Category: Ruminating With Realag

Words such as planned, rotational, management intensive and adaptive multi-paddock have all been used to describe grazing methods that mimic the movement of wildlife that would have grazed the Prairies many years ago. Some of these are also words that Kelly Sidoryk uses to describe her family’s grazing strategies. Sidoryk and her family had initially… Read More

With many cattle producers trying to cut costs, increase the productivity of their land, and have a tiny bit of a personal life, the idea of “out-wintering” has become a little more attractive in comparison to chilly daily feedings of corralled animals. While ranchers have looked at options such as bale grazing, swath grazing, or… Read More

There are many things that are outside of a producer’s control when raising cattle. Rain, or lack of it, market prices, and predators can make farming livestock a risky business. Then there is the risk of having cows that do not birth easily, have low immunity, or do not process feed efficiently. While the first… Read More

There’s no doubt that having a vaccination protocol on hand could save booster misses, bring all farm employees to the same page and improve overall confidence in our herd health programs. But, developing that protocol can be more than a little overwhelming. At the 2015 UCVM Beef Cattle Conference, I (finally!) tracked down Cody Creelman, veterinarian… Read More

The Western Livestock Price Insurance Program’s (WLPIP) calf coverage deadline is May 28, 2015. WLPIP is a risk management program, allowing producers to pay a premium for forward price coverage. Should market price fall below their coverage level for their time frame, the producer will receive a payment. It all sounds pretty straightforward, but deciding… Read More

When you have livestock, you have scouring stock. Or, at least that’s how it seems some years, when any spare time you thought you might have is spent mixing, smelling and tubing warm electrolytes. In this episode of Ruminating with RealAg (the podcast), we hear about calf scours from Cody Creelman, a large animal veterinarian… Read More

This Ruminating with RealAg podcast takes us back to the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference in Saskatoon, where we hear from Suzanne Bertrand, deputy director general at the International Livestock Research Institute, on the differences between Canadian and African adoption of genomics technology, and how genetically modified cattle could combat African Sleeping Sickness. Related: Julie Borlaug Kicks… Read More

Near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy is widely used in research today. In medicine, NIR assists in non-invasive assessments of the brain, blood glucose levels and oxygen concentration in muscles. For agriculture, NIR is largely used in determining the quality of feedstuffs, as it’s quick and relatively inexpensive. Related: NIR Workshop Offers Beef Producers Another Way to Improve Feed… Read More

In this episode of Ruminating with RealAg, I speak to Brad Johnson, a professor and chair in meat and muscle biology at Texas Tech University. Johnson has been heavily involved in research around steroidal implants and beta adrenergic agonists, and attended the Saskatchewan Beef Industry Conference in January as a speaker. The conversation starts off with… Read More

The role of genomics in the cattle industry continues to expand, as the price for genetic tests become more affordable for a wider demographic of producers. Parentage testing is only the tip of the iceberg available to interested parties, with understanding of expected progeny differences (EPD) and estimated breeding values (EBV) increasing and playing an impressive role… Read More