Eastern Livestock Raises Questions About Too Big to Fail
Chris Clayton
DTN
USDA has pegged the losses of unpaid cattle sales at more than $131 million involved in the Eastern Livestock Co. financial collapse. However, people in the cattle industry haven’t seen a plan on how to untangle the mess of cattle sales, or heard just how Eastern Livestock began its spiral downward.
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Steve Cornett: How to Read the GIPSA Responses
Beef Today
USDA got tons of responses to its request for public input on its pending GIPSA rule.
Your reporter devoted several hours of his holiday weekend to trying to find a pattern. Maybe it’s just me and my preconceived notions, but what I think I see is that a high percentage of the support for the changes comes from a few cattle producers, a lot of city folks—no few of them women for some reason—and quite a few people who say they were poultry farmers who got abused by integrators.
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Don’t Limit Genetic Potential Through Bad Management
Bovine Veterinarian
Management impacts on marbling actually begin prior to an animal’s birth, as inadequate passive immune transfer at birth becomes an important factor in an animal’s susceptibility of bovine respiratory disease (Galyean et al., 1999). Management and nutrition practices that keep cattle from becoming sick are very important because diagnosis of cattle with respiratory diseases is very difficult.
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SDSU professor Amanda Weaver receives USDA New Teacher award
Tri State Livestock News
South Dakota State University assistant professor Amanda Weaver received the 2010 New Teacher award at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities annual meeting in Dallas.
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Neb. Ranchers Serve Big Market With Small Cows
KETV
A pair of Nebraska ranchers has been breeding miniature cattle for the past 16 years, saying their rare breed results in better temperament and better meat.
When they introduced their miniature Herefords on their ranch near Tekamah, Ali and Kenny Petersen said they were the laughingstock of the area.
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Proposed rule sparks controversy
The Westerner
When the 2008 Farm Bill was signed into law, it included language directing USDA’s Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration to establish new criteria for the U.S. secretary of agriculture to consider in determining whether an undue or unreasonable preference had occurred in violation of the Packers and Stockyards Act.
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Southwest Beef Symposium set for Jan. 18-19 in Amarillo
Kay Ledbetter
The Southwest Beef Symposium jointly hosted by the Texas AgriLife Extension Service and New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service is scheduled for Jan. 18-19 in the Grand Plaza Room of the Amarillo Civic Center, 401 S Buchanan St., Amarillo.
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Keys to Forage Profitability
Garry Lacefield and Don Ball
Beef Today
Forage production is a broad topic. After all, there are numerous forage crops that can be grown in most any given geographical area, the soils and sites available for forage production vary greatly, various species and classes of livestock are produced on different farms and producers have widely differing resources and objectives.
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Scours An Expensive Problem
Dr. Ken McMillan
DTN
Q&A: What steps do you recommend to keep scours from cutting our calf crop? I’ve read that scours is the biggest calf killer in the United States.
Calf scours is certainly one of the most costly problems affecting the cow/calf producer.
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Late autumn management tips for the cow
Dave Barz, DVM
The weather has been great this fall. The harvest is completed and most of the fall tillage work is finished as well. The warm temperatures and lack of precipitation have made it easy to maintain gestating cows.
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Gary Minish named provost-senior vice chancellor
Tom Woolf
The Saluki Times
Southern Illinois University Carbondale Chancellor Rita Cheng today (Nov. 18) announced the appointment of Gary L. Minish as provost and senior vice chancellor.
Cheng selected Minish from among four finalists. His appointment, effective Dec. 15, is subject to ratification by the SIU Board of Trustees.
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Cold weather management for calves and cows
Rusty Evans
The Leaf Chronicle
Justin Rhinehart, assistant professor with University of Tennessee Extension, offers some good advice on cold weather beef management.
Cold weather can have a drastic impact on the performance of cattle. In fact, it can have as much of an effect on production as hot weather. Understanding how cattle deal with cold will help you understand how to bring cattle through winter without losing performance or wasting resources.
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GIPSA clarification wanted
High Plains Journal
After hearing more of the same and reading the letter to the editor ("Another Washington idea that rural America just can’t afford," Nov. 22, Page 4-B), I have to ask. KCA and R-CALF have never in all the years I have been involved (since day one) ever said or believed that all cattle should be priced the same as commodities like corn or wheat.
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Luke Bowman Joins Select Sires’ Beef Team
Select Sires Inc. has hired Luke Bowman as Beef Public Relations and Communications Coordinator. In this role, he will coordinate all aspects of public relations for the beef program, organize beef training within the Select Sires federation, assist with photography and video of newly acquired and current lineup sires, oversee production of the annual Beef Sire Directory and development of other promotional materials. Bowman will be based out of his home in Greens Fork, Ind.
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BeefTalk: Simple Bull Rankings Fill the Bull Pen
Kris Ringwall, Beef Specialist, NDSU Extension Service
The Dickinson Research Extension Center utilizes many bulls and always evaluates bulls at the time of purchase and periodically throughout their life span. Perhaps the most challenging evaluation is to ask if the bulls meet the current objectives of the breeding program or expected market for the calves.
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Proof at last: eating meat is not bad for the environment
Spiked.com
In an interview last year for a spiked debate about the future of food, animal-rights philosopher Peter Singer put the green case against eating meat: ‘I believe that if we aim to get to a sustainable place in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it’s going to be very hard to have large herds of cattle and sheep as we do at present.
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GIPSA Comment Period Ends; What Now?
Joe Roybal
BEEF
With the public comment period having ended this week for the proposed GIPSA rules on livestock marketing, what happens now?
While there’s a lot of conjecture on what exactly will happen next, what can happen is several fold, says Colin Woodall, chief of legislative affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA).
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Be Diligent on Genetic Defects When Buying Bulls
W. Mark Hilton, DVM
BEEF
While pregnancy testing a group of cows for a client recently, he mentioned that his 2½-year-old herd bull was lame. On closer inspection, I saw the bull had a corkscrew claw on the lame rear foot. The owner was quite disappointed to learn it was possibly a genetic defect and that the bull should go to slaughter.
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100% Grass-Fed: BQA Part 3
Randy Kuhn
Beef Today
I don’t think that what is required by the BQA Program is anything that any BEEF producer can’t uphold. Committing to the BQA way of producing BEEF & Dairy BEEF isn’t going to cost you anything more than what you’re currently doing, In the long run it could actually save you money!
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Septicemia in calves
Heather Smith Thomas
Western Cowman
On occasion a calf develops an infection in which bacteria or their toxins get into the bloodstream and travel throughout the body, creating a condition called septicemia. Some types of toxin-forming bacteria (usually gaining entrance to the body via the GI tract, after damaging the gut lining and slipping through it) cause very rapid death.
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