Month: December 2020

OSU Extension Beef Team to Host Winter Meetings

– Garth Ruff, Beef Cattle Field Specialist, OSU Extension

Dr. Kenny Burdine, Extension livestock economist at the University of Kentucky, will focus on beef cattle market outlook for 2021.

What a year 2020 has been. Are you looking to improve herd efficiency and profitability to weather the storm? Look no further than the slate of winter programming to be offered by the OSU Extension Beef Team. Programs planned for early 2021 are designed to provide valuable information for all segments of Ohio’s beef industry.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a challenge to the beef industry to say the least, and the effects will continue to linger for some time. One thing we have learned this year is there continues to be need for gained efficiency and improved management within all segments of our beef cattle industry. This winter’s Ohio State Extension Beef School series will focus on both of those topics. Given current university policies regarding COVID-19, this years Beef Schools will be offered as a virtual series of programs.

What was originally planned as two on-farm face-to-face Cow-Calf Management Schools has now been redesigned as a series of 6 consecutive two hour webinar programs. While perhaps being less ‘hands-on” this webinar format now opens Continue reading →

Posted by at Posted in Events

Grazing Concepts that Benefit the Bird and the Herd

Application deadline for the Northern Bobwhite n Grasslands EQIP project in 30 Ohio counties is January 15, 2021

If you think livestock and quail don’t mix, a type of managed grazing may change your mind. USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is accepting applications for a program that focuses on establishing productive warm season forages to improve livestock production and provide large areas of prime habitat for ground nesting birds and other wildlife.

Ohio’s Northern Bobwhite in Grasslands project is part of a national Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) partnership, a collaborative approach to conserving habitat for declining species on farms and working forests. NRCS works with partners and private landowners to focus voluntary conservation efforts on working landscapes.

The Northern Bobwhite in Grasslands project is designed to help bring back the quail that were once an integral part of Ohio’s farming way of life. Leading researchers have documented the Continue reading →

Hay Quality: Beyond Proximate Analyses

– Jeff Lehmkuhler, PhD, PAS, Associate Extension Professor

My forage colleagues and I seem to get bombarded with questions on forage quality and interpreting forage test results this time of year. The timing coincides with folks starting to feed hay and looking at developing supplementation programs for the cattle receiving the forage. Getting the forage tested for nutrient content is the first step.

Proximate analysis allows for separating a forage/feed into various macronutrient categories and was initially developed by German researchers in 1860. The components measured in the Weende analysis included: moisture, ash, crude protein, crude lipid, crude fiber and calculated nitrogen-free extracts. Crude fiber was replaced by the neutral and acid detergent fiber analyses developed by Dr. Peter VanSoest in the 1960’s to improve energy estimates of feedstuffs for ruminants as some of the cell wall is degraded by the rumen microbes. I am always in awe of the progress researchers have made in the nutrition field beginning with feed composition analyses more than 150 years ago.

The laboratory process provides us with some insight on the feed quality, but the energy estimates don’t always mimic the biological performance of a feedstuff. However, the laboratory analyses are useful in developing feeding programs. As an example, knowledge on the Continue reading →

Cattle Auction Receipts

– Josh Maples, Assistant Professor & Extension Economist, Department of Agricultural Economics, Mississippi State University

This year has shown some pretty large shifts from normal for every sector of the cattle industry. The number of feeder and stocker cattle auction receipts are no exception. The USDA-AMS weekly estimates of feeder and stocker cattle sold at auction in 2020 reflect some of the dynamics and challenges faced by producers.

The disruptions during the spring are immediately evident. The number of auction receipts during March-April 2020 was 33 percent (or 661k head) lower than during the same months of 2019. Prices were very low during this period and there were gathering/travel restrictions in most places, and many producers responded by holding cattle longer. The expected rebound came during May-July when auction receipts were about 18 percent (or 306k head) higher than during those months in 2019. August 2020 was much stronger than August 2019, but this was driven in part by the low prices during August 2019 due to the meat packing plant fire in KS. That disruption likely led to a Continue reading →

Temple Grandin Offers Livestock Farmers an Alternative Business Model

– Mike Estadt, OSU Extension Educator, Pickaway County

Temple Grandin, Professor at Colorado State University and world renown animal welfare specialist and contributor to Forbes Magazine recently authored an article “Alternative Business Models That Farmers Should Consider”

In that article she suggests that first and foremost, small processing plants will never – let me repeat that – never compete with the large plants on cost efficiency.  But a series of smaller plants will be less susceptible to the disruptions that happened in the spring of 2020. Grandin offers the following points that have been synthesized into a few sentences.

