New Livestock Integration
Livestock expert Kelly Klober offers his 10 essential steps for successful breeding stock acquisition and incorporation.
Calves: Rearing Them Right
If you are too busy, unsure about calf rearing, or don’t have the proper facilities, then forget it and buy weaners. Sometimes it is more profitable to buy yearlings, which often sell cheaply.
In Support of Small Cows
Let’s assume you’re feeding nothing but forage, hay and mineral. You live in New York where I do, feeding hay five months out of the year (many farmers here aren’t proficient at stockpiling fall forage, so they may be feeding hay for upwards of eight months). How much more money did you spend on winter hay to produce each pound of calf from the larger cow than from the smaller one?
Shift the Workload: Focus on Livestock Culling, Genetics
Hard, unbiased livestock culling is absolutely essential to the establishment of a strong herd. It goes hand in hand with intensively breeding durable, low-input genetics. Use both of these practices as tools to build a ranch on which you call the shots. Adopting this mind-set makes a herd of any size profitable and enjoyable to run.
Grass-Fed Beef: 10 Keys to Getting Started
There are few agricultural activities more exciting these days than being able to make and sell your very own gourmet 100 percent grass-fed beef.
Ordering Chicks: Tips for Adding the Right Birds to Your Flock
Ordering chicks, for most of us, means that spring comes early in the poultry world. Here in Missouri we start planning out the mating groups in the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
