Progressive dairy farm managers must monitor and address diverse challenges in the dairy industry to be successful. In today’s dairy market, human resources and leadership skills are equally as important to smooth operations as cow comfort and forage quality are to milk yield.

Your management philosophy translates into your thinking framework and behavior, impacting your management style. One way this impacts your dairy is by influencing how you work with people and their overall engagement – which translates directly into productivity and return on investment for you.

Under Current Review: Farmeron’s web-based herd management software One of the most prominent dairies in Hilmar, California, will be testing an upstart company’s cloud-based herd management program against its long-established desktop management software during 2017.

The beginning of my career and love for commodity markets stemmed from my first job dumping grain trucks at a terminal on the Illinois River. It was there I learned the basics of futures, options and hedging. As my knowledge of the markets grew, my role with the grain co-op did as well.

Five of World Ag Expo’s Top 10 new products have direct application in the dairy industry. Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley interviewed the companies and innovators behind these new technologies.

I don’t know how many times I’ve uttered, “Technology is great … when it works.” And it seems like, today, more and more of us are adding, “Technology is great ... when it works and doesn’t interfere with work.”

Here’s the assignment: Find the lost milk. Where are you going to look? When Cornell students focused on this task, helping a New York dairy producer – one who had an exemplary calf program and whose cows should have been producing 15 pounds or more milk per day than they were – they found it. The lost milk was in the heifer barn.

With the implementation of new rules regulating the use of antibiotics important in human medicine, many livestock producers will need to implement different procedures to maintain the health and productivity of their livestock.

Perhaps you are sitting at your desk evaluating last year and thinking about the future. This past year has not been the most favorable for the dairy industry: Milk prices are down, calf prices are at their lowest in years, and employees don’t exactly come “free” these days.

Feeding calves with self-feeders or computerized auto-feeders has increased in popularity in recent years. These systems can have positive effects for on-farm management, especially around labor, but how are these systems impacting calf performance?