The formulation and management of dairy cow diets has become increasingly more dependent on computer programming and modeling over the past two decades.

As an industry, we’ve made significant strides in improving feed efficiency. However, when we dig deeper, we have some work to do. Protein is one of the most expensive parts of the ration and there remain vast opportunities to improve protein efficiency.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to livestock production, of which 37 percent is methane.

Feeding fat and fat products to dairy cows is common on most, if not all, dairies. Understanding how to properly feed fats and fat products is another story and seems to change daily.

Many agricultural crops are harvested each year, stored and subsequently fed. To maximize preservation of the crops’ nutrients, we rely on fermentation. This is silage making. But the key to good fermentation is an anaerobic (absence of oxygen) environment.

Given the ever-rising costs of feedstuffs and the tight margins in the livestock industry, animals need to be as efficient as possible at extracting nutrients out of feeds used in livestock operations. Enzymes are one of the tools that can be used to increase the efficiency of nutrient utilization.

Sadly, all is not well. Termites are at work. At first, no one noticed them. They were only innocuous holes in the bow of the ship and the mast. They were only dissenting voices in the political process and judges turning a blind eye to unethical behavior in the name of tolerance.

The first question I usually ask a dairyman about his generator is: Who has done the maintenance in the past? They usually respond with, “I have a farm mechanic that is supposed to look after it, but he doesn’t know anything about generators and feels intimidated.

When we first arrived, he took me to the balcony and put his arm around my shoulder. We were seven floors up, and the cars below us looked small. I think he wanted me to notice that. He pointed into the darkness.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”—Nelson Mandela We have one of the coolest dairy stories out there. When my husband, Bruce, and I met in 1996, neither one of us had anything except a couple of car payments.