Kansas And USDA Join Forces To Fight Johne’s Disease

Kansas And USDA Join Forces To Fight Johne’s Disease

Cattlenetwork.com

The state of Kansas is teaming with USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to help Kansas beef producers test their herds for Johne’s disease, a chronic and incurable intestinal infection of cattle and other ruminant animals.

The programs, funded by APHIS and sponsored by the Kansas Animal Health Department, as well as Kansas State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, also aim to help producers reduce and prevent the disease.

FULL STORY

Cattle on feed up from last year

Cattle on feed up from last year

Rapidcity.com

South Dakota’s 1,000-plus capacity feedlots reported 210,000 cattle on feed for the slaughter market on Dec. 1, up 20,000 head from last year and from November 2006, according to the South Dakota office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service.

FULL STORY

Effects of Three Hay Feeding Methods On Cow Performance & Wintering Cost

Effects of Three Hay Feeding Methods On Cow Performance & Wintering Cost

Cattlenetwork,com

The primary objective of this 3 year North Dakota Univ. project was to compare the effects of three different hay feeding methods on cow wintering cost. The three methods were: 1) Round bales fed by rolling bales on the ground 2) Round bales shredded with a power takeoff driven bale processor and fed on the ground and 3) Round bales fed by placing the bale in a tapered cone round bale feeder.

FULL STORY

Big farms have big impacts—and solutions?

Big farms have big impacts—and solutions?

Environmental Science & Technology

A working group reports on environmental and human health effects linked to factory farms.

Farms that raise poultry, swine, and cattle at an industrial scale also have industrial kinds of environmental impacts. Newly published results from a workshop convened in 2004, cosponsored by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, address the major issues of such operations.

pigs

USDA

Large farms for pigs and other animals pose future environmental and human health threats for which solutions can be planned, researchers say.

Known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), the farms can affect air quality, contaminate local water sources, and create other environmental and human health concerns. The authors forecast future problems from CAFOs and suggest solutions in an overview article and five papers published in Environmental Health Perspectives online November 14.

FULL STORY

National Weather: Storm Provides Needed Moisture, Stresses Livestock

National Weather: Storm Provides Needed Moisture, Stresses Livestock

Cattlenetwork.com

A major storm across the Nation’s mid-section provided much-needed moisture for winter wheat but severely stressed livestock and caused significant travel and electrical disruptions due to snow, ice, and wind. Blizzard conditions engulfed the central High Plains and adjacent Rockies on December 20 -21. Prior to reaching the Plains, the storm provided the season’s first widespread precipitation in the Four Corners region and drew chilly air across the West.

There were four consecutive mornings (December 18-21) of frost and temperatures near to slightly below the freezing mark in the San Joaquin Valley and several other valleys across interior southern California, although readings were generally not low enough to cause significant concern for citrus and winter vegetables. Meanwhile, showery weather persisted in the Northwest, maintaining abundant to locally excessive soil moisture for winter grains.

FULL STORY

Feedlot rules loom for large operators

Feedlot rules loom for large operators

KFYR Radio (ND)

Feedlot operators in North Dakota are facing a federal deadline in the new year for handling wastewater runoff.

Officials say most of the operators are already working to comply.

Karl Rockeman (ROCK’-man) is an environmental engineer with the state Health Department. He says large feedlot operations face a July deadline to meet federal wastewater rules. A large operation is defined as one with one-thousand or more beef cattle, 700 or more dairy cattle or 25-hundred or more large swine.

FULL STORY

Cattle Update: Trouble-Shooting Reproductive Failure

Cattle Update: Trouble-Shooting Reproductive Failure

Cattlenetwork.com

With fall preg-checking season well underway, some herd owners are surely pleased with their results. Meanwhile, others are looking for bred females to purchase.

The goal shouldn’t be to have 100% of your cows bred each year. Herds at or near 100% pregnant year after year generally represent one of two situations — a very extended calving season or overfeeding. Neither option is cost-effective for overall herd profitability.

Financial analysis indicates a pregnancy percentage of 90-95% in 65 days is both achievable and likely most profitable. If your herd is below this level, some investigation by you and your herd-health veterinarian is needed.

When I investigate a reproductive problem, I break it into the following categories: For bull problems, it’s Breeding Soundness Exam (BSE), overuse, or lack of libido. For cow problems, I look at nutrition, environment, disease and genetics.

FULL STORY

It’s greener pastures for biogas power

It’s greener pastures for biogas power

By Scott Streater

McClatchy Newspapers/Kansas.com

Texans have always had a strange affinity for cow patties. They’ve been bronzed for trophies. They’ve been tossed for sport. And they’ve been used, however crudely, for art.

