A convenient way to calculate proportions of two feed ingredients to achieve a desirednutrient percentage is to use the Pearson Square. The process is simple and easy to use. Dr. Clyde Lane University of Tennessee Beef Extension Specialist illustrates this method.
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Reducing Losses When Feeding Hay to Beef Cattle
Robert Kallenbach, Department of Agronomy, Univesity of Missouri
Feeding hay to cattle is expensive. Recent analyses show that hay costs between $0.02 and $0.07 per pound of dry matter; usually more than double the cost for the same amount of nutrients from pasture. Hay is expensive because:
* It requires a large investment in equipment
* It requires labor to make and feed
* More than 50 percent of it is wasted by either poor storage methods or improper feeding practices, or both
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Utilize crop residues to lower production costs
Greg Lardy
Tri State Livestock News
Depending on the area of the region in which you live, a variety of crop residues offer opportunities to lower production costs, rest pastures, and extend the grazing season, making them an attractive forage choice for many cow calf producers. In this week’s column, I’ll give you a brief synopsis of the different types of crop residues in the region and some pointers on using them.
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A beef producer’s ABC’s
Kindra Gordon
Cattle Business Weekly
Challenging times in the beef industry can feel overwhelming to ranch families, but long-time Nebraska rancher Homer Buell believes the best advice is to remember your ABC’s – that is Attitude, Business practices and Continuing education.
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Think Safety When Vaccinating Pregnant Cows
AG Network
Beef producers invest a lot of time, energy and resources to get cows pregnant. To protect that investment, an increasing number of producers are becoming more vigilant about maintaining effective vaccination programs that are safe for pregnant animals.
Preventing diseases that can have devastating effects on reproduction, such as infectious bovine rhinotracheitis (IBR), has proven to reduce reproductive failure and abortions.
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Lardy to head NDSU Animal Sciences
AG Week
Greg Lardy is the new head of North Dakota State University’s Department of Animal Sciences.
Lardy has been the NDSU Extension Service beef cattle specialist since June 1997. He was promoted to professor in the Department of Animal Sciences this summer and has served as co-director of NDSU’s Beef Systems Center of Excellence.
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Controversy erupts over Michael Pollan’s Poly lecture
KATHY JOHNSTON
New Times
Nationally known sustainable food expert Michael Pollan will now be part of a panel discussion at Cal Poly on Oct. 15 rather than giving his planned one-hour lecture. The recently announced format change comes on the heels of a letter to Cal Poly President Warren Baker from Harris Ranch Beef Company Chairman David E. Wood, threatening to withdraw a pledged $500,000 donation for a new meat processing facility on the campus.
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Companies Strike Deal on Testing for E. Coli
MICHAEL MOSS
New York TImes
In an expanding effort by the meat industry to make its hamburger safe, officials at the retail giant Costco said Wednesday that they had struck a new accord on testing for the pathogen E. coli.
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Feeding Hay With Herbicide Residues
Dr. Bruce Anderson, Professor of Agronomy, Agronomy & Horticulture, University of Nebraska
Many of you winter cows on corn stalks or other crop residues. Do you also sometimes feed grass or prairie hay to supplement those stalks? If you do, double check to learn if those hay fields were sprayed with herbicides before hay was cut earlier this year.
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TB funding announced
KRVN
Senator Johanns on Wednesday applauded the inclusion of $2 million in funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to depopulate tuberculosis (TB)-infected cattle herds—an increase of $1 million over last year. The funding is included in the recently released Agriculture Appropriations conference report. The provision in the legislation takes money already appropriated to USDA and directs it specifically toward the department’s program for cattle depopulation and compensation of owners.
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From Hoof to Plate: Two Beef Tales
Courtney Lowery
New West Blog
Especially after reading the this gruesome story in this weekend’s New York Times about E. Coli and the failings of the inspection process in mass-produced ground beef, this piece from Douglas Brown in the Denver Post, about a different way of getting beef from pasture to plate, is timely.
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Ottawa confirms new case of mad cow disease
Canada.com
Final tests have confirmed mad cow disease in a mature beef cow from the Alberta, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Wednesday.
The animal is Canada’s eighth case of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, since the first native-born case in 2003.
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Joel Salatin’s gospel
Angela Allen
Culinate.com
Joel Salatin can work the crowd as well as the soil. On a visit to Oregon in late summer, the Virginia-based farmer fertilized his presentations with a southerner’s natural-born gift of the gab.
Sporting a Grass Farmer baseball hat and aviator glasses, Salatin the 50-ish farmer who stole the spotlight in “Food Inc.” and in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, is a fire-in-the-belly orator on the green-food-movement lecture circuit, and last month he received the prestigious Heinz Award for spreading the word about sustainable family farming.
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Fall selling season is here, advise for feedlot operators
Codi Vallery-Mills
Cattle Business Weekly
The bulk of the nation’s feeder cattle are sold in the fall selling season. The region is just a few weeks into the autumn and no huge flutter of activity has been seen as order buyers are cautiously bidding and feedlots are slowly filling their pens.
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Is It Finally Time for a Bull Market?
Del Deterling
DTN/Progressive Farmer
There is a flicker of light for beef producers who have seen nothing but gloom for the past couple of years. Industry leaders and some economists foresee improvement in both feeder calf and fed cattle prices as the general economy rebounds, perhaps as early as the first quarter of 2010.
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The Beef Blog 