BeefTalk: Beef Business Full of Joyful and Sorrowful Producers

BeefTalk: Beef Business Full of Joyful and Sorrowful Producers

Joy and Sorrow Living Together Joy and Sorrow Living Together

By Kris Ringwall, Beef Specialist, NDSU Extension Service

The difference between those producers who were just getting by and those who were acquiring some level of wealth was more than $232 for every cow on the place.

After the recent review of articles and associated data regarding beef production priorities, a most intriguing point sticks out. There is money in the beef business. One can watch the money flow by or do something about it.

The “do something about it” phrase is the kicker. The phrase is the stamp of authenticity that joy and sorrow exist simultaneously in the beef industry and have for several decades.

A recent BeefTalk column cited data from the North Dakota Farm and Ranch Business Management program. The data revealed that the annual net return per cow in this century from the low 20 percent to the upper 20 percent amounted to $232 for every cow in the beef enterprise. Maybe I should repeat that. The difference between those producers who were just getting by and those who were acquiring some level of wealth was more than $232 for every cow on the place.

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Cattle Auction in Texas Benefits Penn State Cancer Institute

Cattle Auction in Texas Benefits Penn State Cancer Institute

Cattle Today

HERSHEY- It isn’t often that you can put cattle auction and cancer research in the same sentence. But earlier this year in Grapevine, Texas, the Texas Longhorn Legacy Sale III did exactly that. The highest-priced animal, Sabrina, sold for $82,000, all of which benefits the Fenza Gaynor Family Endowment for Cancer Research at Penn State Cancer Institute. The endowment provides annual support to Penn State Cancer Institute physicians and researchers as they search for a cure.

This endowment helps Penn State Cancer Institute with its mission of advancing the care of cancer patients, said Thomas Loughran, M.D., director, Penn State Cancer Institute. The Fenza familys support allows us to make the latest cancer research advances available to our cancer patients as quickly as possible.

Sabrina was consigned by business entrepreneur Bill Hudson, Hattiesburg, Miss., and purchased by Bill and Judy Meridith of Wellington, Kan.

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What is acidosis and how do we prevent it?

What is acidosis and how do we prevent it?

Montana State University

Acidosis is the most important nutritional disorder in feedlots today. Caused by a rapid production and absorption of acids from the rumen when cattle consume too much starch (primarily grain) or sugar in a short period of time, acidosis causes cattle to be stressed. As long as cattle are finished on grain, cows are grazed on cornstalk fields (grain consumption) or high energy (grain) diets are fed to dairy cows, acidosis will be an important problem. Cattle evolved digesting roughages that ferment slowly in the rumen. The rumen microbes of a forage- fed animal are selected for fiber digestion. Adjusting cattle to high grain diets from predominantly forage diets disrupts the normal microbial environment and precipitates acidosis.

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Sel-Plex receives free choice allowance

Sel-Plex receives free choice allowance

Drovers.com

Alltech’s organic selenium, Sel-Plex, recently received free choice allowance in livestock diets from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This registration regulation allows producers and beef cattle owners to offer the mineral in a loose granular form, providing a full range of feeding applications. Sel-Plex is an organic selenium yeast produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae CNCM I-3060.

Selenium plays an important role in beef cattle diets. This nutrient supports a healthy reproductive system, meat quality, and shelf life for beef products.

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Safeway Pulls Product Packaged In CO

Safeway Pulls Product Packaged In CO

Cattlenetwork.com

Congress asked, and Safeway complied.

The nation’s largest retail chain announced Wednesday it will no longer stock meat packaged in carbon monoxide gas, a substance that enhances the “bloom” of fresh product.

The action is in response to a letter Reps John D. Dingell and Bart Stupak, both Michigan Democrats, wrote Safeway in June requesting that it pull CO-enhanced meat product from its shelves. Dingell and Stupak also reportedly wrote to three meat processors that supply the product, requesting they discontinue it.

In a letter to Dingell and Stupak, Safeway Senior Vice President Michael McGinnis indicated that while the retailer believes the format is safe, owing to the fact that it contains only trace amounts of CO, it may nonetheless “have raised concerns with customers who do not have the benefit of the background on this process and may be confused.”

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Beef and dairy team to fight negative nutritional image

Beef and dairy team to fight negative nutritional image

by Peter Shinn

Brownfield Network

Dairy Management Incorporated (DMI) and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) held a first-of-its-kind joint meeting on nutrition at the Cattle Industry Summer Conference in Denver Tuesday. The meeting was apparently spurred in part by developments in the United Kingdom, where foods are now being labeled under a new government scheme as green for good, yellow for not so good and red for bad.

In fact, DMI CEO Tom Gallagher told the hundreds of beef and dairy producers at the meeting on nutrition that the new UK labeling scheme is something the entire U.S. food industry is anxious to avoid. And he said it makes perfect sense for the beef and dairy industries to work together on promoting the positive nutritional aspects of both commodities.

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Land O’Lakes Purina Feed Presents — “Building Better Cattle”

Land O’Lakes Purina Feed Presents — “Building Better Cattle”

Beef Quality Strategies

Good cattle health and potentially profitable gains are possible during the weaning and starting phase of beef production — with the right nutrition and management. To learn more about “building better cattle” beef producers from around the country are invited to participate in RFD-TV’s “Monday Night Live” — Monday, July 23, at 8:00 p.m. EST. Sponsored by Land O’Lakes Purina Feed, LLC, the timely interactive program will focus on cattle-weaning strategies and post-weaning ration development.

