Posted: October 11, 2011 at 12:51 pm
By Cindy Zimmerman
His motto is “Have Cheese, Will Travel” but Cheese Chef John Esser doesn’t have to travel very far to showcase his culinary skills at World Dairy Expo each year, since he is based right there in Madison, Wisconsin.
John has been an independent consultant to cheese manufacturers and dairy industry organizations, including the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, for the last 18 years and he really knows his cheese! He is especially talented when it comes to pairing the distinctive flavors of various cheeses with other foods that make your taste buds do the tango.
At the expo Talk Session for the media this year, John grilled up some cheese and turkey sandwiches, featuring Big Ed’s Gouda from Saxony Creamery. He also torched a Gruyère-topped crouton and added that to a French onion soup.
Watch Chef John demonstrate his recipes and show off some of the cheese pairings on display. For great cheese recipes, check out www.eatwisconsincheese.com.
It’s a tradition for the selection of the grand champion Brown Swiss at World Dairy Expo to be accompanied by classical Swiss music and dress, complete with yodeling, alphorn blowing, and cowbell ringing. Pictured in the foreground here is Dublin-Hills Treats owned by Peter Vail and Ken Main of Copake, NY walking in front of the New Glarus Jodlerklub just before being named the 2011 Grand Champion.
After we saw some of the performance by the 80-year-old yodel club that hails from New Glarus, Wisconsin, we happened to catch up with a couple of the members walking around the expo ringing their gigantic cow bells, which they say came from Switzerland where they were worn by lead cows as they were moved from one pasture to another.
Watch the Jodlerklub in action and enjoy a very impromptu interview with yodelers Ernie Jaggi, Roberly Williamson and Dwight Truttman.
The Grand Champion Holstein, Eastside Lewisdale Gold Missy, paraded across the colored shavings to win the Supreme Champion honors, along with $1,500 Cash Award from BouMatic, a royal blanket courtesy of Agpro, Inc., Paris, Texas and a director’s chair sponsored by Royal Brand Embroidery, Ellsworth, Wisconsin. Missy is owned by Morsan, Van Ruinen Dairy, M. Butz and G. Andreasen.
Watch the World Dairy Expo video of the announcement here:
The Reserve Champion title was earned by the Grand Champion Jersey, Pine Haven SSM Marmie, owned by Nic, Jeni, Ben and Andy Sauder of Tremont, Illinois. Meanwhile, Ben Sauder took home the Junior Supreme Champion award for the third year in a row with a Jersey Junior 3-year-old cow, South Mountain Voltage Spice-ET sired by Golden Elliott Voltage. Britney Hill of Bristol, Vermont won the Reserve Supreme Champion of the Junior Show with her Red & White 4-year-old cow, Ainger Advent Jessa-Red sired by KHW Kite Advent-Red.
Robotics is a word I’ve been hearing a lot around the media room at this year’s Expo. That’s probably because of several announcements like this one from DeLaval. At this year’s show they’re debuting the AMR automatic milking rotary system. I interviewed Thierry Perrotin, Marketing Implementation Manager, who is based in Sweden. You can see the unit in action in the video interview below.
The DeLaval AMR™ is the world’s first automatic milking rotary system. Winner of the EuroTier 2010 Gold Medal for innovation, the DeLaval AMR has been tested on farms in Sweden and Australia. The DeLaval AMR is the most advanced milking technology available – providing an automatic milking solution flexible enough to operate in different farming practices, from free stalls and loose housing to pasture-based dairying.
“The AMR meets the changing needs of our customers in North America,” said Christian Poggensee, Regional President North America. “As herd sizes continue to grow, the AMR is set to revolutionize high capacity automatic milking while offering dairy farmers better profitability, farm management and flexibility.”
The main components of the DeLaval AMR are teat preparation, attachment and teat-spray modules, two touch screens to operate the system, automatic cup back flush, automatic floor cleaning and safety systems. The first AMR systems will have up to 90 cow/hour capacity, depending on the number of robots installed. As many as five robots can be attached to the rotary.
