Feedlot animals do best – with optimal performance – when environmental conditions are good and cattle are minimally stressed.

Many college graduates are now finding that it made no sense to spend $200,000 of their parents’ money or go in debt $100,000 for a degree just to discuss the classics with other college grads in the unemployment line. Some schools now are offering “diseducation” courses to untrain people who are having difficulty getting jobs because they are overqualified. While these overeducated people had their heads buried in books, their high school classmates who didn’t go to college were getting all the jobs.

Robin lives in a valley that is dotted with grazing pasture and selected irrigated vegetables. She has neighbors who graze yearling heifers to sell in the fall and another neighbor who grows pickling cucumbers. Her heifer neighbors, Barry and Claire, had their yearlings comin’ on strong. The grass held up, and they supplemented them. Their heifer market was good, but one of the requirements of their buyers were that they were guaranteed “open” as opposed to bred. To their dismay, one of the cattlemen in the valley had his bulls – good bulls, no doubt, but still bulls – within “wafting distance” of the 600 yearin’ heifers.

Zinpro Corp. has come up with the Step-Up Management Program for the beef cattle industry. Developed by the company in conjunction with the Beef Cattle Institute and Kansas State University, the program provides a systematic approach to identify and manage beef cattle lameness.

The International Brangus Breeders Association (IBBA) has appointed Tommy Perkins as its new executive vice president. He will begin his appointment in early October.

Merck Animal Health, as it has done for the past decade, recognized 15 individuals with the 2013 American Association of Bovine Practitioners (AABP) Bovine Veterinary Student Recognition Award. The company’s Office of Corporate Philanthropy funded a $100,000 grant to AABP for the 2013 awards, making it possible to increase the number of awards this year.

The September USDA Cattle on Feed report shows a Sep. 1 feedlot inventory at 9.88 million head, down 7 percent from last year and the smallest September feedlot inventory since 2003.  

Resources, weather give birth to western Kansas feedyards Western Kansas has always played a role in the beef industry.

EPA has reached an agreement with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) to make changes to Iowa’s Clean Water Act (CWA) permit and compliance program for concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The agreement includes specific actions the IDNR intends to take to remedy the program and a timeline for implementation of those actions to ensure clean, healthy water.

Corn prices were on a rocket with ethanol boosters for several years, but that’s in the past now, said Dan Basse, AgResource Company, in remarks to cattle feeders last month in Omaha and in Garden City, Kansas.