BURLINGTON – The 2024 Organic Dairy Days will feature a wide range of topics of interest to organic dairy farmers including on-farm innovations and strategies to improve milk production and forages, among others.
The program will be offered from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at two separate locations: March 13 at the Eastside Restaurant, Newport, and March 14 at the American Legion, Vergennes. The registration fee is $25 per person and includes lunch.
Fay Benson, a retired Cornell Extension small dairy specialist, leads off the program with a talk, “Is Your Heifer Program Draining Your Dairy or Adding to it?” The lineup of speakers also includes a presentation by two Maine organic dairy farmers, Haden Gooch, Mayday Farm, and Doug Hartkopf, Hart to Hart Farm, who will discuss their technological innovations for forage management on their farms.
Kurt Cotanch will describe management practices to feed the most forages possible, while Dayna Locitzer will discuss how farmers can maximize milk production by improving reproductive performance and a cow’s daily time budget. Cotanch is a dairy nutrition consultant with Barn Swallow Consulting, Underhill. Locitzer is a large animal veterinarian at the Green Mountain Bovine Clinic in Chesterfield, N.H.
Participants also will learn about grant and program opportunities from a number of state agencies and participate in table discussions at lunch with the speakers, UVM Extension staff and other farmers.
The event is supported by UVM Extension’s Northwest Crops and Soils Program in collaboration with the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center and Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont’s Organic Dairy and Livestock Technical Assistance Program.
Registrations will be accepted until March 8 online at https://go.uvm.edu/2024organicdairydays or by contacting the University of Vermont (UVM) Non-Credit Registration office at (802) 656-8470 or [email protected]. To request a disability-related accommodation to participate, please contact UVM Student Accessibility Services at (802) 656-7753 or [email protected] by February 29.
