As the calving season winds down, check the calving book. Count the number of cows that calved within 21 days from when the third mature cow calved. After that, check the number that calved the next 21 days and the next 21 days. Keep counting until you get to the end of the calving book.

“We got $10 in new spending over that 20 years; meanwhile our pork and poultry competitors got $110,” said Nevil Speer, an animal scientist at Western Kentucky University. “You can’t grow an industry without new revenue coming in, and we basically worked in a stagnant industry for 20 years.

One hundred twenty-five years of beef leadership will be celebrated at the Nebraska Cattlemen (NC) Midyear meeting June 18-19 in Valentine, NE. 2013 is the 125th anniversary of NC and NC President Dale Spencer is excited to invite all to attend this historic event.

“Most of the shift will occur on irrigated wheat fields lost to late spring freezes in the Rolling Plains and Northern High Plains,” said Dr. Gaylon Morgan, AgriLife Extension state cotton specialist, College Station. “The optimum planting window for cotton has passed in South Texas and the Blacklands.

Unlike the Senate Agriculture Committee—which cleared its entire bill in three and a half hours—the House Agriculture Committee’s markup on Wednesday was setting up to be a much longer affair, even though the lion’s share of the legislation is the same as last year.

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Pesticide Action Network North America have asked for a two-week extension of a May 22 deadline to file an amended complaint after the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed the case on April 22 following a U.

The proof, they say, is in the pudding—or in this case in the Twitter feed, Pinterest and Facebook postings. During the first week of May Beef Month, activity on the South Dakota Beef Industry Council’s (SD- BIC) social media sites more than doubled.

If you wait too long, perhaps until this fall, time will have mellowed most of the events and one soon has difficulty matching a calving season with particular problems. Now is perhaps the best time to make a few notes on what to change for next year..

“When it turns dry, people get desperate, and that hay can be worth quite a bit,” Redmon said. “Back in 2011 during the drought, the last round-bales of hay into Abilene were priced at $180 a bale. If the bales weighed 1,000 pounds, that’s $360 a ton. I would use current market prices to start figuring the crop’s potential as hay.

Oftentimes, the marketing and increasing value of cull cows are overlooked by producers. This is mainly due to the fact the cow is open or aborted, feed is limited and it is not cost-effective to keep a non-efficient part of the ranch around with increasing feed prices and decreasing forage availability.