Last Trimester of Pregnancy

Last Trimester of Pregnancy

Ropin’ The Web

Points to Remember

    * This is a very critical time in the yearly cycle of the cow. The way she is fed and managed at this time will have a direct effect on her rebreeding schedule and the health of her calf.

    * If a cow is to calve every 365 days, she must be bred within 83 days after calving.

    * From calving until the uterus is in condition for pregnancy is approximately 40 days. This leaves only two heat periods for her to rebreed. The nutritional needs of cows increase rapidly during the last 3 months of pregnancy.

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House passes new farm bill

House passes new farm bill

By Sara Wyant, Agri-Pulse Editor

High Plains Journal

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a new farm bill Friday by a 231-191 margin, representing a carefully crafted compromise with dozens of key interest groups, including specialty crop growers, the nutrition and food aid communities, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

Passage came despite a White House veto threat and “no” votes from the majority of House Agriculture Committee Republicans, who vigorously protested the use of what they described as a last minute tax increase — included to fund new spending initiatives. Despite the partisan divide, most major farm organizations and commodity groups continued to back the Committee’s bill and pushed for passage of H.R. 2419.

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Wet vs. Dry

Wet vs. Dry

Byproducts of ethanol industry can vary based on type of production, source and individual load.

Hereford World

Troy Smith

Grain ethanol really isn’t a new fuel alternative. According to Nebraska Corn Board spokesman Randy Klein, ethanol was used to fuel lamps even before the Civil War. As early as the 1920s, it was used as a fuel octane enhancement when blended (10%) with gasoline. Nor do the byproducts of distillery processes represent a novel source of animal nutrition. The mash left over from making whiskey — either by legitimate distillers or moonshiners — has been fed to livestock for more than 100 years.

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No More Free Lunch

No More Free Lunch

by Ed Haag

Angus Journal

Like hungry shirttail relatives, deer are often the uninvited guests who clean out your larder.

If you rely on forage to feed your cattle and your forage stores are located in an area accessible to creatures other than your livestock, it is highly likely you have been selected as the designated meal ticket by the local deer population.

A 1998 nationwide survey of agricultural producers in the United States revealed 80% of those who reported back had experienced wildlife damage to their crops, and 53% said depredation exceeded their tolerance. Conservative estimates of nationwide agricultural losses due to wildlife soared as high as $2 billion, with white-tailed and mule deer causing more damage to agricultural crops than all other species combined. Considering the rise in forage production costs since the turn of the century, experts now estimate that the total forage dollars lost to wildlife is considerably higher than it was in 1998.

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Summer provides a reversal of fortune

Summer provides a reversal of fortune

By Greg Henderson

Drovers.com

Ethanol, of course, is the story of the year for the cattle industry. Demand for corn by ethanol refiners drove corn prices past $4 per bushel this year, causing a predictable backlash from livestock producers. Cattle feeders lost money, feeder-cattle prices dropped, and everywhere you looked there was another cowboy preaching gloom and doom for the cattle industry.

It looked like the only direction for this corn market was up, but just as we started to get a grip on that idea, corn prices tumbled dramatically. Last month, both old-crop September and new-crop December corn futures fell to the lowest levels since October and November of 2006. December corn fell more than $1 per bushel off contract highs set in June.

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K-State’s Apley A Most Influential Veterinarian in Cattle Feeding Industry

K-State’s Apley A Most Influential Veterinarian in Cattle Feeding Industry

Mycattle.com

MANHATTAN — Veterinarian Dr. Mike Apley has devoted his career to animal health. The Kansas State University professor’s efforts were recognized recently when he was spotlighted as one of the six most influential veterinarians in the cattle feeding industry in the past 35 years. Bovine Veterinary Magazine featured Apley and other industry leaders in an article on “VIPs of the Feedlot Industry.”

“We at K-State are pleased that one of the nation’s leaders in cattle management, Dr. Mike Apley, and his lifetime of leadership in animal health is widely recognized,” said Ron Trewyn, K-State vice president for research. “Mike certainly has had an ongoing vital role in maintaining the health of our nation’s cattle supply, and therefore America’s food supply.

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Kids, Parents, and Cattle Shows

Kids, Parents, and Cattle Shows

MFA Health Track

Mike John

I just finished reading Troy Marshall’s commentary in this week’s Beef Cow-Calf Weekly about the Fiasco at the Colorado State Fair surrounding premise registration. What happened is that the fair board made it a requirement to have your premises registered in order to show cattle and a couple of the contestants chose not to comply with this rule. The rules were then “bent” not only to allow them to compete but also to receive the same amount of money for their animals their replacements that were in compliance did at the sale after the show. I have spent a lot of time involved with politics in the last few years and through that experience I have come to believe that there are some places political divisiveness and activism don’t belong.

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Are You Vaccinating Calves Or Shooting Blanks?

Are You Vaccinating Calves Or Shooting Blanks?

Burt Rutherford

Beef Magazine

Preconditioned cattle usually aren’t, says John Peirce, and it doesn’t take very long after they arrive at a feedyard to know exactly how much preconditioning they didn’t receive.

“Every pen of calves gives you a report card on its health-management background,” he says, and the grade is given in dollars and cents. If Peirce were a schoolteacher, he’d give the cattle industry an “F” for its performance with a vaccine gun.

