Some Facts & Myths Regarding Higher Corn Prices

Some Facts & Myths Regarding Higher Corn Prices

 Beef Magazine

 Everyone’s speculating that higher corn prices will fuel a drive to make cattle bigger on grass, with an end-result of fewer days on feed. The reasoning is quite simple — cost of gain will be significantly cheaper in grazing programs than in the feedyard.

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Beef Management Tips March 2007

Beef Management Tips March 2007

 John B. Hall, Extension Animal Scientist, Beef, Virginia Tech..

 March Beef Management Calendar

Spring Calving Herds

    * Move pregnant heifers and early calving cows to calving area about 2 weeks before due date

    * Continue calving

    * Check cows 3 to 4 times per day, heifers more often – assist early if needed

    * Keep calving area clean and well drained, move healthy pairs out to large pastures 3 days after calving

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Rotating a calf at parturition to aid in delivery

Rotating a calf at parturition to aid in delivery

 Dr. Glen Selk, Oklahoma State University

 Pulling on a calf should only be done when the presentation and posture of the calf are normal. This applies both to a normal anterior (forward) position and a posterior (backward) position. A large calf, with shoulders too wide for the pelvis, is sometimes held up at this stage. If so, pull one limb only so that the elbow and shoulder of one limb only enter the pelvis. Then, while the pull on the limb is continued, the other limb is treated in the same way until both feet project equally from the genital passage.

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Ag class presentation gives pros and cons of antibiotics

Ag class presentation gives pros and cons of antibiotics

 by Sharlene Irete,
Record Courier (NV)

 “A Case of Foul Play” is a play in the style of a CSI episode investigating a possible connection in the death of a chicken and the use of antibiotics in livestock feed.

The Douglas High School agricultural issues team present the pros and cons of the issue by posing as a scientist, consumer, veterinarian, environmentalist, pharmacist and a politician in preparation for the Reno State FFA competition March 21-23.

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Stocker Cattle Forum: Can We Afford To Feed $4 Corn?

Stocker Cattle Forum: Can We Afford To Feed $4 Corn?

Cattlenetwork.com

During the past 40 years we have been schooled on the inherent advantages that the Great Plains has in feeding cattle (environment, proximity to corn and harvest facilities). For the most part this has been a fairly accurate scenario. However, with the current focus on renewable fuels the wind may be changing course to the north and east.

I am not going to say that large scale cattle feeding is going to come back to the eastern corn belt. But I would like to point out that there is opportunity to feed cattle as a part of your farm production plan. I crunched a few numbers, feeder calf prices, hot carcass prices and corn prices for the eastern corn belt versus the Great Plains/Midwest. I did not look at historical data over several years but current prices in February. Why, well right now I think we are seeing history making some shifts based on renewable fuels.

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Hay shortage drives producers’ decisions

Hay shortage drives producers’ decisions

 Linda Breazeale
Delta Farm Press

Mississippi livestock producers saw it coming, but the hay shortage is forcing some tough decisions that may have long-term repercussions on the health, performance and profitability of their animals.

Jane Parish, beef cattle specialist with Mississippi State University’s Extension Service, said surplus hay is difficult to find in the state, and the traditional spring forage flush is not yet available. She receives calls daily from producers looking for more hay.

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Wet Distiller’s Grains Could Play A Role In Cattle Diets

Wet Distiller’s Grains Could Play A Role In Cattle Diets

 Science Daily

 Wet sorghum distiller’s grains can be fed in a steam-flaked corn ration without affecting efficiencies, said two researchers.

 The two four-month cattle finishing experiments with yearling heifers were conducted by Dr. Mike Brown, a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station ruminant nutritionist and West Texas A&M University associate professor, and Dr. Andy Cole, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service animal scientist.