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Kind-Flake farm bill proposal draws kudos, complaints

Kind-Flake farm bill proposal draws kudos, complaints

By Forrest Laws

Farm Press Editorial Staff

Rep. Earl Pomeroy got a good laugh with a comment about one of the proposals considered by the House General Farm Commodities Subcommittee when it met to consider changes to the commodity title of the new farm bill last month.

“It’s kind of a flaky bill,” the North Dakota Democrat said of a commodity title amendment proposed by Reps. Ron Kind, D-Wis., Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and others that would overhaul major features of the current farm law.

While the joke may have angered hard-line farm bill reform advocates, Pomeroy’s comments were mild compared to the language some farm organizations have used to describe the Kind amendment in recent days. Their concern: Although the subcommittee rejected the amendment, it could come up again on the House floor.

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Ultrasound Measurements of Body Composition Were Highly Correlated With Carcass Measurements

Ultrasound Measurements of Body Composition Were Highly Correlated With Carcass Measurements

Dr. Rick Rasby, Professor of Animal Science, Animal Science, University of Nebraska – Lincoln, Lincoln, NE

An Iowa State University study compared ultrasound measurements of body composition of 145 heifers to their subsequent carcass measurements. The measurements were made on five separate harvest groups during the period of 2002 through 2004.

Overall results showed that ultrasound technology can accurately estimate ribfat thickness, ribeye area, and marbling prior to harvest. Correlations between live and carcass measurements were remarkably high for ribfat thickness and ribeye area at 0.80 and 0.66, respectively.

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“Handling, Feeding, & Marketing Cattle For Profit”

“Handling, Feeding, & Marketing Cattle For Profit”

Cattlenetwork.com

“Handling, Feeding, and Marketing Cattle for Profit” is the theme for an August 24th and 25th meeting at the Ross County Service Center and a local farm near Chillicothe. Rising input costs, dry weather, and ever changing market prices require beef producers to maintain themselves on the cutting edge of management and marketing information. Modern animal behavior and management techniques combined with current feeding and marketing trends to remain competitive in a changing world will be highlighted.

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Lepto: A danger to your herd?

Lepto: A danger to your herd?

Mel Pence DVM, MS, PAS, Diplomate ABVP (beef cattle), University of Georgia, College of Veterinary Medicine

What is Lepto?

Leptospirosis (Lepto) is an infectious and contagious bacterial disease of most farm animals and many wildlife species. Abortion is the most common problem associated with Lepto in cattle; it can produce an abortion rate of up to 30 percent when it occurs during the final third of pregnancy. Lepto may also be responsible for high mortality among young calves. Severity in adult cattle is extremely variable ranging from inapparent infection to 5 percent death loss (mortality) and depends on the vaccination status of the cattle the number of Leptospira bacteria the cattle encounter. As bacteria go, Letospira are large in size and spiral coil in shape, hence the name lepto meaning “fine” and spira meaning “coil”. There are more than 100 serotypes of leptospira, but only seven serotpyes have been recognized in U.S. cattle.

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Organic Farming Beats No-Till?

Organic Farming Beats No-Till?

Cattlenetwork.com

Organic farming can build up soil organic matter better than conventional no-till farming can, according to a long-term study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists.

Researchers made this discovery during a nine-year study at the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (BARC), Beltsville, Md. BARC is operated by ARS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific research agency.

Plant physiologist John Teasdale, with the ARS Sustainable Agricultural Systems Laboratory in Beltsville, was surprised to find that organic farming was a better soil builder than no-till

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Put Quality in Their Background

Put Quality in Their Background

by Miranda Reiman

Angus Journal

You can’t change the past, but what happened makes all the difference when it comes to feeding cattle. In an industry of independent segments, genetic potential can be held back or derailed between ranch and feedlot.

The University of Nebraska compared cattle in a growing program to those placed directly on feed as calves. After 60 days in a drylot, 78 days on cornstalks and a summer on grass, the yearlings were finished to the same compositional end point. The effect on quality grade was dramatic: percent Choice dropped 50 percentage points, from 66.3% for the control to a dismal 15.7%.

“That’s a tremendous reduction in marbling due to management factors,” says Mark McCully, director of supply development for Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB). “There are steps that stockers can take to mitigate that effect.”

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U.S. Animal Identification Organization Promotes NAIS

U.S. Animal Identification Organization Promotes NAIS

Cattlenetwork.com

The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced a partnership with the U.S. Animal Identification Organization (USAIO) to register more than 100,000 new premises as a result of livestock producers learning more about the animal health and economic benefits of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).

“This agreement recognizes the relationship among USAIO partners in the livestock industry to build upon the growing support for the NAIS program,” said Bruce Knight, undersecretary for USDA’s marketing and regulatory programs.  “NAIS provides a system that will shorten response times in the event of an animal disease outbreak, to further strengthen our reputation as the safest animal health system in the world,” said Knight.

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IGENITY: Enhance Weaning Decisions With The Power Of DNA Profiling

IGENITY: Enhance Weaning Decisions With The Power Of DNA Profiling

Cattlentwork.com

DULUTH, Ga. — July 18, 2007 — Calf sorting at weaning puts a producer’s herd knowledge to the test — and profit potential on the line. Now, through DNA profiling, producers can access inside information that will help them make the best selection, management and marketing decisions for their operation.

Deciding which heifers to keep as replacements and which calves to retain for feeding can have significant effects on profitability. Knowing the genetic potential of each calf adds confidence to these important decisions, says Dr. Kevin DeHaan, Technical Services Director for IGENITY®.

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