Why Having a Biosecurity Plan in Place is So Important for Producers

Why Having a Biosecurity Plan in Place is So Important for Producers

Oklahoma Farm Report

Having a biosecurity plan in place should be a big priority for cattle producers, says Dr. Rosslyn Biggs, OSU beef cattle extension specialist, and College of Veterinary Medicine director. “The Thing about the coronavirus that’s really brought to the general conversation is things like epidemiology, contact tracing, how diseases, in particular viruses, spread from one infected person or animal to another and measures that we can take to prevent the spread of disease.”

Full Story

Grazing Exchanges Connect Producers and Landowners

Grazing Exchanges Connect Producers and Landowners

DTN

Having the livestock available to graze down crop residues and covers isn’t always feasible, even though the practice clearly comes with a long list of benefits, including keeping down wildfires.

Full Story

Freezer Beef Sales Explode During COVID-19

Freezer Beef Sales Explode During COVID-19

Mike Estadt

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

It is well documented that early in the coronavirus pandemic, major meat processing facilities across the United States became supply bottlenecks due to employee infections shutting down production.

Full Story

‘Winterizing’ your cows: Nutrition going into the dormant season

‘Winterizing’ your cows: Nutrition going into the dormant season

Caitlin Hebbert

Progressive Cattle

For the vast majority of cow-calf producers, this time of year is scored with the chorus of freshly weaned calves. The majority of our focus right now is directed toward weaning strategies, alleviating stress, vaccination protocols, nutrient management and marketing of the 2020 calf crop – and rightfully so.

Full Story

Brassicas are a great fall-grazing resource

Brassicas are a great fall-grazing resource

C.J. Weddle

Hay and Forage Grower

Brassicas can be utilized as fall and winter grazing crops, but there are a few things that University of Arkansas (UA) Forage Program Associate Kenny Simon says you should know before turning a herd of cattle out to graze freely.

Full Story

Oversold cattle market to see a bounce or consolidation

Oversold cattle market to see a bounce or consolidation

Terry Roggensack

Successful Farming

Restaurant and catering demand were already weak, and the potential for further lockdowns for restaurants and bars will limit demand even more. The USDA boxed beef cutout yesterday closed $1.13 lower at $206.70. This was down from $210.60 the previous week and was the lowest the cutout had been since August 7.

Full Story

Beef is bad for the planet. Can we make it better?

Beef is bad for the planet. Can we make it better?

Byrd Pinkerton Sigal Samuel

Vox

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.

On the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, there’s a small city called Alta Floresta. It was settled four decades ago when people came in to ranch cattle. They cut down big tracts of the rainforest and set fire to the trees in an environmentally destructive process known as slashing and burning.

Full Story

Select Carcass Value Pressure

Select Carcass Value Pressure

Paul Dykstra

Drovers

The fed cattle price recovery that has been painstakingly built since early September has eroded in an extraordinary decline over the past two weeks.  All facets of the beef supply chain have acknowledged the fed cattle supply burden we face as we begin the new year. However, it seems that the fund managers just became enlightened to that reality, rapidly reducing long-hedged positions and creating the waterfall effect.

Full Story

Prime beef continues to surge

Prime beef continues to surge

Nevil Speer

Beef Magazine

At the end of September, Industry At A Glance highlighted the ongoing solid premium for Prime in the wholesale market.  That surge was surprising, given the sharp slowdown in food service volume in the past six months due to COVID. The column noted, “…the premium for Prime has been defying gravity – the moving average now stands above $30 and has been positively diverging from other categories in recent weeks.”

Full Story

5 reasons to buy a cow (or part of one)

5 reasons to buy a cow (or part of one)

Ginger Kozlowski

Concord Monitor

Want to buy a cow? It could live in your backyard and eat the grass. Then you could feed it expensive fermented hay all winter. It could supply all the manure you could ever want – and more. To the point, how would you turn an inconvenient pet into extremely convenient meat?

Full Story

The economic value of rotational grazing

The economic value of rotational grazing

Mitch Kezar

Successful Farming

Lance Vilhauer pops open a fence gate and strides through dew-laden grass into a pasture. He checks his cows and calves as the sun crests over a slough filled with cattails and raucous ducks. He examines grazed grass stalks, rolling them through his fingers. “What really turned me onto rotational grazing was the economic value of it in dollar signs,” he says. He ought to know. Vilhauer is a banker.