Use the Craft Beer Industry as A Model: Go Niche

During the restrictions placed upon restaurants and bars, craft brewers innovated and moved their dining outside so they could still sell their draft beers.  More importantly craft brewers have been able to coexist with the Anheuser-Busch InBevs because they Continue reading →

Little Mouse, Big Problems!

– Christine Gelley, Agriculture and Natural Resources Educator, Noble County OSU Extension (This article was originally published by Progressive Forage magazine)

Mice can find any number of comfortable places to nest! Photo: Keegan Gelley

The damage that a little mouse can do to electrical systems may have great impacts on the functionality of farm equipment. Before putting equipment in storage for winter, do routine maintenance, including preventing mice from taking up residence in your tractor cab.

One quarter of house fires with undetermined causes are assumed to be caused by rodents chewing on electrical wires. This can also be the cause of many tractor malfunctions. With the risk of electrocution, it makes you wonder why would they chew on electrical wires in the first place?

The answer is easy. They chew on everything. Mice, rats, and other rodents have teeth that are constantly growing and therefore they are constantly gnawing on any material they can find to file their teeth. Electrical wires are often hidden from view in places that would be cozy for rodent nests and offer convenient access to wire insulation to chew. People rarely Continue reading →

Getting the Most out of Stockpiled Grass

– Chris Teutsch, Associate Extension Professor, UK Grain and Forage Center of Excellence

Figure 1. Strip grazing stockpiled grass can extending grazing by as much as 40%.

Stockpiled tall fescue is in the most economical way feed cows during the winter months. Once stockpiled growth has accumulated, how you choose to utilize it can dramatically impact how may grazing days you get per acre. Research in Missouri showed that giving cows access to only enough forage for 3-days versus 14-days resulted in a 40% increase in grazing days per acre. The following tips will help to get the most of your stockpile.

Graze pastures that contain warm-season grasses first. Although we often like to think of pastures as monocultures, they are often complex mixtures of cool and warm-season grasses, legumes and weedy forbs. If pastures contain warm-season grasses, use these first since their quality will decline rapidly in late fall and early winter.

Graze pastures containing clover next. We are always happy to see clover in pastures. However, in a stockpiling scenario it does not Continue reading →

Slaughter Cow Markets

– James Mitchell, Livestock Marketing Specialist, University of Arkansas

As the fall concludes, livestock market analysts have been closely following feeder cattle markets. This time of year corresponds to when most spring-born, fall-weaned calves are sold. In last week’s Cattle Market Notes, Dr. Kenny Burdine made several important points about the November cattle on feed report. We will come back to one of those points that he made shortly.

In addition to feeder cattle markets, the fall is also an important time of year for slaughter cattle markets as many cattle producers across the country make culling decisions. Because of this, an update on slaughter cow markets is warranted. The first figure provides prices for 85-90% lean slaughter cows sold in AR, KY, and MS. The most recent available data is for the week ending November 22, 2020. For that week, average slaughter cow prices were $38.79/cwt, $42.49/cwt, and $35.38/cwt for AR, KY, and MS, respectively. These prices correspond to a 13%, 0%, and 3% week-over-week change.

Cull cow prices tend to reach a seasonal low point in the fall. Still, 2020 cull cow prices remain above Continue reading →

Is now the time to put cattle on feed?

– Dr. Andrew Griffith, Assistant Professor, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Tennessee

A question was asked a couple of weeks ago concerning if now was a good time to put cattle in the feedlot. This is a question that should be asked frequently, because it is a difficult question to answer with a general statement.

The most general statement to answer this question would be to send cattle to the feedlot if one thinks feeder cattle are seriously undervalued and finished cattle prices are expected to increase. The alternative is also true. If feeder cattle appear to be overvalued and there does not appear to be any upside potential in the finished cattle market then the cattle should be Continue reading →