It’s official – summer is heading out, and fall is around the corner. With harvest, taking kids back to school, daily chores and a million other things, planning for winter calf housing might not be top of mind. However, making winter prep a priority will ensure you and your calves are ready to handle cold weather challenges.

In this day and age, producers are great at making heifers. Reproductive and calf raising management practices have dramatically improved through the years, resulting in an abundance of replacement heifers. The benefit of that is we have plenty of animals to keep operations full and have the genetically best heifers possible.

Digest Highlights: Dairy Farmers of America forms solar energy partnership. Bureaucratic hoops earn expanded school milk plan a low grade so far. New I-9 form must be used beginning Sept. 18. Find a summary of these and other news here.

USDA has backtracked a bit after five consecutive previous monthly reports forecasting milk production reductions in 2017. Growth in milk per cow, which has been slow, is expected to pick up the pace, more than offsetting a slower rate of herd expansion.

The pace of life always quickens after the dog days of August, perhaps nowhere more so than in Washington, D.C., as Congress returns to town after its month-long recess. This September is shaping up as the beginning of an eventful period on Capitol Hill in which movement is expected on issues in which National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) and its members are heavily engaged.

This past summer our staff was so impressed with the many photos and messages sent to our office. You took your magazines with you in your camper to the woods or in your boat on the lake. The main message you sent was: Sometimes you must get away to catch up.

U.S. dairy owners prefer daylight saving, according to recent phone surveys conducted by Progressive Dairyman. A combination of both online and phone polls, however, indicated the dairy industry as a whole dislikes daylight saving.

Schools across the country are getting healthier one blender at a time, thanks to the work of the Fuel Up to Play 60 program that was founded by dairy farmers in partnership with the NFL.

Frequent rains this spring and summer have led to lush, fertile pastures. Grass isn’t the only thing that has flourished with the timely rains, though. Parasites reproduce more rapidly in warm, humid weather too, increasing the risk of economic loss.

How did you get started in photography? MOORE: I always loved a good photograph, but when I had kids and the desire to have nice pictures of them without taking them to J.C. Penney’s every month made me start using my camera every day.