Additionally, the DeLaval exhibit at World Dairy Expo will feature the United States’ public debut of Herd Navigator™, an advanced analysis system focused on proactive herd management.
Last week I joined with other members of the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) for the 2011 IFAJ Congress. We meet every year in a different country to learn about agriculture there and for professional improvement sessions. This year we were in Canada and visited some dairy farms. My tour group visited Claynook Farms where we met owners, Wayne and Dennis Wagler.
The conversation with the dairy operators covered just about every topic you could imagine from genetics to marketing. I recorded part of a conversation with reporters in which I asked about their thoughts on the Canadian supply management system (more on that later). You can listen in on that Q&A here: Claynook Farms
I also recorded a video clip with part of the discussion too.
The Dairy Goddess couldn’t attend the AgChat Foundation’s Agvocacy 2.0 Conference she passed along a video link to share around and I found it via the conference Facebook page. It’s a great video and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Here’s what the producer has to say about why he made the video:
So after watching a video a friend made about his “chicks” on his chicken farm(linked below). My friend Marcelo Alves and I decided we could not only make a similar video about my dairy farm but do it even bigger and better. So we decided to try and make a full on music video, and this video is the result.
Posted: March 8, 2011 at 4:21 pm
By Cindy Zimmerman
Today in Reno, Novus International introduced an innovative program to help dairy producers enhance the comfort and well-being of their herds so they can better maximize productivity and enrich dairy industry sustainability. The Novus C.O.W.S. program launched with a new website – www.novuscows.com.
C.O.W.S. stands for Comfort, Oxidative Balance, Well-Being and Sustainability. Each of these four key pillars of the program play an integral role in the objective, systematic approach Novus takes in helping dairy producers evaluate the major factors that impact productive efficiency.
The C.O.W.S. program will be offered to individual key Novus customers as a complementary, value-added service. Confidential farm evaluations will be performed by Novus specialists and include:
• Cow lying time measured with electronic data loggers;
• Gait scores and hock health;
• Facility design and management measures that affect cow comfort
A customized report is provided to each farm, along with benchmarks of other operations in the region, so producers can gauge whether they have problems that should be addressed.
U.S. program benchmarks are currently being established through the evaluation of 140 dairy operations in California, New Mexico, New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Texas. The program is based on a recently completed study by the University of British Columbia Animal Welfare Program that analyzed on-farm cow comfort assessment with 43 free-stall dairies in that province.
Find out more in this introductory video from Novus:
Posted: February 10, 2011 at 11:52 am
By Cindy Zimmerman
A friend of mine sent me this hilarious “Got Milk” video about how milk can help relieve symptoms of pre-menstrual syndrome. It is at least four years old and appears to be a legit commercial produced by the dairy campaign at one time, but it’s not really clear if it ever actually aired on television.
PMS is often the butt of female jokes, but it really is no laughing matter for women who suffer from it. The premise that calcium can help relieve PMS symptoms is actually true, according to many websites devoted to the topic. For example, according to pmsingblog.com, “Symptoms of premenstrual syndrome can debilitate some women, but there is clear evidence that calcium may help naturally relieving PMS.”
The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology published a great study, describing the ability of the calcium to help naturally relieving PMS. According to the results of a study, more than a thousand women took 1,200 milligrams of calcium for three month, and it helped them ease PMS symptoms, significantly decreasing them by half. According to some other researches, women suffering from heavy PMS symptoms usually have problems with calcium metabolism, and that is the main source of their symptoms. When it comes to the symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, calcium appears to be an essential mineral.
Posted: November 8, 2010 at 10:27 am
By Cindy Zimmerman
“Everybody that comes out here wants to know about the steers with the windows,” according to Skip Hampton, manager of product research for Novus International.
