The January 14th NYCO meeting will include beginning farmers from Ridgeway Wisconsin, John and Halee Wepking. Other speakers will be Cornell’s Dr. Margaret Smith describing plant physiology that benefits from organic management. Also Ryker Smith, Jeremy Mapstone, and Kirk Arnold will discuss how they get consistent quality forage in for their organic dairies even when the weather isn’t consistent.

Meeting will begin at 10 AM at the J. Martin Auction Facility at 1036 NY-318, Waterloo, NY . No need to register for this free meeting, just bring a dish to pass for the lunch.

Heif study article 11.19.19_jd edits

Healthy Animals From Natural Behaviors

NYCO 2019 will be held on:

January 8: Bedded Packs & Organic Crops

February 12: Understanding Soil Management and Cover Crops Role in Providing Good Growing Conditions for Your Crops

March 12: Understanding the Cultural Environment of Weed Management from Cornell’s Pioneer Weed Scientist & Farmer Panel on High Speed Tillage Disks

The New York Organic Dairy Program (NYODP) collaborated with researchers from four other Northeastern States on a five year USDA OREI Grant. The project ended in 2016 and the work has resulted in two research papers recently published in the “Journal of Dairy Science”. The papers describe work done on organic dairy farms from each of the five states including one farm from Tompkins County, NY and another from Cortland County, NY. Our research team was interested in the quality of pasture during the grazing season on these farms as well as the feeding of flax meal to dairy cows during the winter months. The first paper describes how the quality and quantity of the pasture leads to higher Omega-3 in the milk. The second paper describes an experiment in which the herds were divided in two groups with one half receiving a ration balanced with corn and soybeans and the other half ration balanced with flax meal. The milk from each group was then tested for the types and amount of the two fatty acids.

Links to both papers can be found below:

• Impacts of seasonal variation and winter supplementation of ground whole flaxseed on milk fatty acid composition of organic dairy cows in the northeastern United States 
• Feeding strategy and pasture quality relative to nutrient requirements of dairy cows in the northeastern U.S. 

On April 27th we were part of Cornell’s first Organic Symposium. We were joined by Cornell students and faculty, industry representatives, and fellow extension educators for an afternoon full of presentations and breakout sessions. You can see a few picture of the event here.

Check out the Biweekly Organic Dairy Report from the USDA.

Ryan Murray and Annie Grant farm 150 acres in Truxton, New York. Recently, American Agriculturalist shared a great story about them. Read the article online.