Full Story

Multi-Sire Breeding Program

Multi-Sire Breeding Program

Dr. Ken McMillan

DTN

There are advantages to a multi-sire breeding program. First in my mind is the fact that any bull can “go bad” at any time. This may not be obvious when it happens, and he may still be breeding cows. Additionally, if several cows come into heat at one time, multiple bulls should be more effective at servicing and settling them.

Full Story

Cyanide poisoning and nitrate toxicity – Do you know the difference?

Cyanide poisoning and nitrate toxicity – Do you know the difference?

Dr. Jimmy Henning

Ohio Beef Cattle Letter

Some aspects of forage management are just confusing enough that the same questions come up every year. Take the forage disorders, cyanide poisoning and nitrate toxicity, for example. Questions on these disorders come up anytime the forage sorghum species are grazed and especially in the fall as light frosts predicted. This article gives a quick reminder about these two forage disorders of cattle. (Cyanide toxicity is also called prussic acid toxicity or poisoning).

Full Story

Where does metaphylaxis fit as a feedlot option?

Where does metaphylaxis fit as a feedlot option?

Bruce Derksen

Progressive Cattle

Fall-weaned calves are once again filling the feedlots, bringing with them their stresses, susceptibilities and weakened immune systems. Spurred on by the newly acquired bugs of commingled calves, their depression or lack thereof will soon force operators to select a suitable option to address the oncoming health crisis.

Full Story

Washington to supply federal money to meat processors

Washington to supply federal money to meat processors

Capital Press

Washington meat processors that have up to 250 employees can apply for government grants to pay for expanding their businesses or recoup costs related to COVID-19. The state Department of Agriculture will take applications until Nov. 16. The department plans to give out about $4.6 million. The money comes from the federal CARES Act passed by Congress in March.

Full Story

Virtual beef cattle workshop features applied reproductive strategies

Virtual beef cattle workshop features applied reproductive strategies

Tri State Neighbor

A workshop for commercial and seedstock producers, artificial insemination industries, and veterinarians interested in reproductive management and associated genetic tools is being hosted virtually by Midwestern universities. The 2020 Applied Reproductive Strategies in Beef Cattle Workshop is set for Nov. 4 and 5.

Full Story

Teaming up with lenders

Teaming up with lenders

Lisa Moser

Kansas State University

Anyone who has ever participated in a group sport knows that the most successful teams are the ones where the players and coaches communicate well and recognize that the athletes each possess unique talents that can benefit the team. In much the same way, ranchers who assemble a team of experts to include a veterinarian, nutritionist and a financial advisor often find success that results from the collaboration.

Full Story

Valuing hay with today’s feed analysis

Valuing hay with today’s feed analysis

John Goeser, David R. Mertens

Hay and Forage Grower

With rising water costs in the West, and winterkill and growing season challenges in the Midwest and East, this value has only increased. As a result, appropriately valuing every ton of forage is critical. Total digestible nutrients (TDN, %) are at the root of every hay valuation in one way or another. For relative feed value (RFV) and relative forage quality (RFQ), TDN is an intermediate in the calculations.

Full Story

How Grass-Fed Beef Is Duping Consumers, Again

How Grass-Fed Beef Is Duping Consumers, Again

Jessica Scott-Reid

Sentient Media

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.

“When you have cattle grazing on these grassland landscapes, it really encourages plant and soil biodiversity,” says cattle rancher Ross Macdonald, as he wanders through a bucolic landscape in central Canada. “See that soil is alive,” he adds as dirt falls through his fingers. “The cattle and the ecosystem coexist,” echoes fellow rancher Lieschen Beretta, standing in a lush field in Ontario, “and they actually need each other.”

Full Story

Ear-Marked at Birth

Ear-Marked at Birth

Drovers

According to two University of Nebraska research studies, key information to help identify heifers with a tendency to be successful replacements is known the day those females are born. Dr. Rick Funston, beef reproductive physiologist at the UNL West Central Research and Extension Center, conducted the experiments.

Full Story