As if from the staccato blast of a Gatling gun, I felt three sharp, painful smacks to my head just under my hat and directly behind my right ear. Except for the occasional Red Ryder BB gunfight with my cousins when I was a kid and the time my back was peppered by some shotgun pellets from an idiot pheasant hunter as I was fixing a fence, I’ve never really been shot.

It’s fall on the cow outfit. Time to get out the WD-40 and grease up the handles on the squeeze chute. Maybe find the three or four syringes that work, buy some new gaskets and barrels along with a box of needles.

As summer forage quantity and quality declines in the early fall, many cattle producers begin to think about supplementation options in their operation. This is especially the case for fall-calving systems, as herd nutrient needs increase prior to and just after calving.

Hurricane Florence, heralded by weather experts as the worst storm to hit the Carolinas in 30 years, approached the East Coast as a Category 4 storm and downgraded to a Category 1 storm when it made landfall at Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, on Friday morning, with winds at 90 to 75 miles per hour.

Hurricane Florence made landfall near Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, early Friday morning as a Category 1 storm with winds at 75 miles per hour.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Galveston, Texas, issued a temporary injunction last week, preventing the 2015 WOTUS rule from being applied in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, at least until the current litigation efforts have been resolved.

Most Progressive Cattleman readers talk to their extension agent as least occasionally, according to a recent poll.

Rain is usually a welcome sight. However, wet summers can make for bad winters. Of all the articles and issues that I’ve had the opportunity to write about in the past two years with Progressive Cattleman, this topic is the most important for an operation’s success.

Drought in recent years has led to an increased interest in feedyards feeding beef cows throughout the winter months on a custom-fed basis. Custom feeding breeding stock may be an economical alternative for the cow-calf producer to maintain the herd in some cases.

As many producers in the western U.S. realize, a large component of their ability to remain profitable and sustainable comes down to how effectively they are able to maximize the limited resources available to them.