Automated activity monitoring systems are now the backbone of many herd reproductive management systems. This technology is helping herds achieve reproductive results that seemed impossible only a decade ago.

Precision agriculture is a term often used to describe crop management – but in a recent Progressive Dairyman article, Robert Fourdraine, vice president of research and development for Cooperative Resources International, described dairy management with the same term.

Chronic diarrhea. Weakness. Low bodyweight. Loss of appetite. Death. For decades, Holstein calves not responding to treatment left animal health professionals perplexed while costing dairy farmers worldwide countless dollars in veterinary care and losses.

Prairie dogs can munch their way through pastures, taking away half of the available forage from cattle.

As groupies form around one idolized stockman or another, I hear some say that anyone who invokes the concept of predator-prey relationships instead of stockman-stock relationship just doesn’t “get it.”

It is a pattern as predictable as it is hollow. In every U.S. presidential election year, the guys in polished suits scrambling to get like-minded voters to the polls throw out a tired old claim that this is the most crucial election our country has ever faced. 

The annual USDA Cattle report contains new numbers on cattle inventories and significant revisions to the 2015 numbers. It’s important to consider the revisions when interpreting the new numbers. In general, the report confirms, as expected, that cattle inventories in the U.S. grew in 2015.

Snow, floods and other major weather events in December 2015 and early January 2016 have impacted much of the Southern Plains. The recent precipitation aided wheat pasture conditions and pond levels.

The dreaded topic of “waters of the United States” is in the news again. This time, however, it is not the definition of the term at issue.

Almost every beef producer in the eastern U.S. has at some point wished fescue toxicosis could just go away, but what if it could … or at least the cattle that are susceptible?