Ah, what a tangled web we weave in our search for market niches.

Modern dairy herd management practices have increased the frequency with which animals must be handled. Animals must be isolated and restrained for physical examination, vaccination, artificial insemination, pregnancy checks, treatment, dehorning, calving, etc. on a regular basis. Animal handling is critical because each cow in the herd may be handled 40 to 50 times per lactation.

Amazing progress has been made in the nutrition and management of dairy cattle during the last 20 years.

There has been much made of the adaptation of machinery to handling cattle.

Dear editor, I’m writing in regards to a column/article in the June 17 issue by Ladd Siebert titled: “Are we trimming our dairy cows correctly?”

When our fields are green, I enter them and search for myself. In 16 years of writing this column, I am often drawn to write about my field visits.

What profitable dairymen know is that you’ve always got to be expanding to survive. Being progressive requires it. But what do you do when you can’t? Find a way. This issue is full of examples of producers who have done just that. For example, take the dairy featured on this month’s front cover. Nunes Dairy is a 1,000-cow dairy in Buhl, Idaho. I recently visited the facility and spoke with the dairy’s owner, Jason Nunes. While my primary purpose for visiting wasn’t to talk about his current building project, we spent a portion of my visit discussing why he was doing it.

Yet another challenge to a common dairy practice recently crossed my desk. This time it is a proposal by the USDA under the Animal Welfare Act to regulate how newborn calves are treated from birth to about eight weeks old. Though only a proposed rule, it does suggest issuing a rule for limitations on the transporting, even the removal from the mother during some or all of that period. This would not be good for dairy farmers. It is not the first such challenge to dairy farming. It joins those that claim dairy farmers mistreat their cows, employ the wrong people, feed the wrong feed, give the wrong drugs, mishandle the waste, waste water and, to some, produce an unneeded product. More will come. How dairy farmers respond to those complaints will determine whether or not and the degree by which dairying survives in America.

You have most likely heard the expression that bigger isn’t always better. In my conversations, I find that many dairymen tend to disagree with that statement. Economies of scale spread over sound management have allowed producers over the past five years to not only expand their herd size, but also their productivity (see Chart 1). And despite efforts to keep cow numbers at bay, growth has continued among varying geographies and herd sizes.

One year ago in the May 2007 issue of Progressive Dairyman, I was asked to write an article on feed price direction. By using basic fundamental analysis, a dose of futuristic forward thinking and some technical analysis on historical price patterns in commodity markets, I forecasted that the next bull market would likely give us upper $6 to lower $7 corn prices. Well, $7 corn is here, and everyone is now wondering, “What’s next?”