As I write this, I can hear the crunching of roof and tin being pulled away from our old dry cow barn on our dairy farm. The barn has been here for longer than I have. Shortly after we purchased our own herd, the barn became a dry pen. So, for the past 21 years, the barn has served as the place where basically all our animals calved.

Words are extremely powerful. Written words can completely change a person’s attitude.

Growing up, our garden was less a place of vegetables than a weedier portion of our lawn. Whatever enthusiasm my parents found on a warm spring day to scatter seeds had usually evaporated by the time fieldwork took off.

There is an old hymn that asks the question, “Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?” The better question would be, “When you left your room this morning, did you think when you prayed?”

How does a dairy that regularly sees temperatures over 110°F create pregnancies? Keeping cows cool. For Dickman and Sons Dairy, it really is that simple.

Semiautomated milking technology captured the attention of dairy producers awarding this year’s Nexus Innovation Awards. The new technology from GEA improves upon and brings the fully automated teat preparation common in box-style milking robots to parallel parlors.

This episode introduces you to the 2026 Nexus Innovation Award winners, recently recognized at the Professional Dairy Producers Business Conference.

SenseHub Dairy Youngstock monitoring technology from Merck Animal Health tracks calves from birth and flashes an indicator light when activity, rumination, eating or other behaviors deviate from the baseline. The same eartag can also continue tracking behaviors throughout the animal’s entire life.