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Last year, I visited a large, progressive dairy in Vermont with the “Agriculture and the Environment” class taught by Steve Kramer. Our host was very gracious and gave us a guided tour of the farm where we learned a lot about their operation and nutrient management.
HOW WE MET: I had a free pass to a gym called Charter Fitness, where a good friend of mine is a personal trainer. I bumped into Megan several times while working out at Charter Fitness that same day.
When I was leaving, I noticed she was right behind me. I turned around and sarcastically said, “Jeez, are you following me?” She laughed and said, “No, but it’s weird that we keep bumping into each other.”
Not long ago, I wrote an article that was perceived as a political ploy and an attack on the Catholic church. I was horrified when I read the critic’s message and realized how I had been so totally misunderstood.
Most equipment used in dairy production – including milking and feeding machines, tractors, skid loaders, tillers, bale choppers and even manure digesters – contains several hydraulic hose and fitting components.
While most pay little attention to the hoses of a hydraulic system until after a failure occurs, being proactive about proper safety and maintenance precautions can ultimately save dairy producers costly equipment downtime and the obvious effects – and legalities – of potentially lethal injection injuries.
Doug Maddox, a California dairy producer and national dairy leader, passed away December 19, 2011, at his office in Riverdale. Born on January 2, 1936, to Rufus and Annie Maddox in Hanford, Doug grew up on the family farm in Laton.
He and his wife, Matilda Vink, were married in 1955, and Doug graduated with a degree in dairy science from Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo in 1957.
At that time, Doug and Matilda, in partnership with Rufus and Annie, purchased a 500-acre ranch in Riverdale, and with Doug’s 14 cows and 14 heifers from his college dairy project, established RuAnn Dairy.
A radio sits in the crux of two pipelines at the top of the parlor. It’s mostly tipped to its side and tentatively secured by a piece of baling twine. Dust clogs the speakers and the quality of the reception changes every time a cow walks past it on her way to the freestalls.
Recent world events in the Middle East and outbreaks of Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD) in South Korea suggest we should continue to update ourselves about possible threats to our food system. For livestock producers, this means looking at biosecurity and emergency plans for all foreign animal diseases (FADs) including FMD, a highly contagious viral disease of cloven-hoofed animals.
Foot-and-mouth disease affects cattle, swine, sheep, goats, deer and other ruminants. Livestock owners fear FMD because it spreads rapidly and results in severe economic losses, shutting down exports and loss of consumer confidence.
Replacement heifers, whether they are raised on the farm, purchased from other dairies or contract-raised by growers, are critical to herd productivity because they represent the future milking and breeding stock in all dairy operations.
The goal should be to provide an environment for heifers to develop full lactation potential at the desired age with minimal expense.
In the previous two parts of this series, the extreme importance of drinking water for dairy cattle was emphasized. Click here to read the first part of this series and here to read the second part of this series.
The sex sorting of semen is a relatively new technology that has been commercially available to U.S. dairy producers since early 2006. The process of sorting semen by gender was developed in the late 1980s and has improved significantly over time.
Today, most sexed semen is sorted so that 85 to 90 percent of the offspring are of the desired gender.
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