In today’s dairy industry, keeping cows healthy and productive involves so many facets from cow comfort to proper nutrition to disease prevention and treatment. As a producer establishes medication protocols with their veterinarian and sets up their on-farm inventory, it is important to review the different regulations about medications available for use on farms.
U.S. cheese exporters finished 2024 with a bang. A total of 97 million pounds of cheese shipped abroad, up 21% year-over-year. That capped off an already record-setting performance with outbound cheese shipments reaching a record 1.125 billion pounds, up 18% (+170 million pounds) year-over-year. Sales to Mexico gave U.S. exports a big boost in 2024…
Anyone who has looked for qualified candidates to fill roles in your dairy business may have felt like that is a harder task than it was even just five years ago. That feeling is very real. Since the pandemic, worker expectations and needs have shifted. There is also more competition with higher pay from other…
Looking at the January 2025 USDA Cattle Inventory report, it confirms a continual decline in the overall U.S. cattle and calf inventories. All U.S. cattle and calf numbers were down 1% year over year to 86.7 million head.
Once the harvest is in, the deer have been hunted, and the holidays have been celebrated with family and friends, it’s time for the planning season. Over my career, I find that a lot of the long-term planning that occurs on dairy farms happens this time of year. Based on my experiences as a dairy…
A quick peek at the 2025 milk futures curve might leave you with the impression that this year might be fairly calm. But I can say with certainty that 2025 markets will be far from boring. What are some of the key things we’re watching as 2025 gets underway?
Any of us who has ever had little kids can probably remember how easy the word “why” came up. As children, we are more comfortable asking “why?” when someone tells us something or we see something we don’t quite understand. However, as we grow, we become less apt to ask why because we don’t want…
The USDA announced November’s Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) margin at $14.29 per hundredweight (cwt), $4.79 above the $9.50 trigger. This will be the ninth consecutive month for program year 2024 with no indemnities triggered at any coverage level. We saw November’s margin continue the downtrend from September’s peak margin of $15.57. November’s all-milk price dropped…
Based on the November USDA Milk Production report, we saw a modest increase in Pennsylvania’s milk production of 1.0% from November 2023’s 783 million pounds to November 2024’s 791 million pounds. PA cow numbers were down 1,000 head from last year’s 466,000 head to 465,000 head. Milk output per cow climbed 20 pounds from 1,680…
It gets talked about all the time, and it is an ever more important feature in the US dairy market as we ship about 4% of our milk in the form of cheese on a protein basis into the international market. But we often don’t take the time to break down the who, what, and…
