For the past four years the Okaihau property of Alister and Lyn Candy and their daughter Christine has been Northland’s DairyNZ focus farm.

When animal hair falls out as it does during moulting in the spring, getting heat detectors to stay on a cow can be challenging, comments animal health company Rurtec.

Cow don't know it’s Christmas, says Brian Larson, plant manager of JD Heiskell Ltd’s Pixley branch, a big feed mill in the major dairying region of Central Valley, California.

Dairymen in California see themselves as the “star model for dairying” but they are far from creaming it.

The need for farmers to have a sound strategy to avoid flip-flopping from year to year is now more important than ever. 

More than 200 people turned up to the field day Maranga Station. Maranga is a typical East Coast hill country sheep and beef property and lies about 30km southwest of Gisborne on the Tiniroto Road.

In February the management team at Lincoln University were wringing their hands as the season appeared to be turning to custard, but at the latest field day the tone was much more upbeat.

To call it a perfect storm trivialises the difficulties primary producers are facing in the balance between environment, welfare (human and animal) and economics. 

DairyNZ developer Jane Kay says the term ‘mammary memory’ is being bandied around the industry, causing farmers to question their drying off decisions and continue milking when this might not be the best option.

Working as a veterinarian pregnancy testing dairy herds helped shape the thinking of Australian farmer Tim Humphris when he and his wife Lyndal decided to go farming.