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Ranchers and farmers in a big swath of the Northern Plains and Midwest are far beyond tired of “above normal” weather forecasts. But here’s one they can look forward to, courtesy of Livestock Wx.
The latest outlooks from the North-American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME) were released late last week. The NMME model guidance consists of an ensemble, or average, of numerous government and university climate models. No doubt about it, NMME temperature guidance calls for above-normal readings through the rest of the year. However, more modest readings (closer to normal) could persist over the middle of the nation in October.
"October is often the month of calf weaning and cow culling (for spring calving herds)," according to Glenn Selk, emeritus Extension animal scientist at Oklahoma State University. "Cull cows represent about 20% of the gross income in commercial cow calf operations. Understanding the major factors impacting cull cow prices is important to the bottom line."
He says there are four grades in cull cows. While they are put into these categories, the price can still vary quite a bit because of dressing percentage, according to the Oklahoma Farm Report.
Click or tap here to read more from Selk regarding the cull cow market.
The American economy continues to transition from being product-based to service-based, and as a result, rural citizens and business owners are struggling to remain viable, says Sarah Low, associate professor of regional economics within the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri and director of MU Extension's Community Economic and Entrepreneurial Development program, according to the Oklahoma Farm Report.
Low says the rural areas that are prospering and creating wealth are doing so based on natural assets in those communities. “We’ve got to get leadership from the public and private sector in these rural regions and get them talking together so they can identify assets and opportunities and prioritize their efforts in a strategic way,” she said.
Click or tap here to listen and read more about rural economic development.
It might not be the most dignified look in the world, but a new study has found it might be worth painting your cows to look like zebras, reports iflscience.com.
Previous studies have shown that black and white stripes may protect zebras, other animals, and humans from horsefly bites, as well as other blood-sucking critters. Experiments have shown that these flies tend to avoid black-and-white striped surfaces, while other studies have suggested that the stripes may cause a kind of motion camouflage targeted at the insects' vision, confusing them much in the way that optical illusions like the Barberpole Illusion and the Wagon Wheel Effect confuse us.
Click or tap here to read more.
Photo Credit: https://journals.plos.org
Fire ants have done so well in the U.S. because they left most of their natural enemies behind. “In Argentina, the fire ant is not really a problem because it has many natural enemies there,” says entomologist Steven Valles, with ARS Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Florida. “But in the United States, this ant is a serious problem because populations are growing unchecked. There’s nothing to constrain them.”
But that could change with the discovery of a new virus: Solenopsis invicta virus-5 (SINV-5). Valles and his Argentine colleagues found the virus by studying 180 native Argentinian colonies and using genetic techniques to isolate SINV-5, according to onpasture.com.
Click or tap here to learn more.
What do we do if it is time to wean calves, but the pen isn’t ready? That can be a real concern during wet fall seasons such as 2019. Putting calves into muddy pen conditions is far from desirable, but holding calves on the cows deep into fall increases the risk of adverse winter weather and tends to pull body condition off the cows, reports farms.com.
Using cover crops as a feed resource for weaned calves in the fall offers a potential solution for this dilemma. Holding calves out of muddy yards allows for additional time to perform lot maintenance or until the pen surface freezes. Weaning onto annual forages matches up well with fenceline weaning where the cows and calves are separated by a fence that still allows nose-to-nose contact.
