This collaborative effort includes researchers here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Researchers at Iowa State University, including Dr. Daren Mueller.
Wanting to share agriculture’s story, she studied strategic communications and broadcast journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In college, she held officer positions with the Association of Women in Agriculture and Badger Dairy Club. She also founded the university’s first agricultural radio talk show, AgChat.
Noted: The University of Wisconsin-Madison named Karen Wassarman, associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Wisconsin farmers still have time to see a decent start to the growing season, said Mike Ballweg, a University of Wisconsin Extension agent in Sheboygan County.
There’s still time to have a decent start to the growing season, said Mike Ballweg, a University of Wisconsin Extension agent in Sheboygan County. “But if it’s too wet, too muddy, there’s nothing you can do but wait,” he said.
The award, which is to be presented annually to a faculty or staff member, acknowledges CALS graduate Hemstead’s pioneering work in dairy science and dairy business, according to a joint statement.
John Klatt, Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs for UW-Madison, says most students in the Dairy Science program have an accepted job offer before graduation, or shortly thereafter.
Determining when to cut first-crop alfalfa is often difficult because alfalfa quality, relative to flowering stage, varies greatly. To help with this dilemma, agronomists at the University of Wisconsin – Madison developed the Predictive Equations for Alfalfa Quality (PEAQ) method which predicts alfalfa’s Relative Feed Value (RFV) at the time of cutting.
CALS has embarked on an organizational redesign effort to optimize the structures of the college to ensure a bright future for our college, the students we teach and the people we serve through our research and outreach.
Sometimes dairy scientist Michel Wattiaux approaches his research like a cop at a traffic stop. He uses a breath analyzer to check for problematic products of fermentation.Last spring, the UW-Madison researcher began using a specialized device to measure the methane being exhaled or belched by a group of Holsteins and Jerseys.
Republic Rep. Todd Novak, of Dodgeville, says Grant, Green and Lafayette counties don’t have a full-time agent despite paying the required fees for them. He says officials are in the process of hiring an agent for Grant and five other counties.
Agents give advice, troubleshoot problems, educate through workshops and connect farmers to research at the university.
One of Wisconsin’s top experts in dairy market pricing says butter, cheese, dry whey and nonfat dry milk prices continue to average higher this spring.
Students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Dairy Science took first place at the National Intercollegiate Dairy Challenge, held April 12-14 in Visalia, Calif.
CALS has embarked on an Organizational Redesign effort to optimize the structures of the college to ensure a bright future for our college, the students we teach and the people we serve through our research and outreach.
For the second time in four years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student chapter of the National Agri?Marketing Association (Wisconsin NAMA) took home first place honors at the NAMA Student Marketing Competition April 10-13 in Kansas City, MO, defeating 29 other teams from across the U.S. and Canada in three rounds of competition.
A team of students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison brought home the top prize from the National Agri-Marketing Association’s annual marketing competition last week. The contest, hosted by NAMA as part of its national conference in Kansas City, featured more than 400 students from 30 schools across North America.
If you think UW-Madison’s athletics are the only teams winning championships, you’re wrong.
Center Director John Lucey says the upgrades will help the facility reach its full potential, while giving students an opportunity to advance their skills in cheesemaking.
The State Building Commission signed off on plans to overhaul the Center for Dairy Research and the Babcock Hall Dairy Plant at UW-Madison.
Despite outdated equipment and facilities that have plagued it for years, UW-Madison’s Center for Dairy Research is where most of the state’s master cheesemakers have learned how to craft those mouth-watering, award-winning specialty cheeses that have been credited for reinventing Wisconsin’s formidable cheese industry.
The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents on Friday approved $29.3 million in additional spending for renovation and expansion of the chemistry complex on the UW-Madison campus, bringing the cost to $123 million.
It’s a matter of weeks before soybeans are planted in some parts of the state. For farmers who have cover crops established, cover crops need to be terminated two weeks before planting, said Shawn Conley, University of Wisconsin-Madison soybean specialist.
