Selecting replacement females is challenging, especially when you consider that decisions made now will impact your operation for many years. As commercial cow-calf producers evaluate the opportunity to expand, it is important to review the value of crossbreeding.
Cattle handling facilities are necessary for proper animal husbandry. Low stress cattle handling practices combined with good facilities will allow you to process cattle safely and efficiently. Here are some things to think about when designing and building cattle handling facilities.
By my way of thinking, the most efficient food-producing animals for human consumption are herbivores. Herbivores are animals that are adapted to eat plants. They have a four-compartment stomach, and the first compartment, the rumen, contains bacteria with the ability to break down cellulose, the primary component of plant cells, so it can be digested by the animal. In addition, according to the USDA-NRCS National Resource Inventory, there are approximately 588 million acres of grazinglands in the United States. These lands are comprised of rangeland, pastureland and grazeable forestland. Much of this land is not suitable for farming, but is well suited for herbivores, such as cattle, sheep, goats, deer, elk, bison and antelope. Just taking cattle into account, these lands are responsible for more than 15 billion pounds of beef production on an annual basis.
How would you like to save $15 per cow on your winter feeding bill? What if I told you it could easily be done by making one timely change in what you are feeding your cows grazing on native grass pasture? Many people only buy one feed type during the winter. This mindset may be costing a 50-cow herd the equivalent of the value of a $750 calf.
Develop a cost-effective winter feeding program to meet a cow’s protein and energy requirements while saving money.
Most cattle producers know that the textbook gestation length of beef cattle is 283 days. Most also realize that biology is variable, and predicting the exact day of natural birth in most mammalian species is very difficult to do. However, some producers seem to forget these biological laws when using new technology in their breeding programs. Many producers associate artificial insemination (AI) with the cow herd behaving in very regimented and predictable ways.
Have you ever wondered why ruminant livestock such as cattle, sheep and goats, or wildlife such as deer, elk and bison eat what they do? For example, cattle and bison eat primarily grass; deer eat primarily forbs and browse (the edible leaves and stems of woody plants), but very little grass. Some ruminants, such as goats, have the ability to choose their diet across a wide spectrum of available plant types: grasses, forbs and woody vegetation.
About the end of every year, beef producers have sold the last calf crop and have a few weeks or months of relative calm before calving season starts. It is easy to become complacent about the cow herd and the replacement heifers, but if you don’t take care of them now, they will not be able to take care of you in the future.
It is spring and that time of year when many producers who operate winter stocker enterprises start to consider moving calves off cool-season pastures and into marketing channels. With cattle prices at record levels, one might conclude that not much effort or study is needed to determine the best time or best weight at which to sell cattle sale time will come when pastures quit growing and are grazed out.
Every water pumping option has good and bad attributes. It will depend on your goals and requirements as to which system is the best. Here are some questions to ask yourself before choosing a system.
