Dairy News & Insights for Progressive Farmers

384 Excellent Cows and a Royal Grand Champion: Inside Holstein USA’s 2026 Elite Breeder Jeffrey-Way Holsteins
The Hendricksons of Belleville, Wisconsin built most of their herd off one maternal line. Holstein Association USA just named them 2026 Elite Breeders […]
Class IV Is Soaring. Your Cheese-Route Blend Check Isn’t.
Class IV closed $5.40 over Class III in May. If your milk goes to cheese, almost none of that hits your blend check — and here's the ten-minute math t […]
Screwworm Just Hit a Texas Calf — And the Plant Built to Fight It Won’t Make a Single Fly Until 2027
The first U.S. New World screwworm case since 1966 turned up in a 3-week-old calf in Zavala County. For dairies near the border, the real problem isn' […]
Saputo Opened at A$8.80. That’s a A$119,000 Hole on a 400-Cow Herd.
Saputo opened 2026–27 at A$8.80/kgMS; farmers wanted A$9.50. On a 400-cow herd that's roughly A$119,000 a year — and a step-up nobody's promised won't […]
Metritis: $511 a Case, and Your Records Already Saw It Coming
A $511 metritis case rarely announces itself — it hides in the herd average. But your fresh-cow records flagged it days early. Here's the 30-minute Mo […]

Adam Faust Beat USDA in 11 Months. The Checkoff May Be Next. A Wisconsin law firm walked USDA into a settlement in 11 months. Now they're studying the $18,000-a-year checkoff bill on a 500-cow dairy. No complaint filed yet — but the…
Curtis Vanden Berge: How Holstein USA’s 2026 Young Breeder Built a 2,800-Cow Herd Around Components Most 2,800-cow dairies chase volume. Curtis Vanden Berge chased components — and hit 4.17% fat while one cow, Halogen 516-ET, seeded 200-plus descendants in his Bakersfield barn. When Holstein Association…
California Dairies’ 300 Members Could Split a $100K Recall Bill One CDI recall hit 50+ brands and 2.6 million units. Your milk tested clean — but spread the cost across 300 members and it's $33K–$100K a farm, off a check…
It’s Not Your Fans, It’s Your Genetics: Why Cows Quit Breeding at THI 60 At THI 60, some cow families keep breeding and some melt—same barn, same ration, same fans. That second group is quietly running your days open up 40 and costing 200–320…
€88,500: The Revenue Swing Waiting for DMK Farmers in 2028 A 2.2-cent top-up cushions DMK and DOC farmers through March 2028. Then component pricing kicks in — and on 1.5M kg, the swing runs to €88,500. Which way does yours…

The Spreadsheet Beats the Pedigree: Why Holstein USA Honored an Economist
A breed registry built on pedigree just gave its top 2026 award to CoBank's economist — the same guy who'll tell you why a $1 […]
Beef-on-Dairy Math: $25,200 Rides on Your Semen Order
One Panhandle dairy pulled its full-year closeout — 168 head, too much Select, almost no Prime. The gap between a +0.65 marbl […]
A 400-Cow Herd Loses $27,800 a Year to Ketosis – Then Pays Twice for “Rumen-Protected” Additives That Never Reach the Cow
At 24.1% subclinical ketosis, a 400-cow herd writes off up to $27,800 a year — then spends again on "rumen-protected" choline […]
Polled Just Hit 3371 TPI. The Dehorning Iron Is Now a Choice, Not a Necessity.
A homozygous polled bull just sat at #1 on Canada's August 2025 proven LPI list — ahead of every horned sire. The 15-year hor […]
June Dairy Month Turns 89 — and Farmers Now Keep Just 25¢ of Every Dairy Dollar
They'll ask you to pose with a calf this June. Then you go home to the milk check: $1.97 of that $3.98 gallon is yours. The o […]

Burt Haugen Came Home From Vietnam in ’68 to Milk Cows. He’s One of the 0.4%. Haugen runs an organic dairy across the highway from Joint Base Lewis-McChord. 9% of U.S. farmers served. Just 0.4% of them milk cows. That gap is roughly 3,700 trained operators…
Oakfield Corners Dairy Lost 17 Genotyped Heifers Overnight. The Dairy Community Brought Them Home Seventeen genotyped Holsteins — $3,500 to $5,000 a head — gone from Lamb Farms' pen overnight. No GPS found them. A fast-moving dairy network did, in roughly 48 hours. E571…
Maughlin Storm Built the Modern Holstein Cow. He Also Hid a Killer in Her Pedigree. One $4,400 heifer calf in 1987 became the most copied type sire of his generation — and a 1.3kb APOB insertion that reached 17% of Canadian heifers and 4.4% of…
Roxy, Dellia and The Mothers Who Built the Breed Roxy, Dellia, Blackrose and seven more didn’t just make famous pedigrees. They built the cow families still showing up in bull books, embryos and your best heifers. R554 Roxy, Dellia…
Sexation and the Ocean-View Covenant: The Herd That Taught the Holstein World to Trust Cow Families Marvin Nunes was $450 over budget when Vivian elbowed him to keep bidding. That $2,450 cow — bought partly on her teacher's pension — seeded a herd that today, more…