Podcast Episodes
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E509 The 3‑Lactation Trap: Are $3,010 Heifers Pushing You Toward Beef Checks Instead of Five‑Lactation Cows?
Season 1 Episode 509
USDA just counted the fewest dairy replacement heifers since 1978 — 3.914 million head — while the average replacement now costs around $3,010. At th…
1 month, 1 week ago
E508 5 Backup Bulls Nobody Wanted That Rewrote the Holstein Breed
Season 1 Episode 508
Five "backup" bulls nobody initially chased—Mark, Mtoto, O-Man, Blitz, and Elevation—now shape nearly every modern Holstein. Their stories follow the…
1 month, 1 week ago
E507 How the Juárez Blockades Froze $1.45 Billion – and Blindsided Your Milk Check
Season 1 Episode 507
Mexico now buys roughly 4.5% of U.S. milk production and more than a quarter of U.S. dairy export value. In late 2025, coordinated blockades at Ciuda…
1 month, 1 week ago
E506 Emily Miller-Cushon’s Physics-to-Dairy Pivot: Pair Housing’s 130g/Day Gain Edge and $3,300/Heifer Savings
Season 1 Episode 506
A physicist from the University of Waterloo traded quantum equations for calf barns—and earned the U.S. government's top early-career science award (…
1 month, 1 week ago
E505 Calves for a Cause $170,000 and Counting: How One Dairy Family’s Crisis United an Industry Around a Little Boy
Season 1 Episode 505
A blue baby. A rushed ambulance ride. A dairy dad sitting in a hard plastic NICU chair, staring at a tangle of wires keeping his newborn son alive wh…
1 month, 1 week ago
E504 The $99 Bolus That Protected Ferme Petitclerc’s Royal Winter Fair Run
Season 1 Episode 504
Most breeders still trust eyes, instinct, and twice‑a‑day checks to protect their most valuable cattle. In this episode, we follow a real Royal Winte…
1 month, 1 week ago
E503 From 6 Crises to 75 Tractors: Reed Hostetler’s Death and the $470K Page That Rewrote Dairy’s Road
Season 1 Episode 503
Everyone says “community matters,” but almost nobody in dairy has put numbers to it. This episode walks through six real crises — manure gas deaths, …
1 month, 2 weeks ago
E502 To-Mar Blackstar: The One-Embryo Holstein Sire Behind 15.8% of Today’s DNA – and the Genetic Debt in Your Herd
Season 1 Episode 502
To-Mar Blackstar began as a single embryo on a working Iowa dairy — and became the most related sire in Holstein history. Randy Tompkins flushed one …
1 month, 2 weeks ago
E501 Dairy’s $444 Problem Has a 90% Solution – And It Lives Inside Victor Cabrera’s and the University of Wisconsin’s Dairy Brain.
Season 1 Episode 501
Somewhere on a Wisconsin dairy, a cow is about to get mastitis. She looks fine. Her milk's still flowing. Nobody in the parlor suspects a thing. But …
1 month, 2 weeks ago
E500 Six Colorado Dairy Workers Dead. OSHA’s Price: $41,101 a Life – and no jail time.
Season 1 Episode 500
Six dairy workers — including a father, his two sons, and a son-in-law — died from hydrogen sulfide exposure in a single pump room at a Colorado dair…
1 month, 3 weeks ago