Beef-on-dairy crossbred calves through the supply chain

Mandy Schmidt for Progressive Dairy

Price-taker mentality: Use whatever beef bull you need to get the cow pregnant with a black calf. If you don’t care about influencing your price for beef-on-dairy crossbred calves, the genetics you use don’t matter.

But are you leaving money on the table? Will your current market for generic beef-on-dairy calves hold? What happens when the number of beef-on-dairy calves being marketed continues growing and buyers raise expectations?

Follow the journey of beef-on-dairy calves from farm to harvest.

Weekly Digest: More corn and soybean acreage but smaller hay area in 2021

February DMC indemnity payments climb

Call for FMMO reform pushes on

Pandemic impact shows up in milk ‘mailbox’ prices

Progressive Dairy Industry Happenings: April 1, 2021

Hannay Reels N700 Spring Rewind Hose Reels for Dairy Farms

Take steps to prevent the salmonella cycle in calves

Ruby Wu for Progressive Dairy

Salmonella is a potential concern on many dairy operations. It’s important for all dairy producers to understand and manage this devastating disease – not only to protect herd health, but also to prevent potential impact on food safety for consumers.

Although many salmonella serovars affect dairy cattle, of particular concern is serovar Dublin. Once rarely seen in dairy herds, serovar Dublin is now the most common form of salmonella found on dairies. It also is growing in prevalence among foodborne infections in humans.

Attention to detail from birth through calfhood can help break the infection cycle.

[Podcast] Nexus Innovation Award winners

This episode contains recorded content from PDPW’s Business Conference, and Editor Walt Cooley interviews representative from each of the winning companies.
This episode is brought to you by Ritchie Industries Automatic Waterers:

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HERd Management: How I addressed inaccuracy in my son’s meat production school curriculum

Christina Winch for Progressive Dairy

Thirteen and a half years. I made it 13 and a half years without questioning the curriculum in our school district. Then my oldest son took an AP environmental science (APES) class this year as a senior.

This is a class he has enjoyed very much, and the teacher makes the topic engaging. For the most part, the topics covered I agree with, and then they had a unit called “meat production methods.”

If you aren't happy with the story being told about ag, get in there and tell it yourself.

Do you know the law of entanglement? You probably do!

You may remember this law, which states that any object can become entangled with another object without any rhyme or reason.

Read more.

Heifer Livability – where is the buzz?

Sophie Eaglen for Progressive Dairy

Heifer Livability: The new trait was released in December, but 99% of the attention went to the simultaneously released Feed Saved trait. Of course, we have been getting used to Cow Livability for a while, but it is still worthwhile to reflect on Heifer Livability for several reasons.

First, the trait is the first to target a period that is otherwise largely neglected by the genetics industry. Calving and stillbirth are traits developed to genetically improve the first few hours of life, and Heifer Conception Rate improves that first breeding. But we didn’t have a national trait that genetically aims to increase the chance of survival from calf to breeding.

Good data – and a bit of buzz