Dairy producers have long recognized that bovine growth, reproduction and milk production depend on adequate feed intake. However, feed is only one component of proper nutrition.

Have you ever calculated the amount of water and energy used to maintain your milking facility and each of the practices you have decided to employ? Water and energy are required for a myriad of daily functions in the milking parlor, including equipment cleaning, sanitization, precooling milk and water heating for various uses.

A dairy producer’s work is never done. Whether it’s feeding the heifers, fertilizing the field or registering new calves, there is always something that needs to get done.

There are conflicting reports on the contribution of ruminants to greenhouse gas emissions (GGE). In these environmentally sensitive times it will help to put things in prospective.

Everyone who raises calves has a major stake in how well calves obtain passive immunity from a dam during the first 24 hours of life. Calves receive passive immunity via intake of colostrum during the first 24 hours when their intestines are able to absorb immune proteins without digestion.

The last year in agriculture has been a volatile one. We have seen rapid inflation of all commodities followed by rapid deflation. It has left me and many of my clients wondering how we can sustain food animal production agriculture in North America.

Nothing quite stirs up an appetite like time outside on a cold winter day. And just as people need more energy when battling the cold, so do dairy calves.

This morning I climbed in my van and caught a glimpse of a silver thread of hair mingled with the normally brownish-gold ones. I wasn’t horrified or even sad. I deserve those sliver threads; after all I am at the tail-end of a half a century, and I have seen a few sunrises and sunsets in my young life.

Dear Editor, On the day that I recently hosted a Dairy Beef Quality Assurance program at my auction market facility, I was struck by the fact that on the front page of USA Today was an item that showed that 74 American Bar Association-approved law schools now offer courses in animal rights versus 12 in 1999. Why should we care about this?

A growing number of today’s consumers of dairy products are not your father’s consumers. Today’s consumer is increasingly socially-conscious and willing to pay more money for products that they believe contribute to improved care for themselves, the animal, the land that it came from, the environment overall and their fellow earthly inhabitants.