We're saying goodbye to Steve McDonald again, our down-home, yarn-spinning veterinarian blogger and columnist. Soon after I first took the reins of Beef Producer seven years ago, McDonald's wit and natural storytelling talents were brought to my attention by J.T. Smith, that loyal Texan and former editor of the Farmer-Stockman magazine. I contacted the good doctor and asked if he would write a column for Beef Producer. He agreed and we named it "Eye on the…

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  Last night at the Beef Improvement Federation annual meeting in Oklahoma City I got a real education on sexed semen. It's a technology that's seen major improvements in the last 10 years or so and one I have really intended to research but kept putting on the back burner. If I understand correctly -- and a web search appears to back this up -- pretty much all commercial semen sexing is being done now by Sexing Technologies, a firm based in Navasota, Texas. In turn…

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  It's been 10 years or more since Jim Howell first showed me and explained to me that forage doesn't have to be consumed in Stage II growth, sometimes called "vegetative" growth. It was an open door to a revelation. You see, up to that point most of the teaching about grazing in this country said that ideally you want to come back and graze a sward of forage before it gets into Stage III, which is the reproductive stage of growth. At the time, Jim was…

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At Alltech's annual meeting in Kentucky this week I've been in several sessions where dairy topics were more prevalent than beef topics. Nonetheless, I found some interesting science about the negative effects of high-protein diets. Seems they're a problem for dairy operations because they've actually been formulating too much protein into the rations. This doesn't surprise me considering our long-standing paradigm that the protein level in feedstuffs is the primary…

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  I drove up to Keith Long's place at Beaumont, Kansas, earlier this week to talk about saving winter stockpile forage into the spring grazing season. It's a topic I haven't covered very well in the past and when Keith and some others were talking about  the issue on Kit Pharo's discussion group I realized from his description that Long would be a good one to explain this concept to readers. Simply put, it's long been known that cattle on wheat pasture…

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  I just finished reading Bill Helming's latest economics special report to his clients and found some interesting stuff about China's economy, therefore our economy. Truth about China is always a slippery thing because their entire centrally planned economy is, of course, cloaked in lies. If you follow commodity prices you know China is always the wild card spoiler. It's been that way in cotton for at least a couple decades ... and soybeans. Now corn, maybe rice and…

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  A few days ago a small news item caught my attention because a meat market manager was complaining that changes in beef and pork labeling would cause his customers confusion. My first thought was to recall how many times I've heard John Lundeen, NCBA's beef demand guru, talk about consumer ignorance concerning beef cuts and cooking. Changing the name couldn't really matter, I thought. Nonetheless I went searching for what change might have occurred and whether it…

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  A few days ago the Environmental Working Group publicized and sensationalized data from a year-old research report on antibiotic-resistant bacteria in supermarket-collected meat samples. It was fundamentally yellow journalism and it naturally ended in a call for more government regulation and control, as is typical for this group. The press release was called "Superbugs Invade American Supermarkets" and focused on a small section of the 2011 report of the National…

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  I'm working this week on stories for the June issue of Beef Producer and digging into some juicy financial data from real ranches. I've been working with Stan Bevers of Texas AgriLife extension service again. Bevers keeps the Southwest SPA database, also known as the Standardized Performance Analysis of real cow operations in Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. SPA was initiated in 1992 by some Extension Service educators and the National Cattlemen's Association…

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The animal health industry is taxing itself... sort of. In reality the industry is collectively asking for reauthorization of the Animal Drug User Fee Act, a program whereby a significant portion of the costs of drug review is paid by the industry. In fact, this piece of legislation pays about 40% of the cost of drug review at the center for veterinary medicine, says Ron Phillips, vice president for legislative and public affairs at the Animal Health Institute. He explains it is…

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