BeefWatch Archive

Beefwatch Archive

To read articles prior to September 2017, please visit the article archive on UNL Announce.

Wet Bales Can Tip the Scales

The past few months, we’ve been focusing quite a bit on the issues that can arise when hay gets a bit too wet: combustion, mold, and Maillard reactions.  One often overlooked issue that can arise from wet hay is just the moisture itself. 

Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP)

Nebraska USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) is reminding livestock producers of an approaching deadline for the Livestock Indemnity Program (LIP). Producers who filed a LIP Notice of Loss with FSA for livestock losses due to natural disaster in 2019 have until Monday, March 2, to supply appropriate supporting paperwork and complete the application for payment, if they haven’t done so already.

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.