The past year was one of the most difficult in our community’s history, especially for America’s dairy farmers. As we turn the calendar and begin a new year, your checkoff staff – both national and local – are committed to placing priority focus on those areas we know are building sales of and trust in dairy.

You’re busy – milking cows, managing employees and attending farm meetings. With that in mind, Progressive Dairyman looks at issues in the news impacting you and your dairy business.

Consumers of dairy products are the people who make the dairy industry an industry. Without the consumer buying that chunk of cheese or gallon of milk, eating a pizza, having a dish of ice cream or purchasing bakery products which use nonfat dry milk powder or whey as an ingredient, there would not be a commercial dairy industry.

Making any major change in your dairy operation demands a team approach, and moving from a traditional stall or parlor milking system to a robotic milking system is certainly a major change.

The dairy community is creative and innovative. Dairy Strong brings farmers and industry professionals from diverse management philosophies together to focus on what matters by providing content that is relevant, inspiring and entertaining.

Current commodity prices have some dairy farmers looking to capture additional revenue by feeding out dairy steers or the growing number of dairy-beef calves that are more common due to herd breeding decisions.

Increased components and improved quality are adding to basis on milk checks, but dramatically higher hauling charges are pulling overall basis lower in the Midwest, according to Matt Lange, business consultant with Compeer Financial, Baldwin, Wisconsin.

Whenever I talk to anybody about drinking whey, they look at me like I’m crazy,” says Sam Alcaine, assistant professor of dairy fermentation at Cornell University.

Encompassing around 1,000 acres, the Carter-Stevens Dairy Farm has been milking cows twice a day since 1938. Records show, prior to the 1938 purchase, the Allen family had farmed the land in Barre, Massachusetts, since 1749.

During the gestation period, a cow does all it can to grow an embryo into a calf. The dam’s contributions for its offspring to be successful do not cease at parturition. Instead, its mammary gland secretes a substance with necessary growth factors to set the calf up for life.