Baxter Black, DVM: MY OLD MARTIN

Baxter Black, DVM: MY OLD MARTIN

I can’t remember how many songs Martin wrote, probably half of my notebook full of livin’ room hits!

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Steve Cornett: Too Fair for the Common Good

Steve Cornett: Too Fair for the Common Good

Beef Today

In W. Edwards Deming’s theories of management, there is a basic tenet that strikes me as immutable: You can’t inspect quality into a product; you must build quality in throughout the production process.

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Beef: It’s what’s for farming

Beef: It’s what’s for farming

CHRIS WOODKA

The Pueblo Chieftan

Cattle are a comfortable fit for the Arkansas Valley.

 Even when crops such as sugar beets, vegetables, melons or broom corn were big money-makers for the valley, raising livestock was the primary agricultural endeavor. Most of the farm acres in the valley have been devoted to raising feed for the animals since the early 1900s, and as time went on, cattle became the key to the valley ag economy.

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Forage testing: As important as ever in beef cattle rations

Forage testing: As important as ever in beef cattle rations

Mike Boersma, University of Minnesota Beef Team

Farm and Ranch Guide

Forages are a major component of many beef cattle rations. Therefore, knowing the amount of each nutrient that a given forage contains is critical to knowing the amount of each nutrient that is available to livestock.

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USDA To Require Nutrition Labels On Meat

USDA To Require Nutrition Labels On Meat

National Public Radio

Beginning in 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will require food labels on 40 of the most common cuts of raw beef and poultry. Everything from hamburger to chicken patties would include information about calories, cholesterol and fat. For more, NPR’s Audie Cornish speaks to Steve Kay, editor and publisher of the trade publication Cattle Buyers Weekly.

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Symposium to address current beef industry issues

Symposium to address current beef industry issues

High Plains Journal

The Southwest Beef Symposium, jointly hosted by the New Mexico State University Cooperative Extension Service and Texas AgriLife Extension Service, is scheduled for Jan. 18 to 19 in the Grand Plaza Room of the Amarillo Civic Center, 401 S. Buchanan St., Amarillo.

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SD Beef Plant To Get State Financing

SD Beef Plant To Get State Financing

Food Manufacturing

Officials announced Tuesday that a long-delayed beef packing plant near Aberdeen will get state financing.

The Aberdeen American News reports that state aid will help pay for construction at the Northern Beef Packers plant.

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Farmers Disagree on Antibiotic Use

Farmers Disagree on Antibiotic Use

Nina Moini

KOMU

Antibiotic resistance occurs when farmers or veterinarians administer too much of certain antibiotics into an animal’s system. Eventually, the bacteria the antibiotics were meant to fight off become stronger and resistant to the antibiotics.

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Healthy calves pay big dividends throughout feeding process

Healthy calves pay big dividends throughout feeding process

ANDREA JOHNSON

Farm and Ranch Guide

Among all of the management practices that cattle producers complete, keeping calves healthy and eating well offers the biggest return on investment.

Healthy and aggressive-to-the-feed-bunk beef cattle increase in value throughout the feeding process – from the cow/calf operation, to the backgrounding site, to the feedlot.

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UW Cattle Feeder Clinic scheduled for Jan. 12

UW Cattle Feeder Clinic scheduled for Jan. 12

Green Bay Press Gazette

A UW-Extension Cattle Feeder Clinic will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 12, at Snazz & Jane’s, between Oconto Falls and Gillett on Highway 22. The meal will begin at 5:30 p.m., with presentations to follow. Anyone raising beef or dairy steers or interested in raising steers is invited to attend.

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UNL: Corn stalks less valuable as feed source

UNL: Corn stalks less valuable as feed source

Ken Anderson 

Brownfield Network

Corn stalks are the main winter feed resource for many cattle producers in the Midwest.  But increasingly, their value is being questioned.

A University of Nebraska report points out that both stalks and cattle have changed considerably in the past 20 years.  For starters, today’s modern combines are leaving much less grain in the field.

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Worried about newborn calves in winter? Check CANL

Worried about newborn calves in winter? Check CANL

SUE ROESLER

Prairie Star

Lots of winter and spring newborn calves can be lost in the Midwest Plains states due to weather conditions often unforeseen by livestock producers.

But a new system called Cold Advisory for Newborn Livestock (CANL) gives producers the chance to check out hazardous weather conditions that increase risk of problems or death to exposed newborn calves 36 hours in advance of birth.

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Cattle Nutrition: Feeding Coproducts: Fact versus Myth

Cattle Nutrition: Feeding Coproducts: Fact versus Myth

Beef Today

There are more myths about distillers’ grains and gluten feed than I can list. One of the more interesting is that distillers’ grains will cause foot rot and bloat, when in fact distillers’ grains, with their dense mineral content, improve bone and hoof hardness and will reduce the chance of bloat if fed correctly.

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Competitiveness and the growing role of the stocker industry

Competitiveness and the growing role of the stocker industry

Drovers

For much of the last 50 years, cheap fuel/cheap food policies in the U.S. resulted in an abundance of inexpensive feed grain for livestock production. One result of that was a beef industry, as we know it today, which deemphasized the forage role of beef cattle, particularly beyond the cow-calf production level.

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Beef Packing Plant to Employ Hundreds Near Aberdeen

Beef Packing Plant to Employ Hundreds Near Aberdeen

Tom Hanson

KDLT

Today officials announced that a long-delayed beef packing plant near Aberdeen will get state financing.

State aid will help pay for construction at the 70 million dollar Northern Beef Packers Plant.  The financing package was announced this afternoon.

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US bison ranchers struggle to meet consumer demand

US bison ranchers struggle to meet consumer demand

STEVE KARNOWSKI

Seattle Times

The deep snow blanketing the Midwest prairie didn’t bother the bison on Ed Eichten’s ranch one bit. The hardy animals evolved to survive – even thrive – year-round on the open range, and with their big heads, they can plow right through drifts 5-feet tall or more.

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Eastern Livestock Co. case costly: East Tennessee firms claim damages in hundreds of thousands

Eastern Livestock Co. case costly: East Tennessee firms claim damages in hundreds of thousands

Ed Marcum

Knoxville.BIZ

East Tennessee livestock companies were hit with hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses from the collapse of Indiana-based Eastern Livestock Co., filings in civil court and with the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal.

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Derrell Peel: Five cattle market factors to watch in 2011

Derrell Peel: Five cattle market factors to watch in 2011

Tri State Livestock News

Derrell Peel, long-time Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist, recently named five factors he expects to have the biggest impact on market prices in 2011.

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Corn Fed vs Grass Fed

Corn Fed vs Grass Fed

Gary DiGiuseppe

American Cattlemen

Promoters and producers of grass fed beef have made a lot of claims about its nutritional and environmental benefits.  One web-based marketer states, “100% grass-fed meats, from any kind of critter, are the most perfect food for man.

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Diagnostic Dilemmas

Diagnostic Dilemmas

Dan Goehl

Beef Today

As we get nearer to spring calving season, our clinic will begin to get calls of aborted fetuses, near-term stillbirths and lost calves. These cases can be frustrating, as often we will not get a definitive diagnosis of what caused the problem. It is important for producers to understand a couple of things when deciding if it is worth the expense and effort to run diagnostic tests on individual ill or dead animals.

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