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Throughout high school and college it seemed like everyone I knew had a seasonal or part-time job working at a restaurant. I remember one really fun summer as a cook at my uncle’s restaurant. His managers typically only hired cute girls to work the “front of the house,” so I never made my way up near the customers.
However, I learned a lot of interesting things working in the bar and restaurant industry that summer. In fact, one of the lessons I learned was that it’s not politically correct to call waiters and waitresses by those titles. For those of you who haven’t already heard, the proper term these days is server.
At the Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference in Dubuque, Iowa in June, a four-member panel related what they did or recommended to be done throughout the last 18 months of low milk prices.
The lender
Gary Sipiorski, dairy development manager for Vita Plus Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin, said lenders are worried about cattle values, land values and regulators.
By now dairy producers and others have heard about or viewed the released video of animal abuse on an Ohio farm. Anyone who has seen it will agree the actions shown are intolerable. There is some debate floating around as to what the farm owner may have known or not known about the activities of the employees shown, but that is for others to determine.
What is important is what farmers learn about preventing this kind of incident on their own farms. What should be learned may be in two different avenues: livestock handling procedures and employment practices. The two are closely related because having the right employees who have positive attitudes about working with animals will help make the livestock handling procedures an easier issue to manage.
Everyone likes an advocate, especially if they are advocating for you. One advocate group has repeatedly earned its reputation of helping farmers. Ohio Farm Bureau (OFB) has been instrumental in working with farmers across agriculture to promote ag, advocate for farmers and lobby legislation to improve farming, not hurt it. Most recently OFB had its hands full dealing with media asking questions about the Mercy For Animals footage that was taken on an Ohio dairy farm.
Recent economic hardships have left the dairy industry reeling. Now more than ever, it is crucial that dairy producers carefully analyze all of their input costs to make sure they are using their dollars wisely. Since feed expenses can represent up of 60 percent of input costs, analyzing their feeding program is a logical place to start.
Producers feeding high-quality ingredients to their herds are often faced with the question, “Is this making my dairy more money or just increasing my ration costs?” While it’s hard to know the exact impact specific ingredients may have on herd performance, one financial metric can help answer this question with more accuracy. Income over feed cost (IOFC) is a proven financial measurement to economically evaluate if feed ingredients are generating additional income for the dairy operation.
Forages make up 45 to 95 percent of the feed that dairy animals receive on a farm. We usually think in terms of just the lactating cows. It is more difficult to think in terms of the whole herd in terms of the forage needs for the farm on an annual basis.
Before antibiotics were commercially available, extracts from various plants were used to treat human aliments and diseases. With trial-and-error, man discovered which botanicals contained secondary metabolites that had antimicrobial properties.
Back about 25 years ago when the first personal computers were becoming affordable, I discovered the power and utility of the electronic spreadsheet. With the aid of feed analysis data that I found in dairy science textbooks – moisture, crude protein, TDN – I was able to construct tables that would calculate rudimentary nutritive values for dairy rations. I could substitute one feedstuff for another and have an instant answer.
If you visit a local farmer’s market you’ll find a feast for your senses. Baskets, bins and counters filled with vibrantly colored fruits and vegetables, the sugary smell of ripening peaches and the sound of a melon being thumped for ripeness. The selections are endless. So how would you buy apples with such varied choices of sweetness, size and color?
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