Manure applications not always a good thing

Manure applications not always a good thing

Barbara Duckworth

The Western Producer

“If you apply manure to agricultural land that is already productive, those soils usually have lots of organic matter already… you are not going to get an improvement just because the soil already has good physical properties. It is hard to improve something that is already in relatively good soil health,” he said.

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Investments for Animal Feeding: Fence vs Machinery

Investments for Animal Feeding: Fence vs Machinery

Christine Gelley

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

Years like 2019 can test farmers and ranchers to the brink of insanity. People in this profession have to be resilient to the unpredictability of the weather, the markets, and the general chaos of life. All year thus far, we have discussed many ways to adapt our animal feeding programs, pasture systems, and hay production to the far from ideal conditions we are facing.

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Does Your Pasture Need a Boost? Fall Seeding Might Work For You

Does Your Pasture Need a Boost? Fall Seeding Might Work For You

Victor Shelton

On Pasture

Early August to mid-September is an excellent time to plant cool-season grasses. One of the advantages of seeding this time of the year as compared to a spring seeding is lower competition from weeds and getting enough good growth to guarantee them to survive the coming winter months.

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Farmer bankruptcy bill signed into law

Farmer bankruptcy bill signed into law

Feedstuffs

A bill to aid family farmers during downturns in the agricultural economy was signed into law by President Donald Trump. H.R. 2336, the Family Farmer Relief Act, eases the process of reorganizing debt through Chapter 12 bankruptcy rules and was created specifically to help family farmers during tough economic times.

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5 things to consider when working cattle

5 things to consider when working cattle

Burt Rutherford

Beef Magazine

Have you ever videoed yourself working cattle? Ron Gill says it can be instructive—humbling, but instructive. That’s one of the many, many golden tidbits that around 100 people took away from a recent Stockmanship and Stewardship program at Colorado State University.

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Weaning Techniques for Beef Calves

Weaning Techniques for Beef Calves

Dr. Ron Gill, Dr. Bruce Carpenter

Texas A&M

Weaning is the most stressful time a calf will experience. It has been well documented that health problems such as bovine respiratory disease (pneumonia, “shipping fever” etc.) usually beginswith stress at weaning. For this reason, all preconditioning programs begin with attempts to minimize stress at weaning.

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Keeping Cull Calves Profitable

Keeping Cull Calves Profitable

Vitaferm

Each fall when you go to market with your weaned calves, it seems like there are a handful of outliers in your calf crop that could cost you some premiums. But don’t dismay; there are ways to find value for every calf that you’ve produced; it might just take some extra time or some different marketing venues.

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Immunologic and physiologic differences of stressed and unstressed beef calves

Immunologic and physiologic differences of stressed and unstressed beef calves

Anne Zinn

American Society of Animal Science

A research team from the University of Georgia, Athens recently compared cell-mediated immune responses following ex vivo stimulation with viral and bacterial respiratory pathogens in stressed and unstressed beef calves.

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Tips offered to break the fluke life cycle in cattle.

Tips offered to break the fluke life cycle in cattle.

Angus Beef Bulletin

If you’re grazing cattle in coastal areas or river bottom pastures, then your cattle may be at risk for picking up liver flukes. It’s important to consider control measures because conditions in these areas support the fluke life cycle.

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JBS SA Monitors Suppliers With Satellites

JBS SA Monitors Suppliers With Satellites

Greg Henderson

Drovers

JBS SA monitors the origin of cattle it buys in Brazil using satellites, according to a Reuters report. Citing heightened concerns about environmental preservation and sustainable beef production, JBS Chief Executive Gilberto Tomazoni said the company is using satellite technology to monitor a 450,000 square-km (280,000 square mile) area of Brazil to guarantee it is not buying cattle from deforested areas.

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Fall calving – worth the off-season plunge?

Fall calving – worth the off-season plunge?

Heather Smith Thomas

Progressive Cattle

There are advantages and disadvantages to every calving season; producers need to figure out what works best for their own climate and management system. Dr. George Barrington, Washington State University, says the advantages and disadvantages to fall calving are partly geographic, with regional and management differences. “Some producers in the Intermountain West have successful fall-calving programs, even though it might work best in a milder climate,” he says.

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Why Consider Backgrounding a Calf?

Why Consider Backgrounding a Calf?

Stan Smith

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

Typically, when feed prices go down, we see feeder calf prices begin to climb as a corresponding move. That is, unless fed cattle prices are unstable or declining. A fire in a Kansas cattle packing plant just before a report detailing that the U.S. might have planted more acres of corn than earlier anticipated caused the perfect storm that allowed pressure on feeder calf prices at the same time as declining feed prices.

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Coyotes Can Protect Your Livestock From Predators

Coyotes Can Protect Your Livestock From Predators

Randy Comeleo

On Pasture

Livestock losses are an unfortunate reality of ranching and the use of traps and snares is a common way to attempt to reduce predator-livestock conflict. However, one USDA study (Shivik et al. 2003) noted that for many types of predators, there is a paradoxical relationship between the number of predators removed and the number of livestock killed. Surprisingly, these researchers found that as more predators were removed, more livestock were killed.

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Bunk Management and Feed Delivery

Bunk Management and Feed Delivery

Farms.com

When it comes to nutritional management of growing and finishing cattle, the scientific aspects tend to get the most attention.

What’s in your (stock) water?

What’s in your (stock) water?

Beef Research

Beef producers often worry about having too much water or not enough on their farms. However water quality, particularly in fluctuating stock water sources, may go unnoticed. As the summer wears on, evaporation, low rainfall, and consumption can cause the quantity and quality of surface water to dwindle. Meanwhile, hot and dry conditions cause cattle to be at their peak water demand.

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Range Beef Cow Symposium Registration Now Open

Range Beef Cow Symposium Registration Now Open

University of Nebraska

The Range Beef Cow Symposium will be held November 18-20 in Mitchell, NE at the Scotts Bluff County fairgrounds. The format is slightly different this year. In the afternoon of November 18, we will be offering Beef Quality Assurance Certification and a Ron Gill stockmanship clinic.

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This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry

This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry

ROWAN JACOBSEN

Outside

Editor’s note: Stories of this ilk are included in the blog to inform those in our industry how agriculture is being presented to and perceived by the public.

There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” That was actually written by the Workshop on Nonviolence Institute as a summary of Gandhi’s philosophy, but regardless, it’s remarkable how often it accurately describes the evolution of causes, from legal cannabis to gay marriage.

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The dangers of settling for low-quality cattle equipment

The dangers of settling for low-quality cattle equipment

Aleeya Laureola

Ag Daily

Cattle are responsible for 22 U.S. deaths per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Canada, there were 65 fatalities with animals from 2012 to 2016 — half caused by cattle. In Ireland, livestock are responsible for 42 percent of farm injuries, with 18 deaths caused by cattle between 2009 and 2018.

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Using cover crops to feed cattle

Using cover crops to feed cattle

Beef Magazine

Until now, there’s been little reliable, Iowa-based information to assess the value and viability of cover crops as a feedstock for Iowa’s cattle industry, which represents an estimated $4 billion to $6 billion of economic activity in the state.

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Dry edible beans as livestock feed when hit by drought, hail

Dry edible beans as livestock feed when hit by drought, hail

Karla Wilke

The Fence Post

Dry edible beans such as pintos, great northern and black beans are a very valuable commodity raised in western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming, ranking Nebraska second, and Wyoming eighth in national dry bean production.

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