In January, I had the opportunity to volunteer at the Calving Corner, which is Pennsylvania’s live dairy cow birthing center at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

Twenty-five miles inland from the Atlantic coast, along the Savannah River, you can still see the rise and fall of the ocean tide.

Every day on the farm, we have one goal: Keep the cows happy. Everything dairy farmers do centers around this so they produce milk. Taking care of the cows is my number one priority.

Using feed additives to reduce enteric methane emissions from dairy cows is getting a lot of press lately. Scientific evidence with promising results is growing rapidly. 

We’ve seen a lot of headlines and news articles lately about trends and changes in the workforce. From the “quiet quitting” trend to tightening labor markets in nearly every industry to the transition back to the office after the COVID-19 pandemic, it is a new day in how we approach and work with our teams. 

What once was old is new again after an old cheese factory was rebuilt into an eight-room boutique hotel, restaurant, café and micro-dairy plant. 

No industry is immune from disruptions, but dairy can survive and thrive through innovation, building relational trust and being active participants in government, speakers told producers and allied industry representatives during the 2023 Dairy Strong conference.

Adding grain to the dairy cow diet supplies energy and generally increases milk production above what the cow would produce on a forage-based diet alone. But production isn’t everything.