Nearly 75 percent of our time is spent communicating our thoughts and ideas. However, we are not conscious that non-verbal communication, such as facial expression, eye contact, voice intonation, body posture and motions, can express more than the oral forms do. During the process of communication, messages are sent on both levels, in verbal and non-verbal mode. Non-verbal communication accounts for 80 percent of the interpretation of the message. If the non-verbal and verbal messages are incongruous, communication fails.

A tool to assess the critical points of management and their impact on the welfare of calves and heifers was recently developed by researchers at Laval University, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and Valacta. Their results were published in the Journal of Dairy Science and are summarized below. The development and implementation of these types of assessment tools are a critical counter-balance to the legislation approach to animal welfare that groups such as the Humane Society of the U.S. employed recently in California and Ohio.

Arriving in Pakistan in early December, I have begun my work here as an expeditionary agricultural scientist. My mandate here is largely agricultural reconstruction and stabilization (R&S), and this work is largely in the realm of the third foreign policy pillar of the three D’s: defense, diplomacy and development.

In December 2009, Progressive Dairyman featured the Reed family in Jasper, Minnesota. The Reeds were forced out of dairying because they weren't able to overcome problems with stray voltage, despite their efforts to solve these issues with the help of Chuck Untiedt. Out of the more than 1,500 articles we published since then, the article, "The boogey man in the milking parlor" ranked as the third most read. As part of our year-end recap, we followed up with Untiedt to find out what he's learned since then about detecting stray voltage.

In 1999, a 34 year old dairy couple milking 80 cows in a 52 cow stall barn became interested in following Extension’s Model for dairy grazing. The first step was to reduce crop work and their swine enterprise to have the labor to add more cows. By 2001, the couple was milking 115 cows in the stall barn. The physical stress led to the stall barn being converted to a low cost swing 16 milking parlor at a cost of $38,000 in 2002. The pastures, the parlor, the low cost facilities, the crossbreeding, the labor efficiency and the annual financial analysis were the keys to their success.

Scott Munes Green Bay, Wisconsin Business Development Manager Dairy Business Milk Marketing Cooperative

David Packard Montgomery, Pennsylvania District Sales Representative Semex USA

(See related photos and information on this topic in: Sharemilking: A viable, exciting business opportunity) "The conventional definition of management is getting work done through people, but real management is developing people through work." Joe Horner, University of Missouri Extension Commercial Agriculture Program, dairy economist, quoted a famous banker, as he explained the concept of sharemilking to hundreds of participants gathered in Joplin for the Missouri Dairy Grazing Conference in July 2010. Horner believes that the future of some Missouri dairies may lie in the adoption of a career path similar to the traditional New Zealand system, involving sharemilking leading to ownership.