MANAGEMENT

Within the last 10 years, a lot has changed in modern agriculture. Scientific and technological advances have allowed dairy producers the opportunity to propel various aspects of their business operating capabilities by leaps and bounds.

“I wasn’t able to talk for over two years about what happened with my grandfather,” a young farmer confides as he describes a bitter battle over the transition of land titles from his father’s father to him.

It does not matter if the person who is injured at your workplace is an employee, family member, visitor, contractor or someone of the general public. If they have a critical injury, it must be reported to the Ministry of Labour.

As farmers, we face challenges and feel stress every day. It is when it becomes unrelenting and overwhelming we begin to experience negative side effects.

Precision dairy technologies are advancing at an exponential rate. These technologies are allowing us to track and monitor an individual cow’s activity, rumination, production and even location in a pen on a daily (or even hourly) basis. But with these advancements in individual cow monitoring, we sometimes forget that these individual cows do not function independently of one another in a herd. A cow is affected by how well she can access the resources she needs in a herd, both in a tiestall and a freestall environment.

This year’s spring is one for the records when it comes to the growth and harvest of first-cut forage. According to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, southwestern Ontario has at least 50% of fields experiencing some winterkill to as much as 80% of fields being affected in central and eastern Ontario.