BeefTalk: Are You Feeding and Keeping an Eye on the Bulls?

BeefTalk: Are You Feeding and Keeping an Eye on the Bulls?

Kris Ringwall, Beef Specialist, NDSU Extension Service

Sometimes beef producers overlook the obvious: bulls. If the bulls are not in a separate pen, now is the time to separate them from the cow herd and take a good look at their condition. Bulls actually enjoy a solitary life, absent from all the comings and goings in the cow herd. Bulls in a bullpen are much easier to monitor and watch while feeding, lest one of them decides to challenge you at the feed bunk.

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Polled Bulls

Polled Bulls

Dr. Ken McMillan

DTN/The Progressive Farmer

Horns and scurs have separate but related inheritance. Scurs only develop in heterozygous polled cattle (Pp). Homozygous polled cattle (PP) will not develop scurs.

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Energy Dense Forages Can Be Beneficial to Herd

Energy Dense Forages Can Be Beneficial to Herd

Heather Smith Thomas

Cattle Today

Some forage species are more energy-dense than others. Beef producers around the world have been utilizing some of these species in grass-fed beef production, using forages instead of grain for finishing beef animals. Some of these forages can also be beneficial in a fall/winter grazing program.

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Optimizing dairy beef potential

Optimizing dairy beef potential

Bill Tiedje

Iowa Farmer Today

As beef cattle numbers continue to rebuild to pre-drought levels, an increasing number of Iowa dairies have focused on developing the beef production capabilities of their stock in the past couple years.

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Producers can take precautions to help prevent fetal losses during calving

Producers can take precautions to help prevent fetal losses during calving

Ryan Crossingham

Farm & Ranch Guide

Calving time, whether spring or fall, is always a busy time for cattle producers. Along with a packed schedule, calving brings with it its share of concerns for producers, none bigger than abortions or fetal losses.

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Plan forage management now

Plan forage management now

Derrell S. Peel

FarmTalk

The economic basis for cow-calf production is growing grass and using cows to harvest the grass. Feed costs are typically the largest component of annual cow costs in cow-calf operations.

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How legume and grass systems actually work

How legume and grass systems actually work

Chad Hale

Progressive Forage Grower

There are two schools of thought when it comes to adding nitrogen to mixed stands of legumes and grasses. The first school of thought is this: legumes provide all the nitrogen that the accompanying plants need, so additional nitrogen fertilizer is not needed.

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Ranch ingenuity: Army truck beats rancher’s battle with winter-feeding

Ranch ingenuity: Army truck beats rancher’s battle with winter-feeding

Cassidy Woolsey

Progressive Cattleman

A 5-ton army truck isn’t a common piece of equipment to see roaming the rangelands of central Wyoming – with hay stacked in the back no less – but one ranching family has taken a unique idea and transformed it into a working reality.

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Don’t wait, be ready! New antibiotic rules for 2017

Don’t wait, be ready! New antibiotic rules for 2017

Beth Ferry, Madonna Benjamin, Megan Sprague

Michigan State University

he use and distribution of antibiotics in animal agriculture is changing and producers of all sizes need to begin preparing to adapt in the coming year. Focusing on the one-health concept of combating antibiotic resistance, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is working to ensure the judicious use of humanly medically important antibiotics.

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Take precautions to avoid Trichomoniasis this breeding season

Take precautions to avoid Trichomoniasis this breeding season

The Cattle Business Weekly

Trichomoniasis, a reproductive disease of cattle, is experiencing somewhat of a resurgence in South Dakota this past winter and spring.  As such, cattle producers should keep the disease at the top of their mind when preparing for the upcoming breeding season, said Russ Daly, SDSU Extension Veterinarian.

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