As another silage season approaches, now is a good time to start preparing for a safe silage season. Unfortunately, when most producers are asked what silage and safety mean to them, their answer usually revolves around silage pile or bunker safety.

Traditionally, it has been assumed practical diets fed to dairy cattle provide sufficient chromium to meet their requirements. However, research conducted over the past 20 years has shown chromium supplementation of practical diets can increase insulin sensitivity and increase cattle performance and health under certain conditions.

Proponents of California’s entry into the Federal Milk Marketing Order system (FMMO) received an unforeseen delay when the USDA announced it would wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding administrative law judges before moving forward.

The 2017 growing season was challenging across the U.S. Growers in different regions experienced varied weather conditions that could not only reduce yield, but could also increase plant stress and lead to challenges with mycotoxins.

As many hay producers and operators know, one of the most challenging aspects of baling hay is determining its quality and relative feed value (RFV). The feed value of hay crops like alfalfa can vary tremendously, making it difficult to determine the amount of hay needed in a balanced ration to be fed to livestock.

When milk prices are low and the dairy economy gets tough, we all look for ways to cut costs. The feed ration is often one of the first places we turn.

I recently saw a very odd thing when I observed a farm adviser balance a ration for some replacement heifers. Based on the analyses of the forage and the trace mineral mixture and his estimate of feed consumption, his spreadsheet showed that magnesium intake would only be 6.7 grams per day.

An ideal bedding for dairy cows is clean, provides a certain degree of cow comfort and doesn’t readily support bacterial growth. Sand fits that bill to a tee. Sand-laden manure, however, is the less attractive side of the deal.

The dairy industry continues to change as herd size relative to crop acres increases. This creates a need for more off-farm corn silage to be purchased and more manure to be exported off-farm.

Contrary to U.S. dairy cattle inventories, statistics for the U.S. dairy goat population are a little harder to come by. Milk goats have been included in the five-year U.S. Census of Agriculture for some time, but it wasn’t until 2005 that the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) began reporting the number of milk goats on its annual sheep and goats report.