Mark Parker: Top 10 most common causes of farmer injuries

Mark Parker:  Top 10 most common causes of farmer injuries

FarmTalk

#10. Spending your wife’s vacation fund money on yet another bargain cow at the sale barn.

#9. Bending over to pick up your cap when there’s a cow with a newborn nearby.

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Transition to a Controlled Breeding Season

Transition to a Controlled Breeding Season

Victoria G. Myers

Progressive Farmer

Cattle producers cannot expect to go from a 365-day calving season to a 60- or 90-day season within one year. More feasible is a progressive three- or four-year plan.

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Johne’s Disease and Detection in Beef Cattle

Johne’s Disease and Detection in Beef Cattle

Michelle Arnold, DVM

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

What is Johne’s Disease? Johne’s (pronounced Yo-knees) Disease is a chronic disease of profuse, watery diarrhea and weight loss or “wasting” in adult cattle (Figure 1) caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis, commonly referred to as “MAP”. This is a slow, progressive disease that begins when calves (not adult cattle) are infected with the MAP bacteria, most often around the time of birth but infection can occur up to 6 months of age and very rarely after.

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In Support of Small Cows

In Support of Small Cows

Meg Grzeskiewicz

Eco Farming Daily

I believe that you can single-trait select females for one thing: the percentage of her weight that her calf weighs at weaning. I regard this as the ultimate measure of a cow’s worth. It is a defense against the trap of selecting females based on simply having the largest calves and ending up with a bunch of massive females that will eat you into the poorhouse.

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TN to host Steak and Potatoes Field Day

TN to host Steak and Potatoes Field Day

On the Farm Radio

Beef cattle producers, fruit and vegetable growers, and Tennessee landowners should save the date for the Steak and Potatoes Field Day: Tuesday, August 6. A University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture field day, the event will be held at the Plateau AgResearch and Education Center in Crossville and feature science-driven sessions with the latest research and findings.

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Improve Silage ROI

Improve Silage ROI

Ben Jensen & Jon Pretz

Angus Beef Bulletin

We all know that feeding cows high-quality forage can translate to increased profitability, thanks to its superior digestibility and encouragement of dry-matter intake (DMI). However, over the past few years, prices have been on the rise as the result of a limited forage supply. Despite its high cost, whether we are feeding on our farms or shipping down the road as a source of income, we can all agree that forage quality matters.

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Perspective: Farm Aid is no friend to farmers

Perspective: Farm Aid is no friend to farmers

Michelle Miller

AGDAILY

Farm Aid is a concert put on by the likes of John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Willie Nelson, Luke Combs, Bonnie Rait, and Neil Young (remember his Album “The Monsanto years?”). They talk a big game about valuing farmers and creating the best food in America.

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New policies needed to combat grain fungus of cattle

New policies needed to combat grain fungus of cattle

FEDERICA GIANNELLI

WCVM Today

“In the most severe cases, animals lose their hooves and have to be put down, so there are economic losses for producers,” said University of Saskatchewan PhD student Vanessa Cowan. “It’s terrible. There is no treatment, except to stop eating contaminated grains.”

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Mike Rowe’s Advice For Beginning Farmers

Mike Rowe’s Advice For Beginning Farmers

Anna-Lisa Laca

Drovers

In late June, I had the chance to meet and interview Mike Rowe at the VAS Connect Summit. I couldn’t resist spending a chunk of my interview time to ask him what advice he has to offer beginning producers for a special episode of The First Years podcast and luckily, he obliged.

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Farmers struggle to find hay for animals as wet spring creates shortage

Farmers struggle to find hay for animals as wet spring creates shortage

Jessie Higgins

UPI

Hay stocks across the Midwest this spring were down 24 percent from last year, said Lance Zimmerman, a research and data manager at Cattle Fax, which monitors and informs the cattle industry. And last year’s stocks were below the norm, he said.

