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Americans may have noticed a new social media trend this past year: more Facebook posts from the farm, more tweets from the tractor and more blogs from the back forty.
The timing of this social media "stampede" couldn’t be better, says Jeff Fowle, president of the AgChat Foundation. Celebrating its one-year anniversary today, the AgChat Foundation is a 100-percent volunteer organization formed to empower farmers and ranchers to effectively tell their stories using social media.
At their recent meeting, the Holstein Association USA board of directors voted to declare Brachyspina as an undesirable recessive trait in the Holstein breed, and approved the recording of testing results on Holstein Association USA pedigrees and other performance products. Brachyspina is expressed when an animal is homozygous for the undesirable allele, meaning that two carrier animals have been mated. Holsteins that are known carriers will be labeled with the code BY, and tested non-carriers will be labeled TY.
Merial’s Best in Class Dairy website, www.BestInClassDairies.com, features a training module, which is part of a new comprehensive educational initiative. The new website and training module provide dairies access to valuable information and educational tools to help ensure healthy cows, the highest standard of milk and profitable operations. The web-based audiovisual training module, which addresses pre- and post-milking procedures, is the first in a series of training modules that will be offered to dairy operation workers through this site.
A new Genex Cooperative, Inc. program can determine the best mating option for a cow or heifer based on the animal’s genomic PTAs (GPTAs) rather than phenotypic scores, performance, parent averages or pedigree indexes. This genomic mating program, G-MAP, is the newest technology available in the genomic revolution.
Dairy herdspersons, cow-care specialists and herd owners hungry for information and skills that can help them address dairy cow lameness are encouraged to attend one of two hoof care training workshops offered by the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin.
Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative announced $8.7 million in earnings from 2010 operations at its 91st Annual Business Meeting held March 29 in Asheville, North Carolina, and continued March 31, in Ellicott City, Maryland. Reported as the second best year in recent history, Maryland & Virginia credits stewardship for the cooperative’s tremendous success.
Long-time clients of the Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center (VMTRC), Cornell and Teri Kasbergen of Rancho Teresita dairy, have received the 2010 El Blanco Award from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine for ongoing contributions to the school's teaching mission and for their role in promoting important advances in animal health and well-being.
The Kasbergens were nominated for the award by Terry Lehenbauer, DVM, associate director of the Tulare center, who notes, "Rancho Teresita is valued as one of the most significant dairy herd clients and research collaborators of the VMTRC."
Newly appointed California Department of Food and Agriculture Secretary Karen Ross hailed a "great partnership with the California dairy industry that has been proactive and forward looking in how we address critical environmental issues so you can stay in business." Ross delivered her remarks Thursday, March 17, at Western United Dairymen’s annual convention in Visalia.
Ross’ upbeat comments set the tone for the convention as California dairy families set their sights on the future following two years of low milk prices coupled with feed costs that have caused severe economic distress to the California dairy industry.
Recent estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) indicate that the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States has remained unchanged at roughly 11 million since 2009.
This comes after a two-year decline of approximately one million that corresponded closely to the most recent recession, which ran from December 2007 to June 2009.
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