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Diamond
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Platinum
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Indiana Dairy Producers
Board of Directors
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Upcoming 2014 Events
MARCH
March 13 Livestock Forage and Grain Forum, Downtown Marriott, Indianapolis, including Indiana Dairy Producers' annual meeting. more information
March 25 IDP Fair Oaks event with PA dairy producers. Call Doug Leman for reservations at 317-695-8228.
APRIL
April 12 Indiana Dairy Youth Conference, Johnson County Fairgrounds, Franklin, Indiana. Questions, contact Kelly Heckaman at 574-372-2340.
April 14 Fort Wayne Tin Caps Baseball Game at 7 PM prior to Milk Quality Conference ticket details
April 14-16 Tri State Dairy Nutrition Conference, Grand Wayne Center, Fort Wayne, IN details
April 15-16 Indiana Milk Quality Conference, Don Halls Guesthouse, Fort Wayne, IN details
MAY
May 3 Purdue Dairy Club Legacy Sale
JUNE
June 4-5 IDP Summer Tour to Ohio, Save the Date!
JULY
July 29-30 Kentuckiana Dairy Exchange in Kentucky, Save the Date!
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Silver Sponsors
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 Indiana Dairy Picture GalleryOver the years we have organized many tours and events, and we have tried to take pictures at all of them. We frequently invite you to watch a picture slideshow, but if you want to see our albums on our flickr page, click here.
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Greetings!
Spring is coming.....I think! We have two very important dates you need to get on your calendar for March 13 and March 25.
We will be having our annual meeting on March 13 during the afternoon breakout session of the Indiana Livestock Forage and Grain Forum. If you want to attend the Forum, you will need to pre-register (see below) but if you just want to attend the annual meeting, you will not need to register or pay. We will be filling two board positions as the terms are ending for LuAnn Troxel and Henk Sevenhuysen. We thank them both for devoting so much time and energy to help IDP get to where we are today - six years of tremendous dedication to your industry! We will also have the opportunity to hear Ted McKinney, director of Indiana State Department of Agriculture, and also get reacquainted with Kimmi Devaney, the new Livestock Program Manager at ISDA.
We are looking forward to spending a full day with our fellow Pennsylvania producers at our Fair Oaks day on March 25. We plan to begin registration at 9 a.m. Central time and begin promptly at 9:30. Please see the details for the day below.
It is very encouraging to bring on new sponsors - businesses having confidence in IDP and wanting to show their support for the Indiana dairy industry. We welcome our new Gold Sponsor Belstra Milling and new Silver Sponsor Purina Animal Nutrition. We are looking forward to working with them. As always, I encourage you to check out our sponsors and support them with your business - they believe in your industry!
Thanks to those of you that spent the day with us at our Regional Meetings. It is good to see each of you and pleasing to see the attendance continue to grow. A special thanks to our speakers, Dr. Ray Nebel, Dr. Judy Loven, Mike Rusch, Dr. Bret Marsh, Kari Keller Steele and others who presented such good information.
Doug Leman,
Executive Director
Indiana Dairy Producers
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Join Us for IDP's Fair Oaks Day March 25
 Indiana Dairy Producers and Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania (PDMP) have partnered together for a full day of opportunity on Tuesday, March 25, and you're invited to join us! We plan to meet at Fair Oaks Farms at 9:00 a.m. Central Time. To begin the day, we are looking forward to hearing from Mike McCloskey about Fair Oaks Farms, and there will be plenty of time allowed for Q & A. We will do both the Dairy Adventure and Pig Adventure tours and have lunch. Then, we will car-pool as much as possible and travel to Hidden View Dairy for a farm visit and then to Seven Hills Dairy for the final farm visit of the day. After gathering back at the Fair Oaks Caf�, we will enjoy a nice buffet dinner together and hear Kevin Jones from Ghost Hollow Consulting tell us about the six things the very best dairies focus on to be successful. The cost for the full day is $50 for anyone from an IDP member farm or business. It will be a day with unlimited opportunities to build relationships and learn from fellow producers and industry folks from both Indiana and Pennsylvania. Give Doug Leman a call at 317-695-8228 to register for the day, as attendance will be limited. Fair Oaks Farms is located just west of the intersection of I-65 and State Road 14. The address is 856 N 600 E, Fair Oaks, IN. Please join us!
