The Dairy Innovation Hub held its fifth annual Dairy Summit on Wed. Nov. 20 on the UW–Madison campus. Through poster sessions, research presentations and panel discussions, the summit highlighted examples of the latest Hub-funded research taking place at UW campuses.
The Dairy Innovation Hub is funded through a $7.8-million-per-year investment by the state of Wisconsin. It harnesses research and development on the UW campuses, ensuring that Wisconsin’s $52.8 billion dairy community remains a global pacesetter. Since its launch in 2019, the Hub has funded 230 projects and 19 faculty positions across the three campuses.
Research Presentations
The summit kicked off with 34 posters featuring the diversity of Hub-funded research. The posters focused on the Hub’s four priority areas. These include enriching human health and nutrition; ensuring animal health and welfare; growing farm businesses and communities; and stewarding land and water resources.
Jennifer Van Os and Jordan Matthews, outlined the development of a video game that helps farm workers improve their animal-handling skills. “Mooving Cows” has so far been downloaded 14,000 times in more than 100 countries. Matthews was one of the farmers Van Os relied on for feedback as the video game was being developed.
Grace Lewis outlined her research project on the feasibility of manufacturing and marketing lactose-free ice cream. Lewis said nearly 65 percent of the world’s population is lactose intolerant. This shows that promoting lactose-free ice cream could open new markets for Wisconsin dairy farmers.
Other research presentations focused on nutrient management planning; childcare for farm families; climate change policy and food behavior; extending the squeakiness of cheese curds; an online course on udder health; evaluating male-female post-secondary education enrollment ratios in dairy-related programs; and understanding the impact of dry-off on dairy cow welfare using automatic milking systems.
The Tours
At Arlington, visitors experienced several unique tour stops including equipment used to measure methane emissions from cows’ breath; specialized gates used in feed efficiency research; artificial intelligence and machine learning for animal health and welfare; a beef x dairy cross calf area; and a lysimeter network used for long-term water quality monitoring.
The calf barn at Arlington was configured in an existing underutilized space at the beef-grazing unit with calf panels, feeding equipment and building supplies funded by the Hub.
On campus, visitors viewed equipment in Babcock Hall used to develop value-added dairy products. The group then moved to the Dairy Cattle Center to learn about a current research study involving dairy cow/calf pairs. The last stop on the campus tour was at the Meat Science and Animal Biologics Discovery building. This was to learn more about research on meat quality from dairy/beef crossbred animals.
