After 25 years in business, Ag Oasis of Liberal, Kansas, has learned a lot about how to do things right. Part of that has been teaching – and learning from – summer interns as well as their full-time employees.

In 2019, age at first calving is on course to be added to the Net Merit Index, and residual feed intake may not be far behind.

There is a lot of talk about the longevity of cows, but Ohio dairy producer Lambert VanderMade thought it was important enough to create a second setup just for older cows.

Cow health, nutrition and reproduction are key when trying to find the best options for the transition period of dairy cows. That said, there is a lot of information about nutritional strategies that can be tough to sort through.

It’s a show more about the youth showing than the dairy cattle being shown. The Youth Dairy Classic started at the Fayette County (Iowa) Fairgrounds after the dairy show at the National Cattle Congress shut down for a few years for financial reasons in the early 1990s.

Twinning rates are on the rise for high-production cows, and you don’t have to look hard or long to see that is bad news, says Paul Fricke, professor of dairy science at the University of Wisconsin.

Three young graziers talked about their experiences starting out in dairy farming at the 2018 Grassworks Conference held annually in Wisconsin.

“It’s not the making of the product; it’s the selling,” says Tim Joseph of Maple Hill Creamery about niche marketing.

Bankers and salespeople tend to look at the cash flow of milking robotics, but Larry Tranel, Iowa State University Extension dairy specialist, said profitability and quality of life may be the more important factors to consider.

“Land-healing agriculture” is not necessarily a common term, but that is one of the first statements Hubert (Hue) Karreman, VMD, and Suzanne Nelson Karreman use to describe their dairy operation in North Carolina.