Skip is also the manager of Novus’ new research facility Green Acres Farm in Montgomery County, Missouri. He says the Holstein steers are used for research trials to study rumen bypass – how an ingredient is degraded or protected in the rumen. To do so, they surgically implant a window into the rumen. “The port doesn’t hurt them and we can pop the center out of there and put products in that we want to test,” he said.
“Their feed consumption is just about the same as a lactating dairy cow,” Skip explains. “So, the idea is to use those as a model for a lactating dairy cow and we can look at a lot of different product concepts through the steers.”
Skip says the steers are much easier to handle and are really just like big dogs. “These guys are probably about 1300 pounds right now and they’re like a bunch of big German Shepherds.”
I’m borrowing from the Alltech blog, Innovations, here. They produced a short video to answer a question very important to dairy farmers. How would you answer the question?
What is the most important thing for a dairy farmer to consider with regard to economic sustainability?
Sustainability means many things to many people. Geoff Frank is CEO of Improcrop, an Alltech Regional Sales Manager and a dairy farmer. I asked Geoff to describe the most important issue for dairy farmers as the industry strives for economic sustainability.
This video is what set the stage for the Alltech Global 500. We’re talking innovation, sustainability, risk management, feeding efficiency and much more.
Cotton Incorporated is asking dairy producers to get creative with their video cameras.
A free truckload of whole cottonseed is just one of the prizes dairy producers will have a chance to win by participating in Cotton Incorporated’s new video contest, dubbed “Innovative on-farm storage solutions for cottonseed.” Launching November 1, the contest invites dairy producers to grab their cameras and show off their cottonseed storage savvy.
While fun at heart, the video contest was created with purpose: to educate fellow dairy producers about innovative and cost-effective storage solutions for the feedstuff, supplies for which are forecast to double in 2010-11. The contest will live on Cotton Incorporated’s recently launched website, www.wholecottonseed.com. The new website and contest coexist to engage progressive dairy producers with whole fuzzy cottonseed in a new and interactive way.
The video contest entry requires dairy producers to demonstrate in three minutes or less an innovative storage solution for cottonseed. Entries must be submitted at www.wholecottonseed.com/contest by December 10, 2010. Cotton Incorporated will select the top five videos, based on the following criteria weighed at 25 percent each: originality, maintenance of seed quality, economic feasibility and presentation (clarity of message, creative, professional delivery). The five finalists will receive a $500 Visa® gift card and a Kodak® flip camera and digital picture frame. The public will subsequently have the opportunity to vote and elect the winning video. The recipient of the grand prize shall receive a free truckload of cottonseed worth approximately $5,000.
Here’s a little social media marketing for you. It’s Yeo Valley Group’s rap video to promote their products. How many of you agribusiness companies are brave enough to try it? Thanks to Lindsay at Corn Scoops for the heads up.
I really like the name of their YouTube channel which is Yeotube.
Posted: October 11, 2010 at 9:25 pm
By Cindy Zimmerman
Hoard’s Dairyman is celebrating a milestone this year that few can claim these days – 125 years of serving readers.
“It’s been a very interesting year for us from the standpoint of celebrating our historic anniversary and secondly, positioning ourselves for the future,” Director of Marketing Gary Vorpahl told me during an interview at World Dairy Expo.
Part of the publication’s longevity can be attributed to diversification and changing with the times. “We’re Twittering and Facebook and Linkedin,” Gary says. “We’ve got three divisions of the company – a newspaper division which is comprised of one daily and 12 weekly newspapers, a commercial printing division where we print everything from last year’s Super Bowl program to high end magazines for shopping centers, and then we have a magazine division, which is comprised primarily of Hoard’s Dairyman, but is also another group of track and field magazines.”
First and foremost, however, Hoard’s is the dairy industry’s leading dairy publication, which was started in January 1885 by W.D. Hoard, the former governor of Wisconsin who was instrumental in making the state the dairy leader it is today. Gary says the publication will continue to evolve and remain relevant. “The print magazine will continue to be valuable but the way we deliver it will probably change as more and more high speed internet is available it will offer us more opportunities to do things in video, more extensive types of podcasting and learning modules,” he said.