Noted: Kubicek has a master’s degree in atmospheric science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The Hall of Fame program, which was created in 1993, is coordinated by and housed in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Meat Science and Muscle Biology Laboratory.
What do these three ladies have in common, aside from their love of horses? They are all animal science majors at UW-Madison and active members of the campus’s Saddle and Sirloin organization. They have also been busy planning the 99th annual Little International Horse Show set for Saturday, April 28, at the Alliant Energy Center’s New Holland Pavilion.
Noted: The research of Amaya Atucha, an assistant professor and Gottschalk Chair for cranberry research in the university’s horticulture department, focuses on how cranberry plants are able to withstand subfreezing temperatures during winter, as well as strategies to reduce the impact of frost and winter stress in cranberry plants.
“To bring people into organics we need mentors, people nearby who can come out to the field and answer questions,” Mesko says. Over the years, the organization has paired 281 mentors and mentees since 2008, and MOSES just wrote a grant to strengthen this program. In another program, OGRAIN with the University of Wisconsin, MOSES is helping develop grain farmer hubs, where one farmer is working with many others nearby in a network.
Row 7, a collaboration between a chef, a plant breeder and a seedsman, aims to sell seeds for vegetables that might not otherwise reach a broad market, reported the New York Times last month. One of its offerings is the Badger Flame, a beetroot of brilliant orange that a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison bred to produce a sweet and mild variety his children would enjoy.
In organic farming, farmers routinely plant green and delay termination of the cover crop for weeks after planting soybeans because they can achieve greater weed control and thus higher yields by doing so. Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania and Erin Silva’s lab at the University of Wisconsin, Madison have led the way on this research. Silva discovered that with a fixed termination date for the cover crop, but varied soybean planting before and after this termination, the soybeans planted before cover crop termination saw an 8 bushel per acre increase as compared to the soybeans planted later after cover crop termination.
Theresa Ollivett, Assistant Professor in the Food Animal Production Medicine Section, School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has become a pioneer in using thoracic (lung) ultrasounds to manage the healthy development of dairy calves.
Joining Holte as keynote speakers at the event were Mariah Martin, UW-Madison Collegiate Farm Bureau member along with Glen Schraufnagel, Wisconsin Cooperative Educational Service Agency 10 Consultant.
Dr. John Shutske, UW-Extension Agricultural Safety and Health Specialist, will present the program and discuss the science of stress and how farm families are coping with stress.
When his children were small, Irwin Goldman wanted to give them a beet to snack on — a beet so pretty and swirled with colors, so juicy and delicious, that they’d crunch on it raw.
Farmers, the scientists said, are key actors in adapting to climate change or mitigating its effects. They manage 61 percent of the nation’s land. They are vulnerable to droughts, cold, heat and hail.
Cross says Wisconsin has to be the state everyone continues to come to for answers or solutions for agriculture, and particularly the dairy industry.
The University of Wisconsin Center for Agricultural Safety and Health is awarding over $19,000 in grant money to help sponsor farm safety and health education, training or informational programs.
During the 56th annual UW-Extension Cow College’s second session, Dr. John Goeser and Dr. Randy Shaver, from the UW-Madison Dairy Science Department, reviewed lab results from 2017 forage and grain, and offered strategies to help producers get the most milk from their feed.
John Gaska, Senior Research Agronomist with the ‘Cool Bean’ project at UW-Madison, spoke about the benefits of including a small grain cover crop in your corn and bean rotation. Most of Gaska’s research has been conducted on winter wheat and oat cover crops, with some focus on barley and triticale as well.
Ted Halbach, UW-Madison faculty associate in dairy management quoted: “No other university has the number of progressive dairy operations located within a 30-mile radius of campus that we do, and there is a concentration of industry professionals who deliver them their services.”
What the dairy industry has been going through the past few years is more than an ordinary, cyclical price trough, according to Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at UW-Madison. It’s really more like a “long scrape,” with milk prices staying persistently low for an extended period, he says.
