During the winter months, birds can be a costly nuisance on the dairy, but there is help available to producers to effectively reduce the population of their feathered foes.

“When our family business was on the line, the learning curve is very sharp,” recalls Amy Marcoot, president of Marcoot Jersey Farm Inc. “The primary reason I came back to the farm was to protect the family tradition.”

My parents always pushed us to be lifelong learners. We watched my dad reading industry magazines. We saw my parents going to meetings about all different business, agriculture and dairy topics. That instilled in my siblings and me that we should always be learning.

Our list of top 25 articles of 2016, as measured by web traffic, was published in the Dec. 12, 2016, issue. Check it out here. We asked our team of editors and copy editors to select a favorite article (or article series) of the year that didn’t make the top 25. See their picks below.

A new congressional effort to prod federal regulators to crack down on the inappropriate labeling of products designed to imitate milk drew support today from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), which thanked lawmakers for speaking out on the issue.

During the 2016 Vita Plus Dairy Summit, two dairies shared their strategies for managing through the tough times of milk price lows.

International, national and regional financial services companies with a stake in the dairy industry share similar outlooks heading into 2017: Recovery is on the way, with strong ties to global markets.

Two large Midwest dairy cooperatives, Prairie Farms Dairy and Swiss Valley Farms, have entered into a merger agreement.

The contentious conversations around dairies and water these days are long passed keeping cows out of the creek; they have evolved into a complex conundrum of concerns over water scarcity and ground water impacts, according to David Crass, partner and industry group chair for agribusiness, food and beverage with Michael Best and Friedrich LLP.

At the 2016 Vita Plus Dairy Summit, attendees heard straight talk from a panel of consumers on where and what they buy and what drives their food purchasing decisions, and they learned about building trust and operating with transparency from Charlie Arnot with the Center for Food Integrity and Andrea Bloom from Vita Plus.