Mark Parker: The Top 10 ways to use a horse as a weather gauge

Mark Parker:  The Top 10 ways to use a horse as a weather gauge

FarmTalk

10. You’re walking across the pasture and run smack-dab into a Shetland pony — heavy fog in low-lying areas.

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No shortcuts when it comes to cattle care in 2017

No shortcuts when it comes to cattle care in 2017

DALE HILDEBRANT

Farm & Ranch Guide

The final segment of the NDSU Extension’s Circle of Life Cattle workshop that was held in Ellendale on Feb. 14 featured a panel of three veterinarians assembled to answer questions from those attending the workshop. Two of the vets were brothers. Dr. Collin Galbreath, DVM and Dr. Ben Galbreath, DVM have private practices in the Oakes and Ellendale area, and joining them was Dr. Gerald Stokka, DVM Extension Livestock Stewardship specialist.

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Cheap Grain Impacts Stocker Prospects

Cheap Grain Impacts Stocker Prospects

Derrell S. Peel

Feedlot Magazine

The primary function of markets is to figure out what gets produced and what resources are used to accomplish that production.  While broader supply and demand forces determine what gets produced and how much is produced, the question of how to produce is particularly tricky in the cattle industry.  The ruminant biology of cattle provides tremendous flexibility in how cattle are produced but also means lots of challenges to figure out how to produce cattle most competitively. 

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Realized Reproductive Rate is an Important Production Calculation in a Cow-Calf Enterprise

Realized Reproductive Rate is an Important Production Calculation in a Cow-Calf Enterprise

Aaron Berger

University of Nebraska

When evaluating a cow-calf enterprise, one of the foundational productivity measures to understand and calculate is the realized reproductive rate. The realized reproductive rate is the percentage of calves weaned from cows that were exposed to breeding. It is often identified as the percent calf crop weaned per cow exposed.

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Preventing and Treating Stock Show Crud in Your Livestock

Preventing and Treating Stock Show Crud in Your Livestock

Crystal Blin

Sure Champ

It doesn’t matter the time of year, location of the show or the species you’re hauling, as the owner, exhibitor, parent or younger sibling, you are likely going to come home with the stock show crud.

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Building a Cow Herd – Billy Bean Style

Building a Cow Herd – Billy Bean Style

Steve Freeman

On Pasture

Two of my favorite subjects are cattle and baseball. Two of my favorite books on these subjects are “The Lasater Philosophy of Cattle Raising” by Laurie Lasater and “MoneyBall” by Michael Lewis. One day, on a long drive, I started playing with the idea that breeding a fertile, easy keeping and most importantly, profitable, herd of cows could be compared to how the Oakland A’s of the early 2000’s built a winning baseball team.

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Reversing Dewormer Resistance

Reversing Dewormer Resistance

Victoria G. Myers

DTN/Progressive Farmer

Dewormer resistance came as no surprise to parasitologists, Ray Kaplan says, but it did shatter some long-held illusions in the beef industry. "This was a problem in sheep long before it became a problem in cattle," says the professor of parasitology in the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine.

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4-Hers, volunteers rally to save orphaned calves

4-Hers, volunteers rally to save orphaned calves

Kansas State University

A Kansas 4-H Club has rallied supporters in the state and surrounding states to take in orphaned calves whose mothers were victims of the wildfires that raced across several western counties last week.

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Precalving Vaccination Programs for Cows

Precalving Vaccination Programs for Cows

Heather Smith Thomas

Angus Beef Bulletin

The best protection against disease in newborn calves is making sure they get an adequate amount of good-quality colostrum, containing antibodies against most of the pathogens they may encounter, soon after birth. If the dam has a chance to build a high level of antibodies before calving, she passes this temporary immunity to her calf via colostrum.

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Minimizing calving difficulties in beef cattle

Minimizing calving difficulties in beef cattle

Farming Life

About 80 percent of all calves lost at birth are anatomically normal. Most of them die because of injuries or suffocation resulting from difficult or delayed calving. Factors contributing to calving problems fall into three main categories — calf factors, cow factors and foetal position at birth.

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