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Register Now for Livestock Forage & Grain Forum on March 13
 The Livestock Forage and Grain Forum will be held on Thursday, March 13 at the Downtown Marriott in Indianapolis (this is a different location than last year). Click here for complete agenda and registration information. Our IDP annual meeting will be held during the 2 PM breakout sessions. There will be a unique opportunity to view the much anticipated pro-farmer movie, Farmland, during lunch. The cost for the entire day, including breakfast and lunch, is $25. Note: to attend only the IDP meeting at 2 PM, there is no cost or registration needed.
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IDP Welcomes Belstra Milling, Gold Sponsor
IDP is happy to announce that Belstra Milling is joining IDP at the Gold Level! Please read below to see how Belstra is providing goods and services for dairy farmers!
Belstra Milling Company is excited to be celebrating 60 years in business this year. We are a family and employee owned regional independent feed manufacturing company located in the northwest Indiana town of DeMotte. We manufacture feed for a variety of animals, specializing in swine and dairy feeds. We also supply agricultural products to fill most needs.
What we offer to dairy farms:
*A wide variety of feed additives and minerals to customize pre-mixes
*Feed sampling services for our feed customers
*Calf feed~Our blend or we will customize your own (Bagged, Tote or Bulk)
*We also have access to a wide range of products as an Animal Health International dealer
*We carry calf hutches, gates, fencing, drinkers & feeders
Contact Philip Leman (219) 869-1127 or Jenny Craig (219) 863-9929 to get connected!
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Ted McKinney to speak at IDP Annual Meeting
 Please make plans to attend the 2014 IDP Annual Meeting, which will be held in conjunction with the 2014 Livestock Forage and Grain Forum at the Indianapolis Downtown Marriott on Thursday, March 13. We are very pleased that our meeting speaker will be Ted McKinney, director of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture. Please join us as we hear more about how Indiana's dairy industry is positioned for success. The meeting will be held at the Indianapolis Downtown Marriott, and our meeting will be held in Marriott Ballroom 2.The IDP Annual Meeting will be held during the 2 PM breakout session. The meeting will include election of new board members, announcement of 2014 Outstanding Dairy Producer of the year awards, and more. For IDP members attending only the annual meeting at 2 PM, there is no cost to attend. However, the Livestock Forage & Grain Forum is a minimal registration fee of $25 and includes breakfast, lunch, great information and networking opportunities. For forum registration and additional information, click here. Questions? Call Doug at 317-695-8228! |
Regional Dairy Meetings Recap:
Attendance, Food, Information--all Good!
 The last regional dairy meeting for 2014 is over, and we are very grateful that so many of you took the time to attend them. We had good turnouts in spite of the incredible winter we've had, and we thank you for supporting these efforts. If you'd like to see the pictures of the 6 regional dairy meetings, click here. They are in order of Turkey Run, Columbus, Warrenton, Shipshewana, Goshen and Decatur. Read below for more about Dr. Marsh's presentation. |
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Purina Animal Nutrition is IDP's newest Silver Sponsor
IDP welcomes Purina Animal Nutrition to our terrific list of SIlver sponsors. Read below for more about this great company: "Dairying is our Business", says it all about Purina Animal Nutrition. It starts with our 1188 acre Research Farm, located near St. Louis, Missouri, at Gray Summit. A team of Dairy PhD's conduct research on our 350 cow dairy (700 total head) research unit, where we do it all; Cows, Heifers, and Calves. We have recently expanded our Dairy Research facilities with the addition of a new state of the art heifer growing unit. Here we conduct research trials to continue to develop the right nutrition to get the right heifer at the right age to enter the milking string and be a highly productive cow. We have a full line of calf and heifer products that are field tested with advanced technologies that were developed at our research farm. Products like AmpliCalf� Starter, AmpliCalf� Grower and HeiferSmart™, have proven, what works to express the full potential that the animal's environment will allow. Custom lactation and transition cow formulas contain proven technologies such as Propel� Energy Plus, Rally�, and MetaPro� Nutrition, that deliver increased income over feed cost potential while maximizing home grown forages and grains. Purina Animal Nutrition is a proud sponsor of the North American Dairy Challenge, and works with many universities on research, internships, and joint teaching of classes. We have been committed to the dairy industry for over 100 years, and are committed to meet the needs of producers all across the United States. We are excited to continue to support and grow with the Indiana Dairy Industry. For questions or to get in touch with Purina, contact Mike Fordyce at MGFordyce@landolakes.com. |
