Just about all dairy producers now know someone with robotics, but at Good-Vue Farms in Goodridge, Minnesota, the Hanson family not only has robotic milkers – a robot mixes the herd’s feed as well.

Raising calves in the Florida heat is no easy task, but Lindsey Rucks is rising to the challenge.

Dairy farmers have until Dec. 15, 2017, to make decisions on participation in the Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) for 2018. One option includes the ability to opt out. By opting out of MPP-Dairy, they are eligible to use a separate risk management tool, Livestock Gross Margin for Dairy (LGM-Dairy).

Could you use milk in your bulk tank? New research shows that feeding calves and heifers a full potential nutrition program through the first six months of life could lead to animals that produce as much as 6,588 more pounds of milk in their first three lactations.

Foremost Farms USA has secured land to build a new dairy facility in Michigan, signaling the cooperative is taking its own path toward building processing capacity in the state. The facility is scheduled to be operational in 12 to 14 months, with capacity to process up to 6 million pounds of milk per day.

With a pending deadline requiring some dairy farms to file air emission reports by Nov. 15, there’s still a lot of uncertainty. In an alert posted Nov. 8, PRO-DAIRY’s Karl Czymmek and Curt Gooch said they had been in consultation with National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) legal counsel. The latest advice: wait.

For back-to-back years, the world champion team in baseball has contributed its success in part to a “glue guy.” I submit that to become elite, your dairy needs to find one too. Perhaps you already have one and don’t even know it. 

Digest Highlights: Cheese consumption is a bright spot. NMPF continues dairy label enforcement fight. Dean challenges continue. Find a summary of these stories and updates on previous Progressive Dairyman news stories here.

Those hoping dairy exports would provide a springboard for milk prices received some disappointing news. Weak sales of nonfat dry milk/skim milk powder (NDM/SMP), particularly to Southeast Asia, depressed overall U.S. export totals in the third quarter, according to Alan Levitt, USDEC vice president of communications and market analysis.

Since January 1, CWT has assisted in selling the equivalent of 606.6 million pounds of milk on a milk-fat basis.This is equivalent to the annual milk production from 26,634 dairy cows.