Visitors to the Marshfield Agricultural Research Station’s summer field day Tuesday, Aug. 23, will open the day with a welcome and research update from station superintendent Tom Drendel and assistant superintendent Mike Bertram.

The UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems has been selected by the EPA as a Pesticide Environmental Stewardship Program Champion for 2005. This designation honors CIAS for its efforts to reduce pesticide risk through sustainable agricultural practices such as Integrated Pest Management and organic farming. CIAS also received this national honor in 2003.

Columbia County won the State 4-H Senior Dairy Judging Contest held July 29, 2005 at the Polk County Fair in St. Croix Falls. They earned the right to represent Wisconsin at the National 4-H Contest held at World Dairy Expo in Madison. Polk County finished second and Walworth County was third. Polk County will travel to the Pennsylvania All-American Youth Dairy Judging Contest in Harrisburg, Pa.

We made it! Our determined group of ten riders completed the 235-mile ride from Cadott to Madison June 24 to June 27 in great spirits … and with only

Twelve senior dairy judging teams and eight individuals from across the state will travel to the Polk Country Fairgrounds July 29 to compete in the 2005 State 4-H Senior Dairy Cattle Judging contest and vie for the opportunity to move on to a national-level contest. The teams and individuals are selected from four statewide district judging contest as part of the 4-H Area Animal Science Days program. Participants judge eight classes of dairy cows and heifers at each competition. Seniors who are 15 to 19 years old give reasons on three classes while younger junior contestants answer conformation-related questions on two classes.

A group of food science students captured first place this year in a national product development contest for

Ground was broken July 7 for the new Cereal Crops Research Unit on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The new facility is funded and operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service.

A milk pasteurization and process control certification course will be held Aug. 16-17 at the Babcock Dairy Plant on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.

The first of four Area Animal Science Days was held at Gays Mills in Crawford County on Friday, June 24. In the dairy cattle judging competition, 113 youth judged eight classes of dairy cows and heifers. In all, 52 senior judges gave oral reasons and 61 juniors answered conformation-related questions as they all competed for spots in their respective state contests.

Between February 14 and March 19 of this year, 10 cows that were part of a herd of beef cattle being studied by a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist died at Franbrook Farm, a university-operated facility near New Glarus, Wis. The cattle had been housed at this facility for more than four years without incident, but in February they were discovered to be excessively thin, evidently the result of not having been fed a nutritionally adequate diet. Six of the 10 cows apparently died due to complications during calving.