Now, cow manure is about to be used to power homes and businesses in Central and North Texas.

A Colorado company is building a $10 million plant near Stephenville, about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth, that will extract millions of cubic feet of pipeline-ready natural gas from cow manure every day.

They call it biogas, and it certainly ranks as one of the most creative alternative sources of energy.

“We’ve got waste materials here that have a lot of energy, and it seems a shame not to capture as much of that as we can,” said Cady Engler, a biological and agricultural engineer at Texas A&M University who has followed the biogas trend.

FULL STORY

Ohio Beef Newsleter available

The December 27, issue # 518, of the Ohio BEEF Cattle letter is now posted to the web at: http://fairfield.osu.edu/ag/beef/beefDecr27.html

What a year! In fact, a couple of decades from now, we’ll likely be calling it a “history making” year! Highlights – to mention only a couple – include animal ID shifting from “mandatory” to a marketing tool, and feeder calf prices slipping enough in the past few months to make feeding $3.60 corn more profitable to the feedlot owner than feeding $2.20 corn budgeted out to be just last September!

Despite this, will “ethanol” simply be the story of year?? It remains to be seen.

As the beef cattle industry continues to experience a rapid change in dynamics, continue to check the OSU Beef Team WEB CALENDAR for timely meetings that address all the current and relevant issues in our quickly evolving industry. And, plan to have a great new year!Articles this week include:

* 2006 Cattle Market Review and 2007 Forecast

* Using Animal ID as a Marketing Tool* Trouble-shooting Reproductive Failure

* Forage Focus: Effects of Three Hay Feeding Methods on Cow Performance and Wintering Cost

* Effect of Storage Method on Round Bale Hay Loss

Stan

Stan SmithProgram Assistant,
AgricultureOSU Extension,
Fairfield County
831 College Ave., Suite D
Lancaster, OH 43130

Distillers’ grains for heifer development.

Distillers’ grains for heifer development.

by Rick Rasby, Extension beef specialist, University of Nebraska

Angus Journal

Heifer development programs can be a major expense for the cow-calf enterprise. Heifer development costs depend on when the potential replacements are weaned and on the feeding strategy used to develop the heifers. Because the replacement heifer enterprise does not generate income, or very little income from cull replacements, costs for this enterprise are borne by the cow-calf enterprise. …

FULL STORY

Checkoff-funded Web Site Showcases Research Projects

Checkoff-funded Web Site Showcases Research Projects

Angus e-list

The Cattlemen’s Beef Promotion and Research Board (CBB) has released a new web site showcasing checkoff-funded research projects. The site, http://www.beefresearch.org, contains fact sheets and summaries, graphics, resource listings, related web sites, staff contacts and glossaries of terms. It is reader-friendly, CBB reports, and it presents facts and findings in layman’s terms.

Research presented on the site was managed by the checkoff-funded Center for Research & Knowledge Management (R&KM) at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), in four priority areas: human nutrition, beef safety, market research and product enhancement. According to CBB, much of the information on the site has stemmed from cooperative research efforts at some of the country’s leading university agricultural and meat-science programs.

Confirmed Identity

Confirmed Identity

Tagging newborns takes a few minutes but yields lasting benefits.

Progressive Farmer

by By Boyd Kidwell

If you haven’t been identifying calves and keeping records, it’s time to start. Resuming beef exports to Japan is a good thing for U.S. producers. But only cattle that can be verified as 20 months of age and younger are eligible. This makes packing plants and feedlots serious about knowing cattle ages.

The Japanese agreement is just another example of how animal identification is working its way into the daily lives of cattle producers. The USDA’s animal ID program also is chugging along and will eventually require records of animals born on each farm.

FULL STORY

Mechanization Has Changed US Meatpacking Industry

Mechanization Has Changed US Meatpacking Industry

Cattlenetwork.com

MINNEAPOLIS (AP)–The meatpacking industry that Jack Cagle knew is gone.

Cagle, 76, a retired meat inspector for Swift & Co., could hardly believe it was his old company where workers were led out in handcuffs two weeks ago during an immigration raid. But changes like automation and falling wages have remade his industry radically, the Star Tribune newspaper reported.

Those jobs once paid $15.67 or more in today’s dollars. Federal statistics show they pay about 30% less today.

“I don’t know when it began to change,“ Cagle said.

FULL STORY

US Plains Feedlots Vary Widely In Muddiness, Cattle Stress

US Plains Feedlots Vary Widely In Muddiness, Cattle Stress

Cattlenetwork.com

KANSAS CITY (Dow Jones)–The condition of U.S. Plains states feedlots appears to vary widely, as does the condition of the cattle they contain, according to trade sources in the Plains.

