A panel at the 2017 Beef Improvement Federation Research Symposium and Convention, held in Athens, Georgia, addressed the complex issue of expected progeny differences across breeds.

Genomics is a technological wonder, not yet 10 years old and already influencing almost every single sire selection the dairy industry makes.

Let’s think about what is happening today in the production agriculture industry:

Scours are an issue across nearly every operation in the U.S. Though the cause of scours is known – stress, leading to an immune problem – what drives it is different from one region to the next.

Just like our human families, we spend a lot of time with the cows on our ranch, and they become part of our families. It’s often hard to see them go when the vet draws an “o” on their sides calling them open on pregnancy check day.

Reproduction has the greatest effect on profitability of a cow herd. If cows don’t breed back, there isn’t much else they can do that matters. One of the main drivers of fertility is body condition score (BCS).

I was raised in the southeastern U.S. (Appalachia, to be more specific), and most of my professional career has been spent in Mississippi and Tennessee.

The majority, at least two-thirds, of cattle producers are spring-calving operations, with calves being born during the months of February through May and some producers having calves hitting the ground as early as late January and as late as May.

The ideal season for calving has been a hot topic for ranchers over the last several years. The traditional time of year for calving season stretches anywhere from late February to early May.

It’s what they call “10-40” country; there are varying stories depending on who’s telling it but, essentially, a cow has to have a mouth 10 feet wide and run 40 miles an hour to get enough feed.