 2008, the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (WVDL) validated a simple non-invasive technique to sample calves and cows for bovine respiratory disease (BRD).

Picture this: A cow is calving on a cold January night. After a few hours, a beautiful heifer calf is born. The calf has one job: to stay healthy. I have one job: to keep her that way.

Dairy farms historically raised pre-weaned calves in hutches or individual pens. This made feedings easier, allowed for individual monitoring and curbed disease outbreaks. As more farms transition to group housing, this traditional method is being challenged.

Nutrition of dairy heifers is often talked about as a whole without referring to the age and growth stage of the heifer. Even though there is a lot of focus placed on feeding milk-fed calves, little research information is available regarding the best strategies for feeding post-weaned dairy heifers.

Mixing milk replacers for winter feeding of dairy calves The total nutrients consumed by pre-weaned calves affects their average daily gain (ADG). What is even more intriguing is some evidence that the calf’s ADG before weaning impacts its first-lactation milk yield.