Dairy News & Insights for Progressive Farmers

Dairy Bet $1.6B on the Fastest-Drying Part of the Ogallala
Hilmar and Leprino built 8-million-pound-a-day cheese plants right over the thinnest Ogallala water — and the lenders financing the dairies that fill […]
Paul Tompkins Is Losing £1,500 a Day. His Processor Just Posted a Record Profit.
Tompkins chairs the NFU's Dairy Board and milks 500 cows at 29p against a 40p cost. In its most recent results, First Milk booked a record £20.5m prof […]
Fonterra Owners Found Out 2 Years Late. Your Co-op Bylaws Might Hide the Same Gap.
Fonterra's lawyers reached the PM's adviser through a personal email. Its 8,300 owners learned it from the news, two years on. Does your bylaw even re […]
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 […]

BREAKING: 17 Genotyped Holstein Heifers Stolen from Oakfield Corners Dairy — Industry-Wide Alert Issued UPDATE - The calves are HOME SAFE! We are so grateful to our local community, the ag community and law enforcement for all of the assistance in helping get our…
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 — and the family's top cow is…
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…
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 turned up in a 3-week-old calf in Zavala County. For dairies near the border, the real problem isn't the parasite — it's the…
Your Fans Can’t Fix Half of Heat Stress. Your Ration Can. About half your summer milk loss happens inside the cow, not at the bunk — and no number of fans touches it. A $15 forage test and the right DCAD…

Against All Odds: The Dreamers, Rebels, and Risk-Takers Who Built the Modern Holstein
In the fall of 1972, a bright-red calf walked into a New York sale ring where the whole Holstein establishment still called h […]
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 […]

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…