Video Feature: Implanting Cattle Properly

Video Feature:  Implanting Cattle Properly

Matt Claeys, Beef Extension Specialist, Purdue University, illustrates the proper method for implanting beef cattle.

Need for Marker-Assisted EPDs

Need for Marker-Assisted EPDs

Matt Spangler, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Currently, bull buyers have a plethora of information from which to make selection decisions. Open up a sale or semen catalog and you’ll be quickly overwhelmed with actual and adjusted measurements, ratios, EPDs, economic index values, and perhaps now the results of DNA marker tests.

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Industry Counts on Stockers to Ensure Cattle Quality

Industry Counts on Stockers to Ensure Cattle Quality

Cattle Today

Genetics were selected years ago; calving and weaning are complete, so the next place that really matters in the beef production chain is the feedlot. Right?

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Misconceptions of Drug Use in Livestock Production

Misconceptions of Drug Use in Livestock Production

Gary Truitt

Hoosier AG Today

Dr. Marianne Ash, Director of Biosecurity and Emergency Planning for the Indiana Board Of Animal Health, was raised on a livestock farm in Carroll County, IN. She understands how livestock producers use antibiotics, something she says most consumers and policy makes do not understand, “They do not appreciate that, in livestock production, producers do everything they can not to use antibiotics because they are expensive.”

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Improve digestibility of silage

Improve digestibility of silage

The Cattle Business Weekly

Making silage under optimum conditions in recent seasons has become more of a challenge with muddy field conditions, fewer heat degrees and custom choppers who need to harvest a lot of acres. Nutrient-robbing molds and yeasts proliferate when chopping conditions are less than ideal.

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Now That´s Rural Warren Weibert – Decatur County Feedyard

Now That´s Rural Warren Weibert – Decatur County Feedyard

The Westerner

What happens when cattle meet computers? That sounds like one of my kid´s riddles. Actually, it could be a way of describing a scientific process for evaluating and managing cattle that is being used by an innovative beef feedyard in rural northwest Kansas.

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How do you treat your beer?

How do you treat your beer?

Clint Peck

Feedlot

Try leaving your beer sitting in your truck in the hot sun for a few hours before consuming it. Likely, even after it’s cooled down the beer’s already gone “skunky.” Your friends are mad at you and you’ll have to make another trip to town to get more refreshments.

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Disposition Drives Feedlot, Carcass Performance

Disposition Drives Feedlot, Carcass Performance

Angus.org

Nervous and aggressive cattle are a pain in the wallet.

That was the kicker in a recent presentation at the Midwest American Society of Animal Science meetings in Des Moines, Iowa.

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Summer pneumonia and BRSV

Summer pneumonia and BRSV

Kenny Barrett Jr., DVM, MS

Tri State Livestock News

The first cutting of hay is done for some ranchers but most continue burning diesel. Some spreads take all summer to roll up once and others, where it rains, bale the same ground multiple times in any given season. No matter the location, every rancher has been troubled by summer pneumonia.

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Mob grazing, organic farm tours set in eastern Nebraska

Mob grazing, organic farm tours set in eastern Nebraska

North Platte Bulletin

The Aug. 19 pasture walk will begin at 9 a.m. at the Don and Pat Jirsa farm southeast of Milford (2040 Saltillo Rd). Don Jirsa will explain his pivot irrigated pasture and mob grazing system, while Terry Gompert, UNL Extension educator, will offer advice and answer questions about mob grazing.

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USA – Smallest cattle herd in 37 years

USA – Smallest cattle herd in 37 years

The Westerner

The U.S. beef-cow herd on July 1 was the smallest in at least 37 years as farmers remained wary of beef demand during the economic recovery after losing money in the past two years. The beef-breeding herd totaled 31.7 million head as the month began, down 1.6 percent from 32.2 million a year earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a semiannual report

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Is Aged Beef Overrated?

Is Aged Beef Overrated?

The Atlantic

In a word: yes. But—and it’s a big but—aging is crucial. The only thing more disappointing than an over-aged steak, in fact, is a steak that hasn’t been aged at all.

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BeefTalk: Feeding Cattle Adds Balance to the Cow-calf Operation

BeefTalk: Feeding Cattle Adds Balance to the Cow-calf Operation

Kris Ringwall, Beef Specialist, NDSU Extension Service

The cattle business is very dynamic, so it is very easy to get lost in the shuffle. The current news or the latest color print catches our eyes and we start talking. Our conversations tend to be filled with lots of thoughts sprinkled with a few facts. The facts are seldom our own and actually may be slightly biased at times by someone having a quick change of expression or a shift in body language.

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Q&A: Is there a connection between deworming and miscarriage or was it going to happen anyway?

Q&A: Is there a connection between deworming and miscarriage or was it going to happen anyway?

Richard Randle, Associate Professor, Vet & Biomedical Sciences, University of Nebraska

While it is unfortunate that this cow lost her calf, we do expect a small percentage (~3%) of pregnant cows to lose their calves as a normal occurrence.

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Pasture weed control in summer

Pasture weed control in summer

Richard Snell

The Fence Post

Early to mid-June is a popular time to spray pasture weeds and woody plants. I’m not always sure, though, that it’s the smart thing to do.

Why do you spray weeds in pasture? Is it to kill plants that are poor forage or is it just force of habit and to make the pasture look nicer?

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Video Feature: Genetic Defects in Beef Cattle Part 2

Video Feature: Genetic Defects in Beef Cattle Part 2

Dr. Terry Stewart discusses the genetic defects Hydrocephalus, Arthrogyposis Multiplex (Curly Calf), Tibia Hemimelia (TH), Contractural Arachnodactyly (Formerly Fawn Calf). In addition he discusses haw to spot an animal afflicted and how to collect lab samples to verify the condition.

Strategic supplementation

Strategic supplementation

Greg Lardy

If you look up the word “strategic” in the dictionary, you will note the following definitions:

1a: of, relating to, or marked by strategy; 2a: necessary to or important in the initiation, conduct, or completion of a strategic plan; c: of great importance within an integrated whole or to a planned effect.

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Antibiotics debate

Antibiotics debate

The Cattle Business Weekly

Last Wednesday the USDA affirmed it supports the idea that there is a link between human health and the use of antibiotics in animals.

USDA chief veterinarian John Clifford said the department believes "the use of antimicrobials in animal agriculture does lead to some cases of antimicrobial resistance among humans and in animals themselves."

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R-CALF wants GIPSA rules now

R-CALF wants GIPSA rules now

KRVN

R-CALF USA is keeping alive discussion of the 90-day extension of the public comment period for USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration’s competition rules. According to R-CALF USA the U.S. meatpacker lobby – principally the American Meat Institute, National Meat Association, National Pork Producers Council and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, placed what it calls – tremendous political pressure – on USDA to gain the extension.

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Freeze branding Offers Producers an Alternative

Freeze branding Offers Producers an Alternative

Heather Smith Thomas

Cattle Today

Hot iron branding of livestock is the oldest form of permanent identification, practiced on other continents for hundreds of years, and was adopted very early in the American West as proof of ownership.

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