Baxter Black, DVM: The Designated American

Baxter Black, DVM:  The Designated American

I wonder if I will see in my lifetime the end of “Designated Americans?” I was filling out a form and was asked to check if I was African American, Hawaiian American, Latin American, Native American, Asian American, Anglo American or Other American.

Full Story

Evaluating Conventional and Sexed Semen in a Commercial Beef Heifer Development Program

Evaluating Conventional and Sexed Semen in a Commercial Beef Heifer Development Program

R. N. Funston and T. L. Meyer

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

Sex-sorting sperm relies on the fact the bovine X chromosome has 3.8% more DNA than the Y chromosome. However, the process of sorting does damage sperm and reduces fertility when compared with conventional semen. Calves resulting from sexed semen do not exhibit more genetic abnormalities nor does it affect calf characteristics.

Full Story

Early Spring Nutritional Challenges of Spring-calving Cows

Early Spring Nutritional Challenges of Spring-calving Cows

Glenn Selk

Drovers

Late winter and early spring is the most challenging time of the year for the nutrition of the spring-calving beef cows.  Unless cool season grasses are available, this is a season where maintaining or gaining body condition on spring calving cows is really quite difficult.

Full Story

Cattle Herd Expansion is Losing Momentum

Cattle Herd Expansion is Losing Momentum

Tong Wang

iGrow

According to the cattle and calves inventory report released by the USDA on January 29, 2016, the U.S. cattle herd increased 3% from a year ago. South Dakota cattle inventory increased by 250,000 head from the same period of 2015, ranked 3rd in the nation, behind only Kansas and Oklahoma.

Full Story

Vitamins for Beef Cattle

Vitamins for Beef Cattle

Homer B. Sewell

University of Missouri

Vitamin needs of beef cattle can be confined largely to A, D and E. This is because bacteria in the rumen of cattle are considered to have the ability to synthesize vitamin K and the B vitamins in sufficient quantities to meet the animal’s requirement.

Full Story

Alternative beef cow-calf systems

Alternative beef cow-calf systems

Rick Rasby

Angus Journal

Conventional cow-calf production systems are dependent on forage resources for grazing or hay production.

Full Story

Put the Sting On Stable Flies

Put the Sting On Stable Flies

Loretta Sorensen

DTN/Progressive Farmer

With more than 40 years of experience in beef production, Richard Winter is well-acquainted with the onset of stable flies come late spring and early summer.

Full Story

Never too early to begin farm succession planning

Never too early to begin farm succession planning

Samantha Stanbery Athey

FarmTalk

Whether the name has been on the mailbox at your farm for 100 days or 100 years, preserving the family farm legacy is the goal of nearly every farmer but is often a hard topic to discuss.

Full Story

Can BMR forage sorghum compete with corn silage?

Can BMR forage sorghum compete with corn silage?

Progressive Forage Grower

“Measure yield” is the number one thing growers can do to help themselves improve crop production, according to Dr. Quirine M. Ketterings, who spoke at the 2016 Northern New York Agricultural Development Program (NNYADP) annual meetings.

Full Story

Horn flies: The $1 billion bite at profits

Horn flies: The $1 billion bite at profits

Southern Livestock

Can you imagine being bit 120,000 times per day? It might be hard to imagine what this feels like, however during peak timeframes, as many as 4,000 horn flies can call a cow’s hide home. At 30 blood meals per day, that adds up to 120,000 bites per cow. Not only are these bites irritating your cows, but with production losses for the U.S. cattle industry are estimated at up to $1 billion annually, they’re also biting away at your profits.

Full Story