He already does, in a sense. He says AzTx Cattle Company, a cattle feeding and ranching enterprise in Hereford, TX, no longer buys calves through preconditioned calf sales, because they aren’t worth the premium they bring.

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Grass-fed animals are healthier

Grass-fed animals are healthier

By Dr. Kevin Weiland,

Rapid City Journal

To love and appreciate the Rocky Mountains, you only open your eyes, but to love and appreciate the prairie, you must open your soul

Louis Toothman, 1961

I have to admit it — I love to eat meat. There is nothing I enjoy more than to cook a

T-bone over an open flame on the grill. Before I began to appreciate the importance of dieting and health, I did not worry about the fat content of the meat, nor did I pay attention to how the meat was raised or produced.Â

As I began to research nutrition and health, I started to change my own eating habits. By watching what I ate, I lost weight without a major change to my lifestyle. Not only did I shed pounds, my LDL (bad) cholesterol decreased, as did my total cholesterol.

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Ongoing drought a critical situation for livestock farmers

Ongoing drought a critical situation for livestock farmers

By J.D. Walker

The Courier-Tribune

ASHEBORO — Farmers knew 2007 was not going to be a good year in April when a late frost devastated the state’s agricultural community.

Now the drought has spread the misery to area livestock farmers.

Barry Foushee, Randolph County extension livestock agent, said the drought has resulted in poor pasture conditions, reduced drinking water supplies and a critical hay shortage in Randolph County.

 “In the past droughts, we have moved a lot of hay into the state in a relief effort, but this drought is regional so pasture conditions and hay supplies are also critical in surrounding states,” he said.

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Gene banks urged to prevent livestock disaster

Gene banks urged to prevent livestock disaster

DANIEL WALLIS

Toronto Globe and Mail

NAIROBI — Over-reliance on a few breeds of imported farm animals is putting others in poor countries at risk of extinction, researchers warned on Monday as they called for the urgent creation of livestock gene banks.

Dependence on a handful of breeds such as high milk-yielding Holstein-Friesian cows, egg-laying white Leghorn chickens and fast-growing large white pigs is causing the loss of one breed on average every month, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) scientists say.

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Mandatory animal ID program opposed

Mandatory animal ID program opposed

Rapid City Journal

ABERDEEN – The South Dakota Stockgrowers Association is leading a charge against an animal identification program that the group calls burdensome, costly and unnecessary.

The association’s Wayne Nelson said the group is asking county commissions to pass resolutions against the proposed animal ID program, adding that people who raise cattle already track their animals.

Earlier this month, the Brown County Commission discussed the topic.

Nelson said a mandatory program would lead to privacy concerns by allowing the government to snoop through farm operations and force farmers to reveal detailed information about all their animals.

Dennis Feickert, a Brown County Commission member, said he thinks the program could make personal information available to animal-rights groups that could gather at individual farms.

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Will Canadians stomach a horsemeat industry?

Will Canadians stomach a horsemeat industry?

As U.S. slaughterhouses shut down, domestic abattoirs are courting demand for the delicacy abroad and controversy at home

KATHERINE HARDING

Tonronto Globe and Mail

NEAR NEUDORF, SASK. — At the end of a remote gravel road in southern Saskatchewan’s Qu’Appelle Valley is the next target in a growing movement to rid North America of its horse slaughterhouses.

Horse advocates in both Canada and the United States are outraged that this vast green valley, lush and rolling, is now home to this country’s newest federally licensed horse abattoir: Natural Valley Farms Inc.

They are also concerned that even more Canadian companies may start slaughtering and processing horses in a bid to satisfy hungry overseas markets that crave horsemeat, a pricey delicacy in many countries, since the industry is headed for extinction in the United States.

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FAO sounds alarm on loss of livestock breeds

FAO sounds alarm on loss of livestock breeds

FAO NEwsroom

Calls for urgent action to better manage and use farm animal resources, safeguard world food supply

4 September 2007, Interlaken, Switzerland – Calling the rate of livestock breed extinctions “alarming”, FAO today urged the international community to adopt a global plan of action to stem erosion of the world’s farm animal diversity and protect the global food supply.

“Wise management of the world’s animal genetic resources is of ever greater importance,” said FAO Assistant Director-General Alexander Müller, addressing participants at the first International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture here today.

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New DNA test for tender meat

New DNA test for tender meat

North Queensland Register

New DNA profiles are being used to pinpoint the most tender breeds of cattle in Australia, and to indentify precisely, the cow that’s carrying Australia’s most tender meat.

The profiles will be included in Breedplan, the national genetic evaluation system for cattle breeders.

Catapult Genetics, a world leader in livestock DNA testing, has compiled more than 10,000 DNA profiles of cattle from across the country.

The DNA profiles will be analysed by The Animal Genetics and Breeding Unit (AGBU) in Armidale, NSW, before being transferred to the National Beef Recording Scheme at the Agricultural Business Research Institute (ABRI).

There, they’ll be included in Breedplan.

On Monday, Qld Minister for State Development, John Mickel pressed the ‘magic button’ that sent the 10 000 genetic profiles to the ABRI for analysis.

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