from the Brattleboro Reformer
BRATTLEBORO — If Jairo Blanco has his way, Vermont might one day become the international home of the people’s cow.Blanco has been working with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture to ship Holstein embryos to Argentina, and a few weeks ago, 50 frozen embryos arrived in the South American country.
Embryo transfer is a common technology in the livestock industry. But according to Blanco, most shipping consultants have largely concentrated on the high-end, pedigree embryos that sell for about $10,000 each.
The Vermont embryos that arrived in Argentina late last month sold for $600 apiece and Blanco said he hopes it is the first of many international shipments that will help spread the state’s well-respected herd across the globe.
“A lot of South American farms don’t require a $10,000 embryo to get what they need,” said Blanco, who is an international dairy consultant who lives in South Burlington and is a native of Colombia. “The average Vermont farmer has some very powerful cows that are not being marketed properly. We are opening a new opportunity for the average Vermont dairy farm.”
Argentina cows, on average, produce 10,000 pounds of milk annually, while the U.S. average is just less than 20,000 pounds, the Vermont Agency of Agriculture reports.
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from The Green Bay Gazette
HOLLAND — It was the year man first landed on the moon and the Manson family shocked California and the nation.
That year, 1969, also was the last time Brown County hosted Wisconsin Farm Technology Days about 1.5 miles south of the 2008 site in the town of Holland.
Like the tractors, clothing and ag equipment shown in black-and-white photographs from 1969, Brown County has seen changes in one of its backbone industries: agriculture.
“(Total mixed rations) and mixed rations were just becoming the big thing back in those days,” said Mark Hagedorn, ag agent for the Brown County University of Wisconsin-Extension, while looking at photos of the event from 40 years ago. “What you’re trying to accomplish is the same … but what is so different is the scale in which you can accomplish it now compared to then.”
Back then, there were 40,919 cows in the county, compared with 40,000 in 2006, according to state numbers. That’s a figure Hagedorn said has been relatively static over the last four decades.
But where the numbers get more interesting are milk production per cow and herd size.
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from The New York Times
FOR the herd of Black Angus cattle that roams Alexander Saunders’s rolling 140-acre farm here, home has become something of an interactive playground. A group of local artists installed 35 sculptures and other works of site-specific art in August, and the cows have gotten involved — knocking things over, moving sculptures around, taking the occasional bite.
“In our prospectus to the artists, we made it clear that the pieces had to be cow friendly — no cables, no pointy edges, no holes,” said A. Eric Arctander, an artist and founding member of Collaborative Concepts, the nonprofit association of artists that organized and administered the exhibition, which runs through Halloween.
“What we didn’t realize was that everything also had to be cow proof,” Mr. Arctander added as he walked the grounds, “because the cows have eaten two pieces so far and knocked over several others. They’re very curious.”
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from The Chicago Tribune
MARNE, Mich. - When four children paraded four black-and-white Holstein dairy cows at the Berlin Fair, the judges may have done a double-take.
Not at the cows — at their handlers.
Noah, Tayla, Seth and Sarah Modderman, 9-year-old quadruplets from Allendale, were competing Monday in their first 4-H event. They attended the annual fair in Ottawa County alongside their brother Colson, 13, who also competed.
Tayla, holding a cow named Shadow, said she hoped the judges would ask easy questions.
Noah hugged Lucky Seven, his calf, and said the cow “likes to walk. He never stops.”
And Sarah said her charge, Chocolate, is shy but can become naughty in the ring.
The Modderman clan isn’t a farming family — the calves were provided by uncle Roger Breen, a manager at nearby River Ridge Dairy.
Jeff Modderman, the quadruplets’ father, said the exhibition is “nerve-racking for dad, but great for them.”
His wife Luanne said the children got a lot out of preparing for the competition.
“They’ve learned responsibility,” he told The Grand Rapids Press. “Every day, they take care of these cows.”
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