As a University of Wisconsin-Madison computer and electrical engineering professor, Susan Hagness doesn’t typically field emails about cranberry farming. Her background is in cancer detection, not agriculture.
The good news is that the multi-year decline in farm income nationally and in Wisconsin seems to have stabilized, summarized Paul Mitchell, Professor Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics, at the UW-Madison, leadoff speaker at the 2018 Ag Outlook Forum.
As a dozen “students” of all ages buzz around a pilot plant at Babcock Hall on the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus, drips of vanilla or chocolate ice cream ooze from five batch freezers.
“The fact that I went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison helps my business a lot, especially among dairy farmers,” Ueno says. “For Japanese people, ‘Wisconsin’ creates an image of a dairy state. Many farmers study dairy in Wisconsin as trainees. When I speak with dairy farmers and let them know I went to UW, they immediately think I am a specialist.”
Plastic has a huge carbon footprint: Producing the petroleum-based material accounts for at least 100 million tons of carbon emissions each year. Now, a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison has invented an inexpensive way to make plastic with a much lighter touch, from sugar and corncobs. If it can be made cheaply enough, the material could one day replace one of the world’s most common plastics—polyethylene terephthalate (PET)—found in food packaging, soda bottles, and even polyester fabric.
The opening session featured Dr. Kent Weigel, head of the UW-Madison Dairy Science Department, and dairy specialist Dr. Victor Cabrera.
Weigel reported on recent studies that examined the benefits of using genomic (DNA) analysis as a tool to improve dairy herd health and productivity.
Another study – conducted by the University of Wisconsin and paid for by the Illinois Soybean Association and the U.S. Soybean Export Council – suggests that farmers can better compete with synthetic alternatives by planting beans with a specific amino acid balance.
Ben Tilberg figured there had to be a better way to count cranberries.
The pregnancy rate of Rollin Green Dairy’s Holstein herd jumped from 18 percent to more than 40 percent in just a matter of two years.
“I attended a couple of Paul Fricke’s seminars and that motivated me to fix things,” McNeely said.
Fricke is a professor of reproductive physiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Jerry Clark, agriculture agent-department head for the Chippewa County UW-Extension office, said two major factors are related to this decline. One is that the industry is seeing a generational shift, he said, with the average age of a farmer climbing.
Loretta Ortiz-Ribbing, Dodge and Fond du lac County’s UW-Extension soils and crops agent, says “Research dollars are important for developing better ways to do things but there also has to be an education arm that allows Extension agents to deliver it to the farmers.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison will host college dairy students at the Midwest Dairy Challenge next month in Madison. The event, which will be held February 7-9, is a prominent educational competition for students planning a career in the dairy industry. Over 100 dairy students from 12 four-year colleges and six technical schools are expected to participate.
Quoted: “I don’t think the Trump administration has really done anything related to agriculture at all,” said Steven Deller, a rural development economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Agriculture agent Mark Hagedorn with UW-Extension in Eau Claire says since it’s not as profitable for dairy farms to operate on a small scale so the likelihood is they’ll continue to decline.
“We’ve got 8,839 dairies in the state versus a year ago we had 9,520. So you’re losing a herd or two a day on average,” Hagedorn explained.
Steven Deller is a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Deller says it’s difficult for small-scale dairy farms to be profitable, so the number of commercial farms will probably continue to decrease.
“The growth is really in the medium- to large-size dairy operations,” said Steven Deller, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The growth in those sectors and the increase in productivity of being a bigger operation, the volume of milk is actually not being affected by this.”
“It’s difficult for small-scale dairy farms to be profitable, so the number of commercial farms will probably continue to decrease,” Deller said. “Farms that aren’t profitable don’t contribute to the local economy,” he said.
Providing farmers with unbiased performance comparisons of hybrid seed corn for both grain and silage available in Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agriculture and Life Sciences recently released the 2017 hybrid performance trials.
Rising highway costs are making the expense of delivering hay more of a consideration, which is resulting in very regionalized hay prices, according to Dan Undersander, a member of the University of Wisconsin Madison forage team.