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Baxter Black, DVM: Talking Dirty

Baxter Black, DVM:  Talking Dirty

In this column I have often mentioned scours, abscesses, big tits, bad bags, cancer eyes, foot rot, slurry pits, afterbirth, retained placenta, castration, heat cycles, sheep pellets and snotty noses.

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Calving Season Countdown

Calving Season Countdown

Victoria G. Myers

Progressive Farmer

As calving season nears, most producers have a list they carry in their heads of those items they need to have on hand. Common things like colostrum, plastic sleeves, calf-feeding bottles and calf pullers are always top of mind. What about forages? That’s what veterinarian Mary Ellen Hicks says she’s thinking about.

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Nebraska rancher’s solar system could offer power for grid, shade for cattle

Nebraska rancher’s solar system could offer power for grid, shade for cattle

Karen Uhlenhuth

The Cattle Business Weekly

A federal grant is helping the farming entrepreneur devise a shading system for cattle that incorporates solar panels. Solar panels are already a common sight on hog and poultry confinement barns in the Midwest. They could be coming soon to cattle feedlots as well.

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Planning for Winter 2020 Cow Herd Feeding

Planning for Winter 2020 Cow Herd Feeding

Francis L. Fluharty

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

Poor quality long stem forages, reduced forage supplies, and increased feed and supplementation costs all demand that we look at nutrition management even more closely this year! The spring and summer of 2019 have set records for rainfall throughout much of the United States, having negative impacts on corn planting and hay production. In addition, areas of the southeast have been exceptionally dry, and hay production has been limited.

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Unusual weather pattern may influence leptospirosis

Unusual weather pattern may influence leptospirosis

Feedstuffs

From early embryonic deaths to lower pregnancy rates, stillbirths, abortions and even weakened calves, Leptospira hardjo-bovis affects all stages of beef cattle reproduction. With these reproductive inefficiencies and minimal clinical signs, the presence of leptospirosis can quickly affect herd profitability, according to Boehringer Ingelheim.

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Reproduction and Health Concerns in Different Environments

Reproduction and Health Concerns in Different Environments

Dr. Bob Larson

Angus Journal

Different environments determine the type and abundance of forage, the extent of heat or cold stress, the occurrence of certain insect pests, and the presence of toxic plants. These environmental differences create diverse health concerns and reproductive strategies for herds.

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Flexibility making stocker cattle more popular

Flexibility making stocker cattle more popular

Teresa Clark

The Fence Post

Is there opportunity in backgrounding cattle? Can money be made? These were just two of the questions addressed by a Breedlove professor of Agribusiness and Extension Livestock Marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University, during a recent stocker calf meeting in Nebraska.

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His Own Road

His Own Road

Julie Turner-Crawford

Ozarks Farm and Neighbor

When Jason Bates says he’s been on some of the nation’s biggest ranches, from Florida to Oregon, that’s not an exaggeration. Jason, a native of New York state, grew up in the Thoroughbred horse business and came to the Ozarks as a college freshman at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M in Miami, Okla., and the relationships he developed in the Ozarks kept him coming back.

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African cattle investing – the new cash cow?

African cattle investing – the new cash cow?

Tanisha Heiberg, Sisipho Skweyiya

Reuters

A pioneering app in South Africa lets investors, eager to benefit from rising global beef demand, buy shares in a cow from their mobile phone for as little as 576 rand ($41). Self-styled “crowd-farming” company Livestock Wealth connects investors with small-scale farmers via its “MyFarmbook” app, where they can buy their own cow and receive interest rates of between 5% and 14% depending on where they put their money.

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Better buck$ at the barn

Better buck$ at the barn

Jennifer Theurer

High Plains Journal

Kent Andersen, director of Genetics Technical Services, U.S. Cattle-Equine, Zoetis, says that genetically testing a cow will automatically give a producer information that would normally require as much as 20 offspring to achieve. To lend perspective, a cow will produce 10 calves in her lifetime, if she’s lucky.

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