In Issue 16 of Progressive Dairyman (Oct. 1, 2017), we discussed ongoing legal battles involving Golden Sands Dairy LLC and a local government over the siting of a new dairy operation. (Land use law and zoning: Vested rights)

Immigration issues have seen heightened attention since last year’s presidential election. Concurrently, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has expanded its efforts to identify undocumented immigrants. As a result, many dairies may have an employee or their family member face deportation.

Issue 16 of Progressive Dairyman (Oct. 10, 2017) highlighted the Rural Firefighters Delivering Agricultural Safety and Health (RFDASH) project from the National Farm Medicine Center.

Take a moment to think about your last cow to calve. Was it smooth sailing or were there complications? If a complication arose, has this issue occurred before?

Managing cows through the end of the dry period and into their next lactation remains a challenge across many dairy farms. Much of this is driven by what we ask cows to handle throughout the weeks before and after calving.

The optimal dry period length between lactations in dairy cows has been debated since the early 1800s. During this time, some English farmers believed a two-month dry period was optimal, while others believed a two-week dry period was adequate.

Cows are in negative energy balance (NEB) when their energy requirements (i.e., maintenance, gestation, production) are not met by their energy intake.

On a typical day, how often do cows interact with people on your dairy? It’s common for a dairy team to mingle with a herd at least two or three times for milking, again if it’s a herd health day, again for breeding, again if pen shifts are on the schedule and probably again if any additional management interventions are needed.

At this year’s American Dairy Science Association annual meeting held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in June, several invited speakers presented ideas about how they saw the dairy industry in 50 years.

Over the past decade, reproductive tools used to get cows pregnant have evolved tremendously. Automated activity monitoring technology has developed to deliver accurate detection of heats.