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When’s the best time to start eating healthy? After a heart attack.
How about exercising? After you’re already overweight.
The best time to stop smoking? After someone you know has lung cancer.
When’s the best time to start talking to your teenager? After the cops call.
And when’s the best time to buy homeowner’s insurance? As soon as you buy a house. Duh?
Editor’s note: The following is a follow-up report to an article titled, “What does a gallon of milk cost?” published in 2009. Google made that article popular with consumers on www.progressivedairy.com; it has received more than 10,000 pageviews in the last two years. Click here to read Ben Yale's article from the September 1, 2009, issue of Progressive Dairyman.
Following milk from the farm to the truck to the plant through the processing into the bottle onto another truck to the store and into the dairy cooler is easily understood. Following the money back from that cooler to the farm is a different story.
I am excited for the opportunity to write this article and provide business owners with valuable tax planning ideas. However, I am a CPA and many may question my qualifications for writing an article in Progressive Dairyman.
So I wanted to start off with some instant dairy credibility by listing some of my impressive agricultural qualifications.
How well prepared are you for a health crisis on your farm or in the dairy industry at large? Are you doing things that help avert a crisis?
Do you incorporate processes in your management that minimize risks of introducing or spreading costly infectious diseases to your cows?
This fall I participated in a “dairy industry crisis drill” in Denver. The event was sponsored by DMI, NMPF, the U.S. Dairy Export Council, Milk PEP and IDFA.
A recent Progressive Dairyman article on fluid milk sales contains several important points that all dairymen should understand. Click here to read Kaczor's article "Fluid milk sales head for 25-year low: Is anyone watching?" in the October 12th issue of Progressive Dairyman. I’d like to add several thoughts to the conversation.
Milk sales analysis usually includes a statement to the effect that other beverages have “stolen our share” of stomach. The reality is, no one stole our share of stomach – we, as an industry, gave it away. Experience shows, again and again, if we give consumers what they want, where and how they want it, milk sales will increase.
AFACT, a grassroots group formed in 2008 by dairy producers frustrated by the restricted use of bST and one that defended unfair or unwarranted interference in farmers’ production management choices, recently informed its members the group will disband and turn the remainder of its nearly $10,000 operating budget over to a non-profit trust account funding the Holstein Association’s Young Dairy Leaders Institute.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley spoke with one of AFACT’s former co-leaders Liz Doornink, who now works in business development with Stewart-Peterson, about the changes and the group’s legacy.
Beginning with our most recent edition of El Lechero we have changed our circulation policy, shifting it to being a request-only publication.
We feel it is more beneficial to have our magazine reach those that are actively reading this publication and making the most of the materials we present. El Lechero will continue to be provided to you at no cost, if you have requested the magazine.
If you were expecting to receive El Lechero and you didn’t, that most likely means that you have not previously requested your own copy of the magazine.
While paying off-farm professionals to trim feet on your herd may be cost-effective, relying upon them to treat lame cows is probably not profitable. Lame cows produce less milk, suffer from pain and may become chronic problems unless the issue is dealt with immediately and treated correctly.
Waiting even a couple of days for your foot trimmer to return and treat a lame cow is much more costly than training one of your workers to handle lame cows as part of the work routine.
When Hispanic dairy workers in South Dakota saw veterinarian Corale Dorn coming, they thought they were in trouble for doing something wrong, but this was before Dorn started using El Lechero.
One of the unique characteristics of the magazine, Dorn says, is its bilingual articles. This, she says, aids dairy and vet employees with vocabulary building.
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