Focusing solely on getting the best price for milk will cause you to miss out on profitable hedging possibilities.

The milk-weighted geometric mean of bulk tank somatic cell counts (SCCs) was 227,000 cells/ml in 2009 in the four Federal Milk Marketing Order areas in the central U.S. That’s according to data released by USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service this summer.

U.S. dairy producers will have 722,000 more heifers available from 2008 through 2012, thanks to sexed semen technology that started coming online in 2006.

With today’s high-volume silage choppers, it’s imperative that you sample corn silage several times a day to ensure the material is being adequately processed. If corn kernels are left unprocessed, you’ve essentially wasted a whole growing season of effort and your cows will be unable to fully utilize the feed.

The link between the ration on paper and the ration delivered to the cows is the person mixing the feed. So it makes sense to involve your nutrition consultant in the training and education of that person.

We have long known that the best corn silage takes 60 to 90 days to properly ferment. The same might be true for high-moisture corn, a highly variable energy source for dairy cows.