December 20, 2022 | Vol. 15 : No. 12
Livestock producers have options for reducing hay waste and feeding costs while improving animal behavior and performance, says University of Missouri Extension Specialist Charlie Ellis.
With any approaching new year, there are grand plans of going to the gym, drinking less, eating more vegetables and so on. While those are great goals, they mean little and might not get accomplished if there isn’t a plan behind them. The same can be said of your operation. Maybe next year is the year you want to expand your herd, pay off debt or finally replace a fence that keeps coming down. Whatever the goal is, if there’s no plan to get it done, it will fall by the wayside of “someday.” The best way to develop a plan to reach your goals is to figure out your operation’s baseline. Where is it now?
This month’s new product features include innovations in hay equipment, portable/permanent waterers, silage inoculants, and a handbook on livestock risk management.
December 6, 2022 | Vol. 15 : No. 12
Drought across the Great Plains has greatly reduced the supply of grass available this grazing season. While many cows went to market to save grass for a core herd, those cows that remain may have had access to limited, dry pastures. Grass in many areas appeared dormant as early as July. Therefore, not only was quantity limiting, but quality may have been limiting, as well.
Producers often debate what type of facility works best when processing cattle. Jordan Thomas, beef cow-calf specialist at the University of Missouri, has worked cattle through many different facilities around the country and says stockmanship is equally important, if not more important, than facility design, but facilities should be constructed with behavioral tendencies in mind.
Twins are fairly common in some family lines of cattle. If one is a bull and the other is a heifer, often the heifer is a freemartin — a female with an improperly developed reproductive tract, incapable of becoming pregnant. Colin Palmer, veterinarian and associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says most female calves born as a co-twin to a bull calf are freemartins, but not all.
This edition’s theme is “Frequently Asked Questions,” so we thought we’d change up our sidebar to direct you to all the stories within a little differently.
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