Farm Help

Feed Efficiency (FE) is the primary driver of profitability for meat producing animals. The multiple requirements for nutrients involved in producing milk complicates the process, but does not reduce its usefulness. Within a herd, changes in FE can be used to help determine the economic impact of feeding and management changes.

Enteric diseases are of major economic concern in the poultry industry. While genetic improvements has increased productivity of broilers, increased rearing density has concentrated and increased disease challenges. Problematic pathogens include enteropathic microbes such as E. coli, Salmonellaspp., Clostridium perfringens, and Camplyobacter spp.

Managing volatile input costs for forage and feed inputs requires some thought and a sharp pencil,” said Ted Fry, Regional Agronomy Specialist for MU Extension serving the South Central Region of Missouri. Fry suggested remember four points when taking inputs into consideration.

1.    Do not purchase goats or sheep from a sale barn or from people who buy from a sale barn. Many goats and sheep pass through sale barns who are sick and can pass their diseases on to other animals being sold.

Cattle feeders’ No. 1 concern was feed inputs. Not any more, said Mike Sands, Informa Economics.

Record high fertilizer prices, above average feed prices, COOL, Curly Calf Syndrome, Proposition 2, and high fuel costs were the talk of the majority of 2008. Add in to the mix just one single word, recession, and it definitely was a roller coaster ride for most of the year.  Many different sources indicate that 2009 is going to be a challenging year in the livestock industry. Is your cattle operation ready for that challenge? Have you looked back upon the things that went wrong or lost you money in 2008? Do you have a plan in place for 2009? 

We have all been cautioned to be skeptical of the idea of getting ‘something for nothing’. “If it’s too good to be true, it probably is," we’ve been told. In the beef business though, there are two times when we can get something for nothing — one is when we use heterosis or cross-breeding to produce more pounds of beef, and the other is when we use legumes — clovers, alfalfa and annual lespedeza to add protein and nitrogen to a pasture to produce more pounds of beef. With commercial nitrogen prices now through the roof, now is the time to get serious about next year’s grazing program and pasture fertility.

The “nifty fifties” was a period of innovation- color television, the polio vaccine, the microchip, the first credit card, Mr. Potato Head, super glue and the incorporation of trace mineral supplementation in beef cattle nutrition. Since the 1950s, cattle producers have been adding trace minerals to their rations to combat environmental conditions, their effect on nutrition and other normally occurring nutritional gaps.

Multi-species grazing is a method of production that allows several different species of livestock to graze on the same pasture simultaneously. Jack Boles, the County Extension Agent for the Arkansas Newton County Extension office said, "Because they are browsers, goats work well with grazers such as horses or cows. But you need to be careful grazing goats with sheep, because they are affected by many of the same internal parasites."

Jon Fitch says Arkansas' cattle herd went from being declared free of brucellosis in the 70's, to nearly being quarantined for the disease in 1985. And the director of the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission doesn't want that to happen again.