Goin’ Showin’

Goin’ Showin’

Sara Brown

Beef Today

There is something about the smell of wood chips. It takes me back to the Missouri State Fair, unloading pigs from the trailer and waiting anxiously to guide (or rather push) my animal into the ring. The smell of a freshly busted straw bale brings back the time I learned the proper way to tie a 1200-lb. steer to the fence, after chasing him around the pen again. Cattle adhesive, Ivory dish soap, purple oil… the list goes on.

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Marketing Plans for Calves

Marketing Plans for Calves

Justin Gleghorn

Beef Today

While weaning time is still a few months away, it never hurts to evaluate market plans for the calves. Given the current cattle market, the question arises over whether or not retain ownership or sale calves into the feeder market.

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New Resolution Raises Cattle Age Limits to Prevent BSE

New Resolution Raises Cattle Age Limits to Prevent BSE

KNEB

According to the Associated Press – the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) has adopted a resolution raising cattle age limits related to preventing BSE in international beef trade.

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Cattle Crush Squeezed

Cattle Crush Squeezed

DTN

There’s a lot in the news these days about the mounting losses in the livestock sector. How bad is it?

One measure from DTN is a “Cattle Crush” study, available to DTN instant online subscribers and on DTN subscription satellite services in its Commercial Livestock segment.

The study generates comparisons of fed cattle futures, feeder cattle futures and corn futures.

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Legal Defense Fund Asks USDA to Re-Focus Listening Tour on Search for Workable Food Safety and Animal Health Solutions

Legal Defense Fund Asks USDA to Re-Focus Listening Tour on Search for Workable Food Safety and Animal Health Solutions

EON: Enhanced Online News

With the next round of hearings by the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) set to begin next week, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is calling on the department to re-focus the second leg of its listening tour on finding true solutions to animal health and food safety.

    “More than 90 percent of the people who spoke at the listening sessions so far have spoken out vigorously against NAIS”

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Nebraska’s status may be affected by TB detection

Nebraska’s status may be affected by TB detection

Ken Anderson & Julie Harker

Brownfield Network

Nebraska’s Ag Department is working with USDA as it works to determine whether more than one cattle herd has been infected with tuberculosis. State Ag Director Greg Ibach announced Monday that TB was detected in a herd of beef cattle belonging to a cow-calf producer in central Nebraska’s Rock County. Other beef producers, adjacent landowners, are being notified and testing of other herds will get underway.

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JBS restructures ownership of its feedlot division

JBS restructures ownership of its feedlot division

The Fence Post

In press release from its Brazil headquarters, JBS said when it bought the Smithfield Beef Group last October, it also purchased 100 percent of Five Rivers Cattle Feeding which owns 10 feedlots, including two in Weld County and another in Yuma County.

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Farming with Animal Welfare in Mind

Farming with Animal Welfare in Mind

Michael Hastings

Winston Salem Journal

Lee Menius grew up on a farm where animals were raised the conventional way for many years. Now he’s trying something different.

Since World War II, his family had bred beef cattle in Rowan County with antibiotics and hormones. Then they sold them to feedlot operations where they would be raised on grain instead of a grass diet.

In the 1990s, Menius and a friend went on some farm tours that showed alternative ways of raising animals.

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Congressman Warns of ‘Cow Fart’ Tax Causing Beef and Dairy to ‘Disappear’ from Supermarkets

Congressman Warns of ‘Cow Fart’ Tax Causing Beef and Dairy to ‘Disappear’ from Supermarkets

Jeff Poor

Business & Media Institute

Is regulating greenhouse gases a necessary means to stop so-called manmade global warming? Or is it an effort by the government to exert more control over Americans’ day-to-day lives?

According to Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the ranking member of the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, it is the latter, and it could have a devastating impact on agribusiness.

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Genome mapping impacts producers

Genome mapping impacts producers

Farm and Dairy

While the six-year effort that mapped the bovine genome gains international attention, Illinois beef and dairy producers have been benefiting from the research for the past 15 years, said Harris Lewin, a University of Illinois professor of animal sciences whose lab created the high-resolution physical map of the bovine chromosomes.

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Backyard butcher still on the road

Backyard butcher still on the road

Craig Reed

Capital Press

Butchering beef in rural backyards used to be a booming business.

Development, other economic changes reduce demand for work

But lifestyles have changed and developments have changed the look of many rural areas. There’s less backyard livestock to process, but Don Livermore of Roseburg, Ore., isn’t letting his centuries-old profession die. He’s still working at it.

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University Researcher Advises on Forage Efficiency

University Researcher Advises on Forage Efficiency

Thebeefsite.com

Can we get forage quality too high? “That is a question I hear frequently,” says Jim Paulson, University of Minnesota Extension. “The answer to the question is…it depends.”

It depends on what we are feeding it to, how much we are feeding, and what else we are feeding along with it, he says. For high producing dairy cows that are fed a balanced ration, forage quality must be high in order to support high production. On most dairy farms, without a concentrated effort to put up high quality forage, the forage can often fall below optimum.

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BED Steer Trial Auction a gamble

BED Steer Trial Auction a gamble

STEPHANIE FARLEY

Garden City Telegram

Drinks were being mixed and handed out — by the individual glass and bucket full of beer.

And Jeff George, general manager for Finney County Feedyard, was busy walking around Friday night, looking at two tables full of photos of steers up for grabs and waiting to be bid on.

George attended the U.S. Premium Beef Dinner and Beef Empire Steer Trial Auction Friday night where 41 steers made up the field.

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Packing industry consolidation concerns Montana cattlemen

Packing industry consolidation concerns Montana cattlemen

Prairie Star

Montana Cattlemen’s Association is concerned with the proposed purchase of National Beef Packing Co., Smithfield Beef Group and Five Rivers Ranch Cattle Feeding LLC by the Brazilian group JBS.

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Effects Of Age And Method Of Castration

Effects Of Age And Method Of Castration

cattlenetwork.com

Why is it so important to evaluate the effects of age and method of castration?

Bull calves are castrated to reduce meat toughness, aggressive behavior, sexual interest and dark cutting.

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