Posted: October 10, 2010 at 7:08 pm
By Cindy Zimmerman
A simple, inexpensive instrument that is routinely used to measure liquids like wine or orange juice to determine the amount of soluble solids in solution can also be used to quickly measure the quality of colostrum for newborn calves.
Research published in the August Journal of Dairy Science showed how Brix refractometer instruments can be used effectively for the measurement of Ig concentration of colostrum and at World Dairy Expo, APC, Inc. was giving away four of the refractometers every day during the trade show. The instruments are available on-line for about $50-60.
I talked with Jim Quigley, director of calf operations for APC, about how the refractometer can help producers better manage their colostrum program. “If the producer mismanages the first 24 hours of a calf’s life, it can really affect the calf for the rest of it’s life and impair its ability to milk when she grows up,” Jim told me.
The refractometer is easy to use and gives a reading within seconds of the quality of colostrum. “This brix refractometer can be a pretty good tool to help the producer, very quickly at cow-side, to identify the colostrum that’s good quality from the colostrum that’s poor quality,” he explained. “They’re very simple and easy to use and quite handy on the farm, since with feeding colostrum, time is of the essence.” APC offers products that are used to replace or supplement colostrum if a producer finds that necessary.
I talked with Peter Langebeeke, president of North America operations for Lely, about the new feedpusher and some of the company’s recent accomplishments. “Lely started out 60 years ago making farm equipment on the farm of the brothers van der Lely,” said Peter. “Ten years ago we brought the robot to the U.S. and we started at the Knigge Farm in Wisconsin.” Lely held an event at the Knigge Farm in September to celebrate the milestone and to highlight the latest in robotic milking technology ― the Lely Astronaut A3 Next.
Juno the Feedpusher is the newest robotic technology introduced by Lely and they were very pleased with all the attention it was getting on display for the first time at World Dairy Expo. “Everybody realizes that feed pushing is important if you want to make sure that cows have feed in front of them all the time,” Peter said.
Posted: October 7, 2010 at 3:37 pm
By Cindy Zimmerman
When the exhibit judges saw what BouMatic had on display at the 2010 World Dairy Expo, it was no contest who was getting the Best Large Booth award.
The Robotic Post Milking Spray System was quite an attention-getter at the expo. “After the cow is milked, this system will apply teat dip automatically and consistently as the cows come through the system,” says BouMatic’s John Mansavage, who says the machine can take the place of three full time employees on a commercial dairy.
They still have a few tweaks to do before the system becomes commercially available, so John didn’t give a time frame for that, nor would he say how much it might cost, but he says it will be well worth it in terms of saving labor costs.
Posted: October 5, 2010 at 11:53 am
By Cindy Zimmerman
Oakridge-Bahler Farm is one of the top-producing and most successful dairies in the Eastern U.S. The third-generation dairy owned by Vern, Dave and Dan Bahler has earned numerous awards for its progressive practices, including Connecticut’s ‘Dairy of Distinction’ award and the New England Green Pastures Award.
Under the direction of Dave Hartford, dairy operations manager, Oakridge-Bahler Farm has doubled in size over the last ten years. The herd currently stands at 1,875 cows with 1,600 in the milking string. Hartford attributes much of the dairy’s success to its colostrum harvest management program designed to reduce calf scours. “We’ve been involved for a number of years with a product called Scour Bos, marketed through Novartis, we’ve been using it about 12 years,” Dave said during an interview at World Dairy Expo. “We vaccinate the mothers before they calve and the immunity for scours comes through their colostrum.”
They harvest the colostrum, refrigerate it within ten minutes, and throw it out if it is not used within three days. “We just have general commonsense animal husbandry, things that work good for us,” Dave says. He adds that Oakridge-Bahler is up to 800 female calves a year and last year they only lost five.
