Bedding choice directly influences cow comfort, but the decision on which material to put underneath cows must consider several other factors, such as cost, availability, ease of handling, udder health, pathogen growth and more.

Nuisance flies are a vector of disease and an irritant to cattle and workers on a dairy operation. Because of the confined nature of a dairy, it is important to use an integrated pest management (IPM) program for effectively controlling fly populations.

Talking about cow comfort involves listening to and understanding numerous opinions on this issue. Nevertheless, what is real cow comfort? How can it be judged? In addition, maybe even more importantly, how can it contribute to profitable dairy farming?

Reading and interpreting a nutrient management plan (NMP) can be intimidating. The plan has a lot of charts, numbers and symbols. Restriction maps include a lot of squiggly lines, different-colored hash marks and a multitude of setback symbols that aren’t immediately obvious.

Using dried manure solids for bedding is becoming more common among U.S. dairy herds. It allows farms an alternative way to handle manure, and it can help offset bedding costs – a large expense on many dairy farms.

It was a magnificent house with all the trappings of grandeur: marble pillars, spiral staircases and stained-glass windows. Passersby and foreigners always bowed their heads, crossed themselves or just smiled with reverent respect, as if they were passing a church.

Have you even been looking for a bolt, found what you thought was the correct bolt, only to find it would not thread up? Or have you ever looked at the top of a bolt and wondered what those numbers or lines meant?

Four burned-out vehicles. Three men hospitalized. Bats and axe handles lying in the mud. A dead dog. The aftermath looked apocalyptic at Anthony McGann’s farm in rural Ireland. Or the stuff of old westerns.

When we were pregnant with our first daughter, people always said, “It takes a village to raise a baby.” If you’ve never had kids, you might not realize that maxim is definitely true. Even if you don’t have kids, having and running a farm is really similar.

When I heard of goat yoga, I thought the tree huggers had lost their minds. I thought there was no way this was real. I was wrong – first time ever.