Feedlots south of Amarillo, Texas, were said to be quite muddy, with cattle losing weight through the weekend as they dealt with the extra work of slogging around and the effects of being wet and cold, trade sources said. Cattle weighed just before last week’s snowstorm and then reweighed after the storm showed as much as 40 pounds of loss, an analyst/trader said.

North of Amarillo, the situation tends to be more variable, but none appear to have dodged the bullet entirely, trade sources said.

FULL STORY

Benefits of organic crops over-hyped, Avery says

Benefits of organic crops over-hyped, Avery says

By Hembree Brandon

Delta Farm Press

Alex Avery sees the issue of conventional versus organic crops as “a battle for the hearts and minds of consumers,” and in reality, he says, the organic foods movement is “a waste of money and resources.”

“But we can win this battle,” he told members of the Southern Crop Production Association at their annual meeting at Amelia Island, Fla. Rather than letting the “utopian myths” of the organic adherents go unanswered, “we need to be an industry on the attack, proud of what we’re doing to feed the world and protect the environment.”

FULL STORY

Meat Output Record Set

Meat Output Record Set

Meatnews.com

USDA reports that red meat processors produced a record 4.14 billion pounds of beef, pork, veal, and lamb in November.

U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) said that red meat production in November sets a record high. Commercial red meat production for the United States totaled 4.14 billion pounds in November – five percent more red meat than the 3.94 billion pounds produced in November 2005.

NASS reported that beef production – at 2.22 billion pounds – was seven percent above the previous year. Cattle slaughter totaled 2.84 million head – up six percent from November 2005. The average live weight was up seven pounds from the previous year, at 1,291 pounds per head.

FULL STORY

Feedlots working to meet federal deadlines

Feedlots working to meet federal deadlines

Associated Press

KXNET.com (ND)

Bismarck, N.D. (AP) The new year brings a new focus on federal rules for animal feedlots.

Karl Rockeman (ROCK’-man) is an environmental engineer with the state Health Department. He says large feedlot operations face a July deadline to meet federal wastewater rules. A large operation is defined as one with one-thousand or more beef cattle, 700 or more dairy cattle or 25-hundred or more large swine.

Rockeman says most of them have been working on designs for such changes as holding ponds or other containment operations.

FULL STORY

Fixing fence, deworming heifers on Reems’ ranch

Fixing fence, deworming heifers on Reems’ ranch

Farm and Ranch Guide

By SUE ROESLER

KILLDEER, N.D. – Joe Reems, who ranches north of Killdeer, was out of breath when he answered the phone last week. He reported he had just gotten in from fixing the barbed wire gate that one of his bulls and a steer had broken that morning.

“I’ve still got the fence to repair,” Joe said.

The bull and steer had apparently wanted to join the cows in a nearby pasture and knocked out about 16 feet of windbreak fence, in addition to the gate.

With the mild weather, the Reems haven’t had to feed hay the last couple of days as Joe said he still has grass left in the pastures.

FULL STORY

Cattle vaccine Okayed to prevent E.coli

Cattle vaccine Okayed to prevent E.coli

Brownfield Network

by Tyne Morgan

The Canadian Food and Inspection Agency (CFIA) approved a new E. coli cattle vaccine aimed to prevent the E. coli 0157:H7 bacterium from shedding in the intestines of cattle.

The vaccine, created by Bioniche Life Sciences Inc., is the first vaccine to be authorized by a regulator for the control of E. coli. CFIA is allowing the company to distribute the cattle vaccine to Canadian veterinarians under a Permit to Release Veterinary Biologics, specified under Canadian Health of Animal Regulations.

However, the authorization does not grant a full license to Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. for the vaccine. The approval by CFIA is the same as a “conditional license” in the United States.

In order for Bioniche Life Sciences Inc. to receive a complete license for the vaccine, instead of the permit already granted, the company must provide additional data confirming the reduction of E. coli O157:H7 shedding in vaccinated animals. This is a guideline the company plans to meet in 2007.

FULL STORY

South Korea Says Dioxin Is Found In U.S. Beef Shipment

South Korea Says Dioxin Is Found In U.S. Beef Shipment

WFRV-TV

South Korea is saying bone fragments found in three shipments of U.S. beef is not the only problem they are having with U.S. beef shipments. South Korean officials say the third of the three shipments of U.S. beef also contained dioxin levels exceeding South Korea’s norm. A South Korean Agriculture and Forestry Ministry official says Washington has been asked to explain why the beef in the third shipment contained dioxin.

FULL STORY