Besides being a 12-letter word – and a hard one to spell at that – anaplasmosis is a disease the beef industry shouldn’t take lightly.

What do both excellent cattle productivity and health ladder up to? Excellent nutrition. A general understanding of nutrition can help you achieve your operation’s marketing and performance goals.

Uncastrated calves going to the feedlot or packing plant bring a discounted price.

Well, it’s dog days in the feedlot now that summer’s nearly doneI been loafin’ through the cattle but the steers don’t suffer none

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced on Sept. 14 that wildland fire suppression costs for the fiscal year have exceeded $2 billion, making 2017 the most expensive year on record.

As fall arrives, it is time to start making or finalizing plans for winter feeding. A first step should be to take inventory of stored forages: hay, stockpiled native range or stockpiled introduced forages like bermudagrass and bahiagrass.

Fall is here, which means weaning time is upon us. Weaning can be stressful for both calves and producers. The actual weaning period offers some unique challenges that can lead to poor calf performance and negatively affect calf value.

Typically, feed represents 50 to 60 percent of total costs in the cow-calf sector, and a proportion of these costs in the Upper Midwest can be attributed to harvested feed. Drought conditions in much of our region have minimized harvested forages this summer and, in return, forage prices are higher.

In 2014, live calves with four legs brought top dollar. Those days are over, and things have definitely changed. Still, everyone wants premium prices for their calf crops.

Most Progressive Cattleman readers prefer to use hard copy versus digital record keeping.