Maple Wind Farm is inoculating their winter-laying houses with Lactobacillus, a beneficial bacterium, to improve animal health. It’s an on-farm trial in collaboration between the farm and the Land Care Cooperative, a farmer-led group focused on building healthy, water-retaining soils, reducing flood...

On most small farms, the difference between a peaceful night and a pasture full of panic can come down to one thing: a guardian animal you trust with your flock. Predator pressure is a reality for nearly every sheep or goat farmer today, whether the threat is coyotes slipping through fences, neighbo...

Silage technology can help you improve herd health and productivity; however, it’s wise to plan well in advance of harvest, according to Michelle Chang-Der Bedrosian, Ph.D. Chang-Der Bedrosian directs research and development at Animix LLC and presented “Beyond the Basics: Cutting-Edge Silage Strate...

Some farmers look forward to collecting Social Security as part of their retirement, but there are other avenues to boost retirement income. Many retired farmers find themselves wishing they had done more retirement planning for more secure income. Those working through farm transition or succession...

Hello, farm family! Yesterday, an old memory resurfaced from some dusty corner of my mind. It was of my great-grandfather sharpening a hoe on our old foot-powered wheel grinder. Hoes We used hoes a lot on our farm back then. Naturally, we employed them for transplanting seedlings and weeding vegetab...

In a video clip filmed in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a 4WD truck grew mired. Its 60 PSI tires dug deeper and deeper, rendering the vehicle helpless as its operator tried to back away from the mess. The narrator reduced tire pressure to 15 PSI, enabling the truck to easily back out of its sand tra...

According to Dan Quinn, Purdue University agronomist, examining corn ears from your fields helps estimate what yield might be. Examining corn ears prior to harvest helps growers visualize how the corn plant was impacted by different factors throughout the growing season, and why their yields may be ...

A relatively small dairy farm with fewer than 100 cows was the norm not long ago, and it’s working today on Becky and Dave Troop’s farm in Cochranville, PA. Becky grew up on a dairy not far from where she and Dave are farming now. Cows were housed in a tie-stall barn that wasn’t much different than ...

What you feed the herd affects both herd health and milk composition. Kevin Harvatine, Ph.D., professor of nutritional physiology and chair in Agricultural Sciences at Penn State, presented “Fatty Acids & Milk Components: Optimizing Milkfat Yield” as part of the recent Herd Health & Nutrition Confer...