Earlier this year, the company that owns the most commonly used herd management software in the industry – DairyComp305 – hired a new CEO and began rebranding itself. Valley Ag Software (VAS) is spending millions to redesign the interface of its herd management software and announced at World Dairy Expo that a cloud-based version will be available in 2018.

In 2000, Roy and Mary Bergbigler were looking for inspiration for a new milking parlor for their 100-cow Holstein herd in Butler, Pennsylvania. While they wanted to keep it simple, they had a few special requests.

Dairy producers hoping for a year-end price rally didn’t have much to cheer about as the 2017 calendar turned to the last page. Meanwhile, the USDA updated milk prices, feed costs and income margins from October.

Digest Highlights: Federal order Class I proposal analyzed. NAFTA outlook shared. New rules affecting dairy coming to Texas, Ohio. Find a summary of these and other news here.

Editor's note: While this article seeks to explain different options to protect milk prices and income margins, it's imperative you talk to professional milk marketers and insurance agents before making risk management decisions.

Winter is a tough time of year regardless of how you milk your cows. Things freeze. Snow, ice and cold are here. Things take longer than they should. Winter was tough when we milked in our parlor, but making the switch to robots meant completely relearning winter.

In Wisconsin and Minnesota, the Discovery Farms Program has been turning privately owned farms into research stations for the past 15 years. The water quality data collected from participating farms is used widely in educational materials and presentations to farmers and farm advisers that are working to reduce losses of on-farm sources of nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment.

This month’s VAS DC305 tip is on parlor performance. Using the parlor performance reports in DC305 can help you take advantage of the benefits of daily milk meters, plus look for cows that fail to produce the expected amount of milk. This data will help you:

Everyone loves a superhero. Stories about seemingly ordinary people with superhuman powers are a crowd favorite, whether it’s Superman, Batman or, most recently, Wonder Woman – which, according to Forbes, is the “fifth biggest superhero movie ever.”

Dairy farmers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have a new date – Jan. 22, 2018 – before air emission reporting requirements related to manure could go into effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted EPA’s motion for a stay of an earlier court ruling, pushing the reporting requirement back at least 60 days.