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Researchers ‘sniff out’ emissions from feedyards

Researchers ‘sniff out’ emissions from feedyards

 PHYSORG.com

 Setting up an air quality trailer in the midst of cattle pens at a feedlot will help measure gaseous emissions, said a Texas Agricultural Experiment Station researcher. Dr. Ken Casey, Experiment Station air quality engineer in Amarillo, wants to measure ammonia and hydrogen sulfide emissions from feedyards.

 His research team is setting up two climate-controlled instrument trailers in different locations at a feedyard. The trailers will be equipped with two continuous emissions analyzers — one for ammonia, the other for hydrogen sulfide.

 Samples from above the trailer are drawn into a heated manifold inside the trailer, where the analyzers draw their sample, Casey said. This instrumentation allows measurement of both ammonia and hydrogen sulfide with a high degree of precision.

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Some warn against putting all our eggs (or ears of corn) in one biofuel basket

Some warn against putting all our eggs (or ears of corn) in one biofuel basket

Fort Madison Democrat
Chris Faulkner/Staff writer

Washington Redskins football coach George Allen wrote a book called The Future is Now.

In looking to corn-based ethanol and other biofuels, its future may not be now, but it may have to be in just a few years.

Jill Euken is one of many people involved in studying and promoting the use of alternative resources.

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Cattle producers upset over USDA plan to open border to older Canadian beef

Cattle producers upset over USDA plan to open border to older Canadian beef

 By SUE ROESLER, Farm & Ranch Guide

 BISMARCK, N.D. – A large group of livestock producers testified at a U.S. Senate Hearing that a proposed USDA rule opening the borders to older Canadian cattle jeopardizes U.S. beef export markets and dumps more cases of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) on the U.S.

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Jolley: What Effect Will Ethanol Have On The Cattle Industry?

Jolley:  What Effect Will Ethanol Have On The Cattle Industry?

 Cattlenetwork.com

 For a moment, let’s forget about planting more corn on the back forty and talk about what the “back forty” really is: Real Estate.  The ever escalating price of corn is doing to rural Iowa what the growing scarcity of land did to Orange county real estate in the 1990’s and the first few years of this decade – driving the price through the roof.

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Cattle producers: USDA should withdraw OTM rule

Cattle producers: USDA should withdraw OTM rule

 North Texas E- News

 Billings, Mont. — The Canadian government has confirmed that its latest case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) was in an Alberta bull born in 2000 – well beyond the 1997 implementation of Canada’s feed ban – and well beyond March 1, 1999, the date after which the Canadian feed ban was previously hoped to have become effective.

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S.Korea to relax quarantine on U.S. beef

S.Korea to relax quarantine on U.S. beef

 JAE-SOON CHANG
Belleville News Democrat

South Korea said Thursday that it will lower its quarantine standards this month over banned bone fragments in American beef shipments, paving the way for the resumption of U.S. beef imports.

 South Korea – once America’s third-largest overseas beef market – notified the United States of the plan during negotiations in Washington on Tuesday, and the U.S. did not oppose it, the South’s Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

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Stocker Cattle Forum: Distillers Grain Notes

Stocker Cattle Forum: Distillers Grain Notes

 Cattlenetwork.com

 The price of corn and soybean meal relative to dried distillers grain (DDG) has increased dramatically since the beginning of the year, though it is still slightly lower than all-time highs observed in the fall of 2006 and the summer of 2005.

 Specifically, I have been tracking the cost savings from substituting 31.8 bushels of corn plus 190 pounds of soybean meal with 1 ton of dried distillers grain (all priced in central Illinois). I chose these numbers as it is one feed ration substitution I have seen mentioned in the proliferating literature about how to use dried distillers grains into livestock rations.

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USDA poised to weaken mad cow safeguards

USDA poised to weaken mad cow safeguards

 Consumer Reports

 From salmonella in peanut butter to E. coli in spinach, a rash of food contamination scares over the past several months has left consumers reeling. But even as concerns about food safety mount, the U.S. Department of Agriculture is poised to adopt a controversial new proposal that would weaken restrictions on cattle and cattle parts imported from Canada–a country facing a significant problem with mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy).

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