American Angus Association® offers Curly Calf Update

American Angus Association®

Curly Calf Syndrome (11/3/08)

Five A.I. organizations requested that the American Angus Association provide to the membership the identity of and preliminary test results for Angus bulls tested by Dr. Jon Beever of the University of Illinois to determine whether they were carriers of the Curly Calf Syndrome (CCS) mutation or were free of it. In doing so we provide the following overview of our understanding of how these results came into existence and the Association’s view of their current significance.

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Barack Obama Blames Health Cares Costs on Farmers

Barack Obama Blames Health Cares Costs on Farmers

Joe Roybal

Beef Magazine

Anyone involved in agriculture should take special heed of the comments by Barack Obama made in a recent TIME magazine article.

Anyone involved in agriculture should take special heed of the comments by Barack Obama made in a recent TIME magazine article.

In the article, as reported by the Associated Press, the Democratic nominee for president said U.S. agriculture was more polluting than the transportation sector. He also said U.S. agriculture was “partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they’re contributing to Type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all that things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs.”

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Risk Management in Increasingly Risky Livestock Markets

Risk Management in Increasingly Risky Livestock Markets

Derrell S. Peel, OSU Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist

I don’t want the title of this article to get anyone’s hopes too high so be clear: this article is more about what NOT to do than what to do.  Cattlemen in the stocker or feedlot business are very accustomed to thinking about the cattle business as a margin business.  Overall price level is less important than the margin between the buy price and the sell price of an animal.  At the cow-calf level, producers have been more inclined to think about price levels because production costs were generally more stable and fixed so risk is a matter of the sell price level relative to production costs.

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Cattle Feeding: Take Care Of Your Hay, It Has Value

Cattle Feeding: Take Care Of Your Hay, It Has Value

cattlenetwork.com

Not long ago, cheap commodity prices made it easy to look at hay as just filler. Nutritional deficiencies could be inexpensively corrected by feeding a supplement. Those days are gone, and quality hay has real value when compared to a commodity feed, but the value is in nutritional quality.

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Q: After weaning what would it cost to feed a beef through to slaughter? First on grass then in feedlot.

Q:   After weaning what would it cost to feed a beef through to slaughter? First on grass then in feedlot.

Dr. Rick Rasby, Professor of Animal Science, Animal Science, University of Nebraska

A:   Input cost for the backgrounding and finishing phase for beef cattle has increased a lot the past few years.

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Making Performance Tested Bulls- Determining Their Value

Making Performance Tested Bulls- Determining Their Value

Scott P. Greiner, Ph.D., Extension Animal Scientist, VA Tech

The development and evaluation of yearling bulls has many components critical to the final goal of producing a quality herd sire.  Proper nutrition and husbandry, along with a good health management program, are necessary to ensure breeding capability at 15-18 months of age.

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Baby Calf Health: Treating Scours With Fluid

Baby Calf Health: Treating Scours With Fluid

cattlenetwork.com

Scours occur when there are inadequate antibody transfers via colostrum or when overwhelming challenges from pathogens are contracted in muddy conditions.

Many cases of scours respond to administration of oral fluids (water and electrolytes). If necessary, calves can be held off milk for 12 hours and maintained on oral electrolyte solutions alone. Calves should not be held off milk for more than 24 to 36 hours.

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Some Iowa meat producers lose under label rules

Some Iowa meat producers lose under label rules

PHILIP BRASHER

Des Moines Register

For Canadian farmers like Richard Bergmann, selling young pigs to Iowans has been a booming business. Until now.

Prices for Bergmann’s pigs, which farms in Iowa feed until they are big enough to be slaughtered, collapsed in recent weeks as a new U.S. law took effect requiring meat to be labeled with the country of origin.

At least one major U.S. packer will cease slaughtering Canadian-born hogs. Other processors plan to start slaughtering U.S.-born hogs separately from Canadian-born ones, and may pay less for them, too.

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Agribusiness fights California proposal that expands animal rights

Agribusiness fights California proposal that expands animal rights

Julie Schmit

USA TODAY

A California ballot measure to improve conditions for farm animals has generated national opposition from agribusiness interests.

