2012 is over
It’s hard to believe that 2012 is already over. Time just seems to be flying by. It’s hard to believe that I’ve been blogging for 3 years already. It was a very eventful year though, and I would definitely say I learned a lot about blogging. I thought I would take some time to reflect what went on the past year, and share the top 5 posts of the year.
Events of 2012
To start the year off, my blog was hacked. It was definitely not a great way to start the year, and not very encouraging . The hacker cut off the traffic to my site, and it became a virtual ghost town. Luckily though, I figured out how to fix it , and Google helped me bring people back. It was a learning experience though, and I learned a lot about managing a website. Sometimes bad things happen, but they can help make you stronger. This was definitely the case for my blog. Even though it was hacked, it really just made this site better, and improved my skills for managing a website.
Another notable event was the 2012 drought in the U.S. The drought was so widespread that it was the worst drought since 1954. It affected much of the corn crop in the U.S. and caused feed prices to soar. This made it difficult for dairy farmers. Feeding the cows got more expensive, and caused many dairies to go out of business. It’s been a rough year for the dairy industry, but we are hoping things get better. Let’s hope that 2013 is a good year.
Then later this year, I had a visit from Casey the cow. Casey was sent to me by a school class, and they were learning about dairy. Casey got a tour of our farm, and asked me some very important questions about cows. It was pretty fun to be able to do this for them.
A Global Reach
Interestingly, I discovered that Dairy Moos is being read by people all over the world. I found a map with were viewers were located, and you can see that there are readers in nearly every country. Hopefully this trend will continue, and more people will be reached in 2013.
The top 15 countries reading Dairy Moos were: the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, India, Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Croatia, Germany, Turkey, and Mexico.
Top 5 posts of 2012
1- Interesting Facts About California Agriculture
The top post on my blog this year, was Interesting facts about California Agriculture. A lot of people don’t realize that California is the leading state for agriculture in the U.S., and is the 5th largest supplier in the world for food and agricultural products. Interestingly, California only has 4% of the farms in the U.S., but it is the largest producer of food. There a lot of interesting facts about California agriculture so definitely check it out if you haven’t already. Read More..
**California is sometimes called the breadbasket of the world thanks to the amount of food that’s grown there**
2- Milk is so Expensive… Really?
This was the second most popular posts on Dairy Moos. Some people like to say that the reason they don’t drink a lot of milk is because it’s so expensive. So this post puts things into a different perspective. Milk has so many essential nutrients that it is actually a bargain buy. Some other beverages are only empty calories. To get a similar amount of nutrients that are in milk, you would need to spend much more on other foods to get similar amounts of nutrition. So if you think about it, milk would be a much better buy. Read More..
**Milk is a bargain bin of nutrients**
This has been a top post for the past 3 years. Many people are concerned that milk has antibiotics so this might be a reason for the popularity of this post. Let this post reassure you that milk is a safe beverage with no antibiotics. Read More..
**Milk is a safe, wholesome beverage**
4- How many Babies do Cows Have?
Another significant event of 2012 was a set of quadruplet heifers that were born on a farm near ours. The odds of this happening, and being all the same sex is nearly impossible. Our farm also had triplet heifers born, and another farm near ours had triplet heifers as well. Triplet heifers are also a pretty rare event. You can read all about the odds in this post. Read More..
**A picture of the triplet heifers that were born on our dairy this year. Even though it’s a rare event, this is the second time its happened!**
5- How the Baby Calves are Treated at the Dairy Farm
Taking care of the baby calves is one of the most important jobs at the dairy. This is the next generation of cows, and how they are treated will affect their future and ours. It’s really in our best interest to treat these babies like royalty, so that’s what we do. Read More..
**Feeding the babies is the most important job**
Happy New Year 2013
Thanks for reading. I hope that you have a great new year, and hope that 2013 will be just as amazing as 2012!
Read the top Dairy Moos posts of 2011
Read the top Dairy Moos posts of 2010
