2012 Milk Mustache Contest Winner

We at Gilmer Dairy Farm are proud to announce that Carly, a six-year-old girl from right here in Alabama, is  our Milk Mustache Contest winner for 2012!

Carly received 202 of the 370 total votes cast last week on our farm's Facebook page. For winning, she'll receive a dairy-themed prize package and will be our "poster child" for the remainder of June Dairy Month.

We would like to thank everyone who submitted a photo for our contest, as well as all the people who took the time to support their favorite milk mustache photo during our fan voting. We are very happy with this year's level of participation, and hope that we get even more photos and votes next year! We'll even begin accepting submissions for next year's contest right away.

Enjoy the remainder of June Dairy Month, and make sure you're getting your "3 Every Day" of milk, cheese, and/or yogurt!

Happy Dairy Month!

It's June, which is of course celebrated as Dairy Month all across this great land of ours!  I hope each of you will celebrate daily with at least three servings of delicious, nutritious milk, cheese, or yogurt. Heck, throw some ice cream in there as well! I promise that if you'll celebrate Dairy Month with "3 Every Day" you'll likely want to keep celebrating year round. That would be awesome (for you and me)!!!

Things are busy, busy, busy here on the farm. We planted our silage corn a couple of weeks ago, and it looks really promising at this early stage. I'm in the process of planing our forage sorghum (which we'll also harvest for silage), and should have half of it planted by the end of the day. Apart from the planting, I've been giving the tractor a workout applying fertilizer and spraying weed killer in and around our various silage fields, hay fields, and pastures.

The downside of June is that it is one of our most expensive months. On one hand we have all the costs associated with growing and harvesting our animals' forages, and on the other we have the reality that milk production (and the price we receive for milk) is going down. This is nothing new, though, so we know how to plan for it.

Speaking of the drop in production, we're getting to the point where we'll be "drying off" pregnant cows nearly every week. Eight left the herd for a two month vacation on Tuesday, and three or four will be following next week. We're currently milking 176 cows, and I can see that number possibly dropping below 160 sometime this summer. Time will tell.

Before I slam one more cup of coffee and go crank up the tractor, I'll leave you with a few tidbits:

• Listen for me and other Southeastern dairy farmers on your local radio stations this month as we share how we're "Dedicated to Dairy" during Dairy Month.
• Speaking of radio, I might be doing a Dairy Month-related radio and/or television interview sometime next week. I'll be sure to let you know once as I get more info.
• Don't forget to click over to our farm's Facebook Page and enter our Milk Mustache Contest. Time's running out, so don't delay!
• Speaking of contests, so me a favor and vote for Mississippi State's Muscadine Ripple Ice Cream this week in Progressive Dairyman's 2012 Flavor Faceoff.

Thanks, and y'all have a "Dairy" good week!