If passed Tuesday, Proposition 2 would prevent California farmers from confining egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs and veal calves in ways that don’t allow them to lie, stand and extend their limbs.

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Robin Ruff Named Junior Activities Director For Angus

Robin Ruff Named Junior Activities Director For Angus       

cattlenetwork.com

Robin Ruff has been promoted to junior activities director for the American Angus Association®, effective immediately.  She has served as the junior activities assistant since May 2007, upon completing her bachelor’s degree from Kansas State University (K-State).

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SucraSEED High Sugar Grass

SucraSEED High Sugar Grass

Minnesota Farm Guide

Grassland Oregon, Keizer, Oregon, recently introduced SucraSEED, a new line of high-sugar grass seed products designed to increase dairy milk yield and livestock growth while reducing environmental pollution.

Multiple high sugar grass trial studies have demonstrated measurable increases in livestock performance, including milk yield in dairy cows (up to 6 percent more milk for the grazing season), increased live weight gains in lambs and beef cattle (up to 20 percent) and higher dry-matter intakes (up to 4.41 lbs/head per day).

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New vaccine could inhibit spread of E. coli 0157

New vaccine could inhibit spread of E. coli 0157

Meat Process.com

Related topics: Industry & markets, Safety & Legislation

Econiche, a new vaccine for cattle that aims to reduce the risk of food and waterborne contamination from E. coli O157:H7 bacteria, has received approval from the Canadian regulator.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) said the information that developer, Bioniche Life Sciences, submitted to the agency demonstrates that the vaccine meets the efficacy and safety requirements in order to obtain full licensing.

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Update: Embattled Agriprocessors plant struggling to survive

Update: Embattled Agriprocessors plant struggling to survive

BY GRANT SCHULTE AND TONY LEYS

DES MOINES REGISTER AND TRIBUNE

The embattled Agriprocessors meatpacking plant is struggling to survive in the face of criminal charges against its former leader, tens of millions of dollars in proposed fines and a bank that is demanding payment on multimillion-dollar loans.

Two main boilers at Agriprocessors, Inc. are not operating, and a local priest who drove past the parking lot counted only 35 cars – far fewer than the hundreds visible on a typical day.

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October prices received by farmers down nearly 10%

October prices received by farmers down nearly 10%

KTIC

The preliminary All Farm Products Index of Prices Received by Farmers in October, at 145 percent, based on 1990-92=100, decreased 9 points (5.8 percent) from September. The Crop Index is down 17 points (9.8 percent) and the Livestock Index decreased 5 points (3.8 percent). Producers received lower prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, and cattle and higher prices for sweet corn, broccoli, lettuce, and eggs. In addition to prices, the overall index is also affected by the seasonal change based on a 3-year average mix of commodities producers sell. Increased monthly marketings of soybeans, corn, cottonseed, and cotton offset decreased marketings of milk, wheat, sweet corn, and grapes.

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Profit Tip: Backgrounding Alternatives: Grazing or Feedot?

Profit Tip: Backgrounding Alternatives: Grazing or Feedot?

Darrell R. Mark, Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist

Rebecca M. Small, Graduate Research Assistant

Galen E. Erickson, Extension Feedlot Management Specialist

Backgrounding fall-weaned calves is commonly considered by both stocker/backgrounding operators and cow-calf producers wanting to retain ownership of their calves. Two of the primary alternatives for backgrounding calves include grazing either crop residue or grass pasture and placing them in a feedlot or growing lot. As the price of corn and roughages used in feedlot backgrounding situations has increased, producers are likely to focus more on crop residue or grass pasture backgrounding .

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Cattle industry challenge – New U.S. legislation affecting prices in Canada

Cattle industry challenge – New U.S. legislation affecting prices in Canada

JEANNE GAGNON

 Herald-Tribune

A number of local ranchers are facing a “significant challenge” with the country of origin legislation being implemented in the U.S., the foreign chair of the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association said Friday.

Since Oct. 1, all beef sold at retail outlets in the United States has to be labelled with the country of origin, according to where the animal was born. Because cattle move a lot throughout their lifetime, the U.S. has now created three different origin categories, depending on where the animals were born, fed and slaughtered.

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