A day-long dairy conference has been planned for Dec. 4 during the Amarillo Farm and Ranch Show Conference, which runs from Dec. 2-4 at the Amarillo Civic Center.

Registration will begin at 9 a.m. in the Grand Plaza, and coffee and donuts will be served, said Dr. Galen Chandler, Texas AgriLife Extension Service regional program director for agriculture and natural resources.

“With the growing dairy industry in the High Plains, it is imperative that we offer high quality educational programming for the dairymen,” Chandler said. “The labor immigration topic is a very important issue for the dairymen in our area and should be very interesting.”

The program will begin at 9:30 a.m. with an update on the Southern Great Plains Dairy Consortium by Dr. Don Topliff, associate dean of West Texas A&M University’s College of Agriculture, Science and Engineering.

The consortium was established to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding dairy industry in the Southern Great Plains, Chandler said. It provides a framework for coordinating research, education, extension and diagnostic service programs.

Other topics and speakers include:

-- Dairy Footbaths and Copper Toxicity in Soil, Sharon Preece, AgriLife Extension assistant in Amarillo.

– Labor Immigration Issues, David Anderson, AgriLife Extension economist in College Station.

– Management of Dairy Rations with High Feed Costs, Dr. Robert Hagevoort, New Mexico State University Extension dairy specialist.

– Confined Livestock Operations Workforce Development Pilot Project, Robert Devin, AgriLife Extension Agricultural Workforce and Community Development Program coordinator.

– Strategies to Improve Reproductive Performance, Todd Bilby, AgriLife Extension dairy specialist at Stephenville.

The meeting is free and will include a noon meal sponsored by Dairy Max. It will wrap up at 5 p.m. after a networking period for participants sponsored by Western Dairy Business and MacroAir, Chandler said.

“The networking opportunity for dairymen and the dairy agribusinesses is important to allow for communication and to build business relationships among the groups of people involved in the dairy industry,” he said.