It’s time to get down, get your hands dirty and take stock of, well, what you feed your stock. As discussed in the last Beef Research School, rangelands serve several purposes beyond just growing grass, and their health is a measure of five key components — species mix, nutrient cycling, site stability, water management and… Read More
Category: Forage
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” While this business principle seems to apply more to hard numbers and bushels per acre, it applies just as perfectly to rangeland production. Beyond just grass tonnage or pounds of growth per acre, there are several other outputs of rangeland production that should be assessed, measured… Read More
When you’ve got many hungry mouths to feed, efficiency counts. And while a big tractor or TMR mixer may help, the process of creating rations and feeding cattle can be made faster and more efficient through the use of a piece of equipment engineered specifically for the task at hand. The Faresin Ecomdoe self-loading TMR… Read More
What’s tall and showy and a new silage option for Alberta ranchers? Sorghum Sudan grass! The crop is a warm season, fast growing, high nitrogen user that, as silage, is capturing the attention of silage users in Alberta, now that varieties are coming along to better fit the growing area. As Vern Turchyn, of Viterra,… Read More
If your grain-farming neighbour is wincing at crop prices and that makes you smile, you might be a cattle producer. And so begins a series of events and conditions converging to support solid cattle prices for the near term. As you’ll hear in this interview with Anne Wasko, of Gateway Livestock, cattlement are enjoying strong… Read More
In the last Beef Research School episode, we took a virtual walk through a riparian area to assess its health. Healthy riparian areas, that transitional zone from pasture to waterway, are critical to decreasing riverbank erosion and nutrient migration to waterways. Once you’ve determined the general health of your riparian areas, it’s time to put… Read More
Well-managed pastures can produce good yields for years, but will produce best if fertility of those pastures is planned for the long-term. Big producing pastures require big fertility numbers, though grazing helps to cycle these nutrients back to the soil. Over-grazing, too low or high stocking densities and time all can begin to mine pasture… Read More
Canada’s Farm Progress Show is a great event to take in if you’re looking for neat new pieces of equipment to make life on the farm easier and more productive. The show even hands out awards to those inventions that offer a new way to tackle an old job. Haukaas Manufacturing, based at Mortlach, Sask.,… Read More
Maximizing forage acre production may be an easy concept to work on in the office, but making decisions in the field isn’t always that straightforward. How do you know whether or not a pasture needs some rejuvenation versus renovation? What factors play a role in getting the most out of existing acres, and what are… Read More
There are times when high quality high just isn’t in the cards. In fact, sometimes the weather makes even attaining low quality hay nearly impossible. It’s times like these that some farmers choose to turn too-wet hay into silage or haylage. The downside there, however, is that quality has already been lost — had you… Read More