Meet Katie Sowers. She is a junior at Greenwood High School in Millerstown, Pennsylvania. Or should I say, she is a very busy junior in high school. She’s involved with many activities, including FFA, serving as historian in her local 4-H Club, showing Ayrshires and Holsteins, and participating in Pennsylvania Junior Holstein activities.

Mastitis is the most common disease and the leading cause for antibiotic use on dairy farms. Due to consumer demand, antibiotic use is becoming more scrutinized in animal agriculture. This year at the National Mastitis Council meeting, Dr. Pamela Ruegg from the University of Wisconsin – Madison discussed how treatment practices could lower antibiotic use on farms and save money. Ruegg listed five steps and considerations for making optimum mastitis treatment decisions.

The Bateman family’s history of dairy farming in Utah spans 150 years. With nine members of the next generation considering dairy farming, its future is already taking shape.

It’s estimated that cows, along with the process of milking, produce 20 gallons of manure and 10 gallons of water per cow per day. Add this up and consider the need for six months of storage plus extra storage for a 25-year, 24-hour storm event. When you multiply this across the herd, it’s easy to see where the need for larger lagoons comes in.

Cooper Miles Moore joined our brood of little farm boys on April 28. Eight days later, I was more than ready to get back in the barn and get back to normal life. Here we are, nearly three months later, and Mr. Cooper still isn’t the farming type. I swear, no matter what we try, that little guy is one step ahead of us.

Proponents of no-baffle barns believe a more open concept allows a more natural environment for the cows:

Currently, ventilation and cooling are hot topics in dairying.

The sheer volume of information collected on a dairy farm may seem daunting to track, but proper record-keeping can play a vital role when making decisions.

The European Commission (EC) released a dairy farmer support package that includes incentives to reduce milk production, allows European Union (EU) member states to provide aid specific to their producers, and extends the use of intervention stocks to keep surplus dairy products off the market.

A common Dutch saying “meten is weten” translates to “measuring is knowing” in English. This saying could not be any more appropriate for precision dairy farming in the Netherlands. With more robotic milkers than any other nation and the ubiquitous use of technology, the Netherlands serves as a technological hub for the dairy industry.