Although some dairy producers have a tried and true method of pregnancy diagnosis on their dairies, new and emerging technologies are in the works to help improve efficiency in this area of the reproductive program. In the fall of 2012, milk-based pregnancy tests joined rectal palpation, transrectal ultrasonography and blood-based pregnancy tests as a tool to determine whether a cow is pregnant.

Concerns associated with inbreeding have recently received more airtime than usual due to genomics. Read on to find some of my answers to frequently asked producer questions about this topic.

If you ask most consumers what breeds of cows have horns, many disconnected from agriculture would respond that bulls have horns and cows don’t. This seems logical and hard to disprove because most dairy cows in milking form or in pictures have no horns. The practice of dehorning has been performed over many years to protect cows from injuring other cows and the farmers that care for them. Dehorning is a common practice on dairy farms. However, it is something farmers do not like to do, and even with a variety of different methods, none can claim a pain-free procedure.

Read the latest from several genetics companies and the changes to their genetic offerings and current lineups of dairy sires, following the release of the USDA dairy sire evaluations in December 2012. Visit each company’s websites for complete listings of their sire lineups. Select a link below to jump directly to a specific section: • • • • • • • • • • •

I’m passionate about agriculture and enjoy being around others who share the same enthusiasm.I believe it’s important to actively participate in agriculture organizations.

HOW WE MET: I met Mike on a flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was on his way to his nephew’s wedding there. Mike’s extended family owns a landscape business near the Hallmark Meat Packing plant that was the subject of an undercover video release in 2008 by HSUS. The video showed slaughterhouse workers mistreating culled dairy cows. Mike told me he knows animals are treated much better on-farm than the video depicted and that he doesn’t sympathize with the efforts of HSUS and others to convince consumers otherwise.

One of the New Product winners from the upcoming World Ag Expo in Tulare, California, was Hammer Works Manufacturing of Visalia, California. They’ve developed the Quick Release Battery Connector. According to the company’s website, the snap-on battery connectors are heavy-duty products equivalent to those designed for permanent connection.

Age: 45 Location: Elba, New York My dairy’s history: Oak Orchard Dairy/Norton Farms is a fifth-generation dairy farm located in western New York. It dates back to 1906 when my great-great grandfather, Charles Bloom, settled in Elba. The farm recently received a Century Farm designation from the New York State Agricultural Society.