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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
