A herd of 60 dairy cows, including a herd of milking goats, are poised to return to Kingston-area prison farms.

Editorial: In defence of animal care

Prison farm activists cheer animals’ return

The announced return of the animals to prisoner rehabilitation farms in the Kingston area was an exciting victory for many in the eastern Ontario farming community. Farmers, and other community activists, had worked hard, protested, and protested some more over years to bring the prison farms back. The farm was eliminated eight years ago by […] Read more

Some dairy farmers have been breeding polled genetics into their cattle for years, but editing genes for top genetics at the cellular stage would dramatically move the trait into the population.

Editorial: Dealing with disruptive technology

My family bred polled Holsteins for 30 years, working away in fits and starts carefully crossing the limited number of polled families in the breed. In the last few years of his dairy career, until the cows were sold late last year, my father put greater emphasis on the trait, using mostly polled bulls in […] Read more

The big data dairy challenge

The big data dairy challenge

The dairy sector is showing how machine learning and artificial intelligence systems can convert raw data into insight

Dairy farm software and equipment is increasingly turning to the power of machine learning and big data sets to bring new tools to farmers. Large, established companies and startups are bringing their scale and creativity to bear on the challenge and the results are opportunities for on-farm management farmers haven’t seen before. Why it matters: […] Read more

Farmers have been building more capacity on their farms to produce milk in new barns and renovations and that additional milk is now coming into the market.  Photo: John Greig

Brakes put on milk production

The committee that manages milk allocation in Canada’s eastern provinces has said there will no more new quota issued from now to the end of July – the end of the dairy year. Regular quota increases and general enthusiasm in the dairy industry over growing demand, has led to significant milk production increases in eastern […] Read more

Knowing the genetic potential of dairy heifers long before they start producing milk has meant an acceleration of genetic improvement in dairy cattle.  Photo: John Greig

The end of the dairy breeder

Genomic testing has ushered in vast changes in how dairy genetics are developed in Canada

At the Lehoux dairy farm at Saint-Elizéar, Que., the family once had a market for bulls sold to dairy genetics companies. They still sell heifers and cows to other farmers, but the bull market has dried up, as it has for most dairy farmers across the country. Why this happened: The market has changed rapidly […] Read more


Pierre Lampron, president of Valacta and Dairy Farmers of Canada. (John Greig photo)

Dairy organizations partner to manage risk

A partnership among Canadian dairy service provider organizations should help position Canadian producers to take advantage of rapidly changing technology and make the sector more efficient, the groups say. Why does it matter? The number of Canadian dairy farmers continues to drop and the need for more efficient services is growing as the price of […] Read more




(Photo courtesy Canada Beef Inc.)

Greig: Salmonella strain hard to treat in livestock

A strain of salmonella resistant to multiple antimicrobials is spreading in Ontario and Quebec cattle herds. There have been 23 cases of Salmonella Dublin in 15 herds reported in Ontario since 2012, but the numbers have been increasing each year. There were eight cases reported in 2015 and four in 2016 through August. Dr. Dave […] Read more

(Landcorp.co.nz)

New Zealand farm firm bans use of palm in feed

Wellington | Reuters — New Zealand farm company Landcorp said Monday it would ban its farmers from using palm kernel expeller (PKE), a feed supplement used for cows that environmentalists have linked to rainforest destruction. The state-owned company, which runs 140 farms, said it would end the use of the feed by June 2017 to […] Read more