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Learning to Use Options as a Tool
by Mike Rusch, Stewart-Peterson
 As I mentioned in a recent article, feed prices, specifically corn, are at some of the most attractive levels we've seen. I also mentioned that now would be a great time to explore locking in some protection for feed, and that options would be a great way to do so. For those of you who are not familiar with how options can work to protect a particular price for feed, here is a more detailed example. How a call option for feed works: Let's say we need to purchase 5,000 bushels of corn on April 1. Between now and then the price of corn, and therefore your cost, could be much higher. Since the April 1 price of corn is currently unknown, your risk is effectively unknown as well. A simple means of limiting and defining your risk is to buy a call option that will protect us from higher prices until the time we purchase our corn feed. Think of a call option as price insurance. The components that make up an option are varied and can be somewhat complicated to understand at first. That said, the insurance analogy works great, in that "you get what you pay for." The more "price coverage" you want, the higher the expense of an option will be. Time is the other dominant component. The more time you want, the more expensive the option is, and the less time needed, the cheaper the option becomes. Read more |
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Indiana Milk Quality Conference
 Dairy Producers are especially invited to attend the Indiana Milk Quality Conference in Fort Wayne at Don Hall's Guesthouse on April 15-16. The meeting includes a producer panel featuring Nathan Kuehnert, John Metzger and John and Cynthia Adam. Also, Ryan Rogers from Homestead Dairy will talk about setting up a digester. Special registration for each dairy farm is only $50 for all farm members. Visit their website for registration details, but if you are a dairy farmer, get special pricing and download the producer registration form here.
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Indiana Dairy ID and Traceability
 | Dr. Marsh at Goshen Meeting
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We were very appreciative that Dr. Bret Marsh, Indiana State Veterinarian, attended every 2014 Regional Dairy Meeting to share updated rules for identifying dairy animals and compliance for Indiana's proposed disease traceability rule, designed to align with USDA's federal traceability program. Although the proposed rule is new, many provisions of it have been in place for years. One of the biggest changes for dairy producers is that every dairy animal sold off the farm needs to be tagged, including bull calves, with permanent ID, unless it is going directly to slaughter. Approved ID's are 840 tags (840 identifies the animal as being from the United States) or an Indiana NUES tag (metal or plastic) that has a US shield. These tags can be purchased by producers. 840's can be either RFID or bangle tag. Registration numbers and tattoos are NOT acceptable ID. Indiana's rule will probably be in full effect by January 2015. For more information on this rule, go to BOAH's website link here or contact the State Board of Animal Health at 877-747-3038.
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Milk Powder Driving Market
 How is Non-Fat Dry Milk driving the current dairy pricing market? Read here for information about the current and unusual situation that is causing the international price of Nonfat Dry Milk (NDM)/Skim Milk Powder (SMP) to significantly influence U.S. producer milk prices. |
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Visit Our Bronze Sponsors
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IDP Corporate Sponsors
 There is a growing list of companies that recognize IDP's value to Indiana's dairy industry. Please visit our list of companies that have become Corporate Sponsors for only $100. If you know of a company that may have an interest in supporting IDP at some level, please download a brochure here.
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Click
on the Archive button to access previous issues of our E-Updates and important information for your dairy operation, industry issues and trends.
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Support IDP
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Individual membership in the Indiana Dairy Producers is $50. Encourage your dairy farming friends to join IDP! Also, any individual who is not a dairy producer but would still like to support IDP can join as an associate member. Download a membership/associate brochure here.
We appreciate our industry supporters. They make it possible for IDP to support the dairy industry in many ways. If your company is interested in finding ways to join IDP, download an information sheet here. |
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