The dairy expansion era in North America, which gathered pace throughout the nineties and continues to this day, has resulted in the migration of dairy cattle from traditional tiestall and stanchion barns to the freestall facility, which has emerged as the dominant form of dairy cattle housing worldwide.

In this article, Dr. Nigel Cook will attempt to summarize the aspects of freestall design that are failing the cow, and justify the solutions we have found and the current trends emerging in the dairy industry of the Upper Mid-West. The challenge presented is to find the balance between excellent cow comfort and manageable cow cleanliness.

The 12th Annual Arlington Dairy Day is schedlued for Wednesday, December 10. The program will be held at the Arlington Ag Research Station (AARS) from 10 AM to 3 PM.

A program brochure is attached or can be found at the Dairy Science website: http://www.wisc.edu/dysci

 If you have any questions regarding this program please contact me at:

920-386-3790   M W F

608-263-9412    T  Th

robert.kaiser@ces.uwex.edu

The September/October 2008 edition of the Dairy Partner/El Companero is now available with attached pdf. Previous issues are available online at:

http://www.uwex.edu/ces/cty/fonddulac/ag/DairyPartnerElCompaneroPreviousIssues.html

The Dairy Partner is a bimonthly bilingual employee newsletter that goes out to 550 farms (1200 copies) in 15 counties.

Paul Dyk - Dairy and Livestock Agent
Email:       paul.dyk@ces.uwex.edu

For those of you interested in the Profit Opportunity Analyzer (POA) tool from AgSource, I have posted in my webpage a power point presentation that explain the details of it. this presentation was used in the Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management post-conference workshop in Dubuque, IO, June 2008.

Attached is a paper I have been working on the last couple of weeks in response to concerns about high feed costs. My intent in writing this paper is to remind people of the economic principle that says as long as dairy producers can cover feed costs and other variable costs, it makes economic sense for them to continue to keep their dairy cows in production. So with milk prices up at record highs, it still makes sense for dairy producers to keep producing milk even though some rather expensive feed is being fed to dairy cows.