Progressive Dairy Podcast

Do you think zero treatments and zero death loss among your calves is possible?  In this episode, you’ll hear from someone who’s done it – for four consecutive years on her farm. Canadian dairy veterinarian and dairy producer Jodi Wallace of Silverstream Holsteins joins the program. She talks about zero-zero calf care and what it takes to make it obtainable and what ultimately broke her farm’s four year zero-zero streak. During this interview, she also explains how her farm used their COVID-19 lockdown time productively.  Knowing she is a vet, you would guess that she’s always telling her producer clients to follow label instructions, but she talks about one label she’d actually like to see producers disregard until it gets changed. And by the end of the interview, you’ll be hungry for pancakes as she talks about her farm’s diversification into the maple sap harvesting business.

During a global pandemic, we learned that essential workers are people who provide everyday services and goods that we depend on, like milk. We are back with Tom and Simon, to get their perspective on how dairy producers can find ways to adapt in a tumultuous marketplace. This episode is sponsored by Zoetis.

In this episode of the Progressive Dairy Podcast, hear from Dr. Don Niles of Dairy Dreams LLC, a veterinarian and Wisconsin dairy producer who has traded in needles and lockups for technologies that take control of bovine leukosis virus (BLV) transmission, capture pounds of milk and get more cows pregnant.

“Have you ever wondered how Progressive Dairy got its start?” In this episode, hear from the man who started it all here at Progressive Dairy – Leon Leavitt. While Leon has retired from day-to-day tasks, he still drops by the office every once in a while and participates in Progressive Publishing functions. We hope you enjoy hearing our origin story straight from the mind who created it.

Ken McCarty is a fourth-generation owner of McCarty Family Farms, which owns MVP Dairy LLC in Celina, Ohio with partners VanTilburg Farms. MVP Dairy was recently recognized as a U.S. Dairy Sustainability Award winner. Hear from Ken about their holistic approach and mindset around cow comfort, soil health, worker care and community engagement with 4,400 cows and 4,500 acres of cropland in their care.

We are back at the Real Science Exchange and invite you to pull up a chair and join us to discuss the effects of heat stress on late gestation cows. Tonight’s guests, who have worked together on research in this area, Dr. Geoff Dahl with the University of Florida and Dr. Jimena Laporta with the University of Wisconsin-Madison, join Scott Sorrell and Dr. Clay Zimmerman. This episode is sponsored by Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health.

Hear from two guests in this commemorative podcast. The first guest is Karen Scanlon. She is the executive vice president for environmental stewardship for the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. She’ll talk about the purpose of the center’s annual sustainability awards and the process that goes into selecting the winners. This year is the 10th anniversary of the awards program, so she also explains how the awards are evolving and recaps some of the projects that have won in the past. The second guest is Chase Goodrich of Goodrich Family Farm in Salisbury, Vermont. Chase and his sister, Danielle, manage their family farm. It is one of several dairy farmer sustainability award winners this year. The farm has a 1.32-million-gallon anaerobic digester that produces renewable natural gas (RNG) from cow manure and food waste. It is one of the largest anaerobic digesters in the U.S. The digester is a partnership that brings together Goodrich Farm, Vanguard Renewables (developer, owner and operator of the digester), Vermont Gas Systems and Middlebury College, which will purchase much of the RNG produced at the digester.

Today we are going to talk about the past, present, and future of the dairy supply chain and how a powerful cloud-based software tool has connected all players in the industry. Joining us today from Atlantic Canada are Milk Moovement’s Co-Founder and COO Jon King along with AgriBusiness Specialist, Shelly Juurlink. This episode is sponsored by Milk Moovement.

In this Progressive Dairy Podcast, Editor Peggy Coffeen sits down with Dr. Larry Corah, Kansas State professor emeritus and now supply chain consultant for Select Sires. Corah brings his many years of experience working with cattle, feedlots and production systems to the conversation about the future of beef-on-dairy breeding.

Healthy cows are the foundation of any successful dairy, and good health begins well before lactation starts. In this episode, we continue speaking with Steven Landwehr, Annie Vannurden and Rocio Ramirez to discuss the importance of healthy cows and what a little fine-tuning and symptom identification can do for your operation. Plus, we’ll get their take on fresh cow management and the transition cow risk assessment they worked on with Zoetis. This episode is sponsored by Zoetis.