A little black cloud floated over the Chadron area of northwestern Nebraska late last month and changed lives forever. At least five fires started from lightning strikes from that little cloud that didn’t bring any rain to an area that hasn’t seen rain worth noting since May.

After a year of consideration, members of the Idaho Cattle Association (ICA) passed a resolution that may have raised some eyebrows. The resolution called for legislation that would make a third offense of animal cruelty a felony, said Richard Savage, president of ICA.

On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 is usually a good thing. But when it comes to body condition scores (BCS) for cattle, somewhere around a 5 is ideal.

A wet spring can be a mixed blessing. While it gives crops and forage a head start, it can also pave the way for a silent killer—anthrax. Anthrax spores can lie dormant in the soil for years, causing no problems for the animals that graze there. It can lie in wait for 70 years or more, impervious to heat and

When you attend any gathering of ranchers, you may notice that bald and gray seem to be the trendy hairstyles. A new program in South Dakota, called beefSD, is hoping to add some younger hairstyles to these gatherings by helping less experienced ranchers get their feet in the gate of the ranching

The so-called death tax, or more politically correctly estate tax, is levied on the assets of a person who dies, when the assets are transferred to another. For farm and ranch families, the assets are usually in the form of land, machinery and livestock.

Peace and tranquility are two of the elements of the prairie most valuable to Marvin Kammerer, a rancher in western South Dakota. They are also two of the elements he fears are most in danger of being eliminated if a proposal by the U.S. Air Force to expand a training complex is put into action.

South Dakotans are learning that having the same goal doesn’t automatically put everyone on the same side. The goal at issue is to protect a unique area of the Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-SD, has proposed designating about 48,000 acres of the area as wilderness. The bill under consideration

Bright yellow. Vibrant purple. To the uneducated, yellow toadflax and purple loosestrife are just pretty flowers. When farmers, ranchers and land managers look at these plants and other noxious weeds, all they see is red. It’s not just an angry red at the expense of both time and money,

In 2010, South Dakota joined the crowd, becoming the forty-third state to base the ag property tax system on productivity rather than market value. Landowners saw the first phase of the change in the property valuations that were sent out in March. The change is for the 2010 tax year,