June is Dairy Month. You may have heard of this campaign. Every summer when June rolls around, I get very excited. Not because school is out, or there is finally nice weather in central New York. Well, I do get excited about that, but not as excited as I do about June Dairy Month. #JuneDairyMonth, s...

Respiratory disease in replacement heifers is costly. However, farms don’t often realize the full cost of bovine respiratory disease (BRD). During a Dairy Calf & Heifer Association webinar, Kevin Dhuyvetter, Ph.D., a cattle technical consultant for Elanco, detailed both the short-term costs of BRD a...

A quick look at market prices for various livestock species will show the most consistent prices for two species: sheep and goats. There’s high and steady market demand for lambs and kids, making small ruminants a popular choice among first-time farmers. However, anyone who wants to raise sheep or g...

Your smartphone is with you all the time, but you likely ignore one of its functions that could really benefit your farm: recording videos. That’s why MidAtlantic Women In Agriculture presented “Smart Phone Movies,” led by Michele Walfred, communications specialist with University of Delaware. “Ther...

Virgina Tech has been hosting a series of livestock update webinars to keep producers appraised of information and strategies relevant to current market conditions. The hockey stick-like increase in the price of wholesale beef is, as producers know too well, not being reflected in feeder cattle pric...

Organic producers can find it challenging to raise heifers. On non-organic operations, heifers are typically fed total mixed rations (TMR), a balanced diet that provides all the necessary nutrients. While organic producers can use TMR, organic feed ingredients are costly. Often organic dairy farmers...

Ben and Mary Brown started milking cows on the farm that had been in Ben’s family since the late 1700s. When Ben’s parents were managing the herd, milk was shipped to a co-op and the income supported the family of six. The milking herd at the Browns’ Whoa Nellie Farm in Acme, PA, includes 70 Holstei...

If you don’t know your soil, you won’t know how to amend it – or what to expect for yield. That’s why Sieg Snapp, professor of Soils and Cropping System Ecology at Michigan State University, presented “Measuring Soil Health.” “I was part of the early discussions about soil health in the early ‘80s,”...

Although mastitis results in changes in milk quality, it is not always caused by the same bugs. Mastitis is caused by several pathogen groups gram positive ( Streptococcus spp. and Staphylococcus spp ), gram negative ( E. coli , Klebsiella spp. ) and others. Even well-managed herds have some level o...