Wisconsin dairyman Ted Johnson arrived for the routine exam his doctor recommended at age 50 more worried about his cholesterol levels than the results of a different routine test. “In my family, if you made it to age 59 and didn’t have a heart attack, you were probably going to live until you were 85 or 90,” says Johnson, owner of Horse Creek Holsteins with his wife Gretchen, in Star Prairie, Wisconsin. “This was a little different because cancer was involved.”

Until now the U.S. has been mostly absent in the world’s largest dairy export market – whole milk powder. But that is soon to change. By next year, the U.S. will have the capacity to produce more than three times as much whole milk powder as it exported just a year ago. That prospect has at least one industry analyst calling it a “game changer” for the U.S. dairy industry.

On the recent Innovation Dairy Tour, GEA Farm Technologies showed just how cutting-edge the technology available to today’s producers is. Dairy producers from across the country witnessed a range of high-tech equipment ranging from tools for calf management to the latest in parlor equipment.

Editor's Note: This is the first of two articles on the Precision Dairy Technology Forum hosted by Penn State University. Click here to read the second article. “When you're making a transition, have a plan. Don't just have a five-minute conversation in the yard about how to make the transition. Have a real plan,” said Paul Berdell of Robotic Milking Integration Solutions. Berdell is a consultant helping dairy producers transition to robotic milking and has more than a decade of experience with robots.

This article was #20 of the Top 25 most well-read articles on www.progressivedairy.com in 2014. It was published in the Nov. 1, 2013 Extra e-newsletter and April 1, 2014 print issue. LED lights have been used for decades, but more recently, new designs are making them suitable to light the way in place of incandescent, fluorescent and high-intensity-discharge lamps. The greatest advantages of LED lighting are the extended life span that reaches far beyond that of incandescent bulbs and better energy efficiency.

Dairy producers, nutritionists and veterinarians now have free access to an online tool that calculates the combined intake of water and feed minerals as compared to NRC requirements. Vi-Cor Dairy Division Vice President Charlie Elrod, Ph.D., has created this web-based water quality evaluation tool that takes dairy rations one step further by accounting for minerals present in the water that cows are consuming.