Posted: October 4, 2010 at 9:59 am
By Cindy Zimmerman
Alpharma sponsored a media breakfast at World Dairy Expo featuring the latest research into precision feeding of dairy replacement heifers, presented by Pat Hoffman with the Department of Dairy Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“There’s been a lot of research work around the country on trying to capture some management practices that improve feed efficiency and reduce costs for dairy replacement heifers and precision feeding is one of those practices that seems to be really working out to have some very distinct benefits,” Pat told me in an interview after his presentation. His research suggests that dry matter intake can be reduced by 2-3 pounds per day without any carryover effects on milk production down the road. They also saw increased feed efficiency in the research and decreased excretions.
“What we’re trying to accomplish with precision feeding is just the subtle limitation of dry matter, trying to save a few cents in feed costs, trying to reduce manure excretion without changing the well being or productive performance of the animal at all,” Pat says. “Precision feeding means that you’re going to feed precisely the nutrients that they need.” That means that the feed is concentrated in terms of protein and is utilized more efficiently.
I also talked with Lance Fox of Alpharma about why they sponsored this particular presentation at expo. “Alpharma has historically been active in the dairy heifer industry,” Lance said. “Pat’s been doing some recent research and we wanted the audience to get that updated research.”
Lance says Pat worked with Alpharma on the idea of updating research he did a few years ago on precision feeding. “In this new study he wanted to look at applying an ionophore to the diet and see if we could tweak that diet back a little more and have an economic advantage for the producer,” said Lance. Alpharma’s ionophore on the market is called Bovatec which is widely used in cattle to control coccidiosis and optimize feed efficiency/gain. “If we take a pound of corn at 6-8 cents per pound, the ionophore at about 300 mg per head per day is three cents per head per day, so you’ve got a nice return on investment when you can replace a pound of corn in the diet,” he said, and that held true in the latest research.
Since World Dairy Expo is held in the nation’s number one cheese producing state, it’s no surprise to find that cheese is just about everywhere.
One of the special events for the media at the expo is the Talk Session, sponsored by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board each year. It gives the media a chance to do interviews with some of the newsmakers at the expo while sampling an assortment of fabulous cheese pairings and recipes cooked up by Chef John Esser. Each year Chef Esser tantalizes our taste buds with special treats, including gourmet grilled cheese concoctions that can be found on the WMMB’s Grilled Cheese Academy website.
I shot a little video here with Chef Esser describing some of the highlights on the table this year:
His motto is “Have Cheese, Will Travel” but Cheese Chef John Esser doesn’t have to travel very far to showcase his culinary skills at World Dairy Expo each year, since he is based right there in Madison, Wisconsin. 
It’s a tradition for the selection of the grand champion Brown Swiss at World Dairy Expo to be accompanied by classical Swiss music and dress, complete with yodeling, alphorn blowing, and cowbell ringing. Pictured in the foreground here is 
The 
C.O.W.S. stands for Comfort, Oxidative Balance, Well-Being and Sustainability. Each of these four key pillars of the program play an integral role in the objective, systematic approach Novus takes in helping dairy producers evaluate the major factors that impact productive efficiency.
“Everybody that comes out here wants to know about the steers with the windows,” according to Skip Hampton, manager of product research for 
“It’s been a very interesting year for us from the standpoint of celebrating our historic anniversary and secondly, positioning ourselves for the future,” Director of Marketing Gary Vorpahl told me during an interview at World Dairy Expo. 
A brand new 
When the exhibit judges saw what 
The Robotic Post Milking Spray System was quite an attention-getter at the expo. “After the cow is milked, this system will apply teat dip automatically and consistently as the cows come through the system,” says BouMatic’s John Mansavage, who says the machine can take the place of three full time employees on a commercial dairy.
I also talked with Lance Fox of Alpharma about why they sponsored this particular presentation at expo. “Alpharma has historically been active in the dairy heifer industry,” Lance said. “Pat’s been doing some recent research and we wanted the audience to get that updated research.” 
Since World Dairy Expo is held in the nation’s number one cheese producing state, it’s no surprise to find that cheese is just about everywhere.