BeefWatch Articles from January 2020

BeefWatch Articles from January 2020

Principles for Care and Management of the Cow and Calf at Calving

In this roundtable podcast, the veterinary team at the Great Plains Veterinary Educational Center discusses calving principles that producers can use to enhance their care and management of both cow and calf.

Winter Nutrition: Are You Staying Ahead or Getting Behind?

As winter progresses, winter nutrition and increased environmental stress on cows may concern many cow-calf producers. Winter nutritional management affects not only the profitability of a beef cowherd, but also the future performance of the cow and her offspring. With that in mind, building a nutritional program for a cow-calf system requires understanding nutritional requirements, knowing the “stress periods” that can happen, and knowing the quality and quantity of your forage resources. 

Use the Numbers (correctly) this Bull Sale Season

This bull sale season, profit-minded cattle producers will utilize expected progeny differences (EPD) and economic selection indices when selecting their next group of bulls. These tools are far more accurate at predicting the average difference in offspring than visual appraisal or actual weights. This is beyond contestation.

Differences Between High-, Medium-, and Low-Profit Cow-Calf Producers: An Analysis of 2014-2018 Kansas Farm Management Association Cow-Calf Enterprise – A Review

This study by Whitney Bowman, Dustin L. Pendell Ph.D. and Kevin L. Herbel can be found at the Kansas State University AgManager.info website. Review and summary by Aaron Berger, Nebraska Extension Educator.

West Central Cattlemen’s Day Series Offered at Seven Locations

Nebraska Extension will be hosting a series of winter meetings for cattle producers in seven locations across western Nebraska. The program is designed to help producers evaluate management practices that could improve their bottom line. Extension Specialists and Educators will discuss a variety of topics including heifer development, nutritional considerations during cold weather, benchmarking and measuring costs, considerations for retained ownership, parasite control, and more.

Dates and locations include: 

Manure: Waste or Valuable Agricultural Resource?

Is manure a Waste or Resource?

Stories about manure often illustrate two opposing sentiments. Is manure a “Waste” that pollutes our water resources and creates undesirable nuisances for communities?  Or, is manure a “Resource” that reduces the demand for importing greenhouse gas intensive inorganic fertilizers and improves the health of our soils? 

Burning Your Bottom Line: How Hot Hay Changes Forage Quality

Hay put up too wet can lead to a number of issues, most notably mold and heat.  Moisture keeps otherwise dormant microbes and fungi active, decreasing forage quality and creating heat.  Too much heat can actually create a risk of combustion. 

New Cow-Calf Budgets Available for Nebraska

As a part of the UNL multidisciplinary Beef Systems Initiative and a complementary project funded by the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), five geographically identified Nebraska producer panels were formed to provide input and feedback on University research and extension projects involving integrated beef systems. These panels have met a combined eight times over the last two years. One of the tasks being worked on is the development of representative cow-calf enterprise budgets for typical cow-calf herds in different geographic regions across the state.

UNL Beef Roundup Webinars January 21 and 28

Nutrition, profitability, and health are the themes of the 2020 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Beef Roundup hosted by Nebraska Extension on Tuesday, January 21, and Tuesday, January 28, at 6pm MST (7pm CST). This series features topic experts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Kansas State University. Each evening features two presentations that can be viewed from any location with internet access or at several locations across Nebraska. Sites and registration information is listed below.

Nebraska Extension Offering Land Application Training in January and February

map showing manure benefits
Which field benefits the most from manure? Participants combine personal experiences and management principles to identify preferred fields for receiving manure.

Livestock producers with livestock waste control facility permits received or renewed since April 1998 must be certified, and farms must complete an approved training every five years.

University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension Beef Economics Team Annual Beef Heifer Replacement Forecasts for the 2019 – 2020 Production Season (Summary Briefing)

What is a respectable value of a beef replacement heifer for the coming 2019-2020 production season? This can be a complicated choice, but a vital one that requires some clear thinking. It is important to have a handle on this value since future prosperity partially depends on it. Pay too much and future profits and net worth will suffer. Non-participation in the market is not likely to be an option since cow numbers are necessary to maintain productivity.