With dairy exports plateaued, it’s time for a “Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal,” according to Tom Vilsack, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC). That goal: boost the percent of U.S. milk production exported another 5 percent by 2021.

Moving calves around the farm used to be a stressful task for Cassie Zirbel of Ledge-Rock Holsteins in Greenleaf, Wisconsin, until she decided to stop struggling with the halters and trade them in for a solution that would relieve stress on both her and her calves.

Can you freeze butter? What about milk or cheese? How do we know farmers care for their cows? Are there hormones in milk?

The news earlier this summer that Amazon is purchasing Whole Foods struck the food industry like a thunderclap. The one-time trendsetter in natural and organic food retailing is now being swallowed up by an even bigger disruptive force in e-commerce retailing.

Editor’s note: Read on for new comments online (Progressive Dairyman).  Visit the site today to ask a question on any article or leave a comment for the author.

It was a beautiful, sunny, summer day when 120 women and a few men gathered at Road View Dairy in Mineral Point, Wisconsin, for the 2017 Vita Plus Chick Day on Aug. 16.

People issues can be a make-or-break proposition for your dairy. How do I know this? I’ve spent more than 38 years in the dairy industry. Wow, the time has gone by fast. I still have a desire to go to the barn at 4:30 every morning, and I love it as much as I ever did.

The American Farm Bureau Federation and American Farm Bureau Insurance Services have been working collaboratively with other partners to develop a new insurance product for dairy farmers. The proposal is for a Dairy Revenue Protection (Dairy-RP) policy.

One purpose of a milk pricing system is to give dairy farmers the economic signal to produce the milk components of greatest value. For many years, our U.S. milk pricing system placed the greatest economic value on the skim portion of milk and the components in the skim, especially protein.

For Charles and Ellen Coblentz and their sons, there is no such thing as too many irons in the fire. Milking 500 cows, farming more than 8,000 acres, raising 1,000 head of beef and running a fertilizer business means everyone is all hands on deck all the time.