Dr. Murl Bailey is a professor of toxicology and emergency medicine in the Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. He is an expert on toxins that adversely affect livestock, including those found in plants.

On the first day in soil science class, we teach that soil is definitely not the same as dirt. Dirt has no value. That’s why your momma fussed at you about tracking it in her house. But soil has value.

’Twas a bright sunshiny day, so this happened sometime between the snow seasons. I-84, westbound a few miles east of Biggs Junction, which is about a hundred miles east of Portland, Oregon, Leo and I were on our way to the Portland area, each driving a truck and trailer loaded with hay.

Bart has a lot going on. He grows barley, wheat, sugarbeets and hay on his southern Idaho farm. He’s got a little feedlot where he finishes a couple hundred head each year. He buys, sells and hauls about a gazillion loads of hay annually. He’s as conscientious a neighbor as you’ll ever find.

Whether it’s harvest quantity or quality related to weather, slumping prices or uncertainty over trade and export markets, there are plenty of factors to play out for forage producers, marketers and buyers entering the final quarter of 2019. Here’s a brief look at conditions as the third quarter came to a close.

Having focus is a good thing, but being singularly focused to measure profitability is not. We know with some certainty, herds which produce more milk or higher components have higher profitability.