Calling all youth exhibitors! Halter up Bessie and get ready to show Wisconsin your “herd” work. The themes for the 2003 Wisconsin State Fair junior dairy show have been selected.

While summer and county fairs are still a few months away, Wisconsin dairy cattle judges need to be thinking about renewing or obtaining their Wisconsin Purebred Dairy Cattle Association judging certifications. PDCA has scheduled its annual judges training for April 12 at Henk and Bonnie Van Dyk’s Willow’s Edge Farm in New Richmond, WI.

Applications are now being accepted for the 2003 Badger Dairy Camp, June 12 through June 14 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Prospective dairy farmers have until April 1 to apply for an innovative program, now entering its ninth year, to help them establish their own grass-based dairy farms in Wisconsin.

Young dairy experts from Green and Richland counties took top honors at this year’s State 4-H Dairy Bowl, held Feb. 1 in Portage.

Wisconsin net farm income has gone from bad to better and back to bad over the past three years. This year, things will likely improve a bit, predict University of Wisconsin-Madison agricultural economists.

The family of the late Jim Crowley, a University of Wisconsin-Madison extension dairy specialist, gathered recently on the UW-Madison campus to install a plaque listing supporters of the Crowley Management and Extension Fund. The fund was established in Crowley’s honor shortly after his death in 1989.

A team of University of Wisconsin-Madison dairy cattle judges placed first in oral reasons and Guernseys at the 2003 Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show -Intercollegiate Dairy Cattle Judging Contest, Jan. 12 at Fort Worth, Texas.

A University of Wisconsin-Madison food scientist is using new technology to tackle an old problem in cheesemaking-and the solution could mean both a bigger market for the state’s dairy producers and reduced costs for cheesemakers.

Almost everyone has opened a container of yogurt and found a pool of liquid floating at the top. The watery substance doesn’t reduce the yogurt’s quality, but many consumers think that the presence of surface whey means that the yogurt is spoiled. As a result, most yogurt makers add stabilizers, such as pectin, to help keep the liquid from separating.