I have reported on the livestock industry in several countries for just over 40 years. I can say with certainty that weather extremes in North America surpass those of any other continent except Australia. The latter appears to have cycles of devastating drought followed by flooding. North America gets both extremes and a lot more as well.  This year is only three months old but it has been tough for U.S cattle producers. Carcass weights plunged for several weeks after a brutal winter storm swept across much of cattle feeding country in early January. The hardest hit areas saw weigh ..read more

Vance Crowe is a podcast host who aims to expose listeners to ideas they would not otherwise encounter, and ultimately make better decisions and gain wisdom. He also records legacy interviews, where individuals are recorded for the family to have as a lasting memory or keepsake. He recently spoke at the Agri-Visions conference in Lloydminster. When Crowe talks about differences between how rural and urban people think, he suggests that the divide is internal and accelerating. He refers to a “vague timeline” of the development of agriculture with humans starting out as hunter-gatherers. The eme ..read more

Dr. Gabriel Ribeiro walks onto the stage at the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Conference following four other researchers in the Saskatchewan beef industry. This is part of the Cattle College portion of the conference, where researchers educate conference attendees on the work they’ve been doing in the industry. Ribeiro is an assistant professor and the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Chair at the University of Saskatchewan. His research focuses on improving forage efficiency in cattle and looking into the environmental effects of cattle. At the conference, Ribeiro presents on four interconnected stud ..read more

“Most people do not understand the relationship between randomness and skill,” says Ben Brode, game designer, on the podcast Search Engine. I’d bet quite a few farmers and ranchers get it. But more on that later.  When it comes to games, most people imagine a continuum between skill and luck, says Brode. On one end are the games that are 100 per cent luck-based, such as Chutes and Ladders. On the skill-based side are strategy games such as chess, which don’t have any random elements. Most people think that if games involve more chance, that means less strategy, or vice versa. But that’s n ..read more

As we approach spring we should be preparing to plant and produce enough forage to support the needs of our livestock for the whole year. In Canada, that means a strong focus on preserving and storing forages (i.e. silage, hay, greenfeed, stockpile forages, swath grazing) as the grazing season is short. For feedlots, where animals are fed in confinement throughout the whole year, this is just as or more important than for cow-calf operations. Planning, producing and preserving forages appropriately can reduce the requirement to buy external inputs (e.g. energy and protein supplements or silage ..read more

Legendary forage breeder Dr. Bruce Coulman will be formally inducted into Saskatchewan’s Agricultural Hall of Fame this month. His first research job was with McGill University, whose forage breeding program had collapsed. With no breeding lines to start with, it took Coulman 17 years to develop his first new variety from scratch. He went on to develop 24 new forage varieties throughout his career before retiring from the University of Saskatchewan. This means he averaged zero new varieties per year for the first 17 years, then one new variety per year from then on. Forage breeding has an incr ..read more

Dr. Bart Lardner is well known in the beef industry across the western Prairies for his work on beef cattle management and forage production. At the end of January, he provided information to the industry on his research once again as he presented at the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Conference.  He says lately a lot of his research has focused on things that are important to the beef industry right now, like the environment.  “There’s a lot of really good news stories in the industry that producers are doing that we need to talk about going forward,” Lardner says.  One of Lardner ..read more

Every forage plant holds some sort of risk without proper management, and it’s becoming harder for producers to get the right information. After an extensive career working with beef and dairy herds across Texas and South Carolina, Dr. Dan Undersander, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, still likes travelling around North America to talk with farmers about their forage needs. Producers are underusing legumes in forage mixes as a way to improve soil health, he says, so picking effective nitrogen fixers is an important decision, both for soils and graziers. When combining differe ..read more

The Junior Stars Leadership Conference was held February 23-24 in Guelph, Ont., with the Canadian Junior Shorthorn Association and the Canadian Junior Limousin Association. Day One included tours of the University of Guelph Dairy and Beef Research Centres in Elora as well as the precision feed facility. The group then moved to the University of Guelph for a campus tour, led by students, including the on-campus abattoir (known as the “Meat Lab”). The group then visited Farm Credit Canada and Tall Oaks Capital Advisors to learn about farm succession planning and ended the day with an escape room ..read more

On the Canadian Prairies, a green Christmas doesn’t exist. However, a brown Christmas sure did in 2023, thanks to El Niño.  Snow was scarce on the Prairies earlier this winter, with temperatures rarely falling below -20 C, or even -10 C. With a drought stretching through multiple years, the dry winter is causing even more concern the Prairies won’t see as much runoff as usual, which could also affect water quality in dugouts. Runoff Dwayne Summach is a livestock and feed extension specialist with the Saskatchewan government and is well-known across the industry for his expertise when it c ..read more