I don’t know what it’s like around your place, but on my farm, things don’t always go the way I had planned. In fact, it might be said that things usually go poorly. My biochemistry professor in college perhaps said it best when he observed, “In nature, things naturally go to heck,” or something like that. Point well taken. Jay Jenkins, who is the UNL Extension educator in Cherry County, placed a unique, but quite useful spin on that message in his Monday…

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Garrett Dwyer recalls the Iraqi countryside, from his days on patrol as a U.S. Marine. He says that irrigation trenches in Iraq were a nighttime obstacle to Marines on patrol. And he rarely observed any livestock in Iraq, except for a few sheep. Today, the young veteran has returned from his days in a Marine uniform, to work with his parents on the family ranch west of Elgin. For Dwyer, the return home and acclimation back into civilian life wasn’t always easy. But he loves the ranch…

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Land prices are high. Real estate taxes are climbing. With record commodity prices these days, large numbers of cool season pastures have been turned over and converted into grain production. For farmers who have retained their pastureland, because of marginal ground or the need for grazing or hay, it’s important to get the most out of the grassland when competition for land is so fierce and the price of maintaining land is so high. I attended a cool season forages field day near…

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With the warm weather we’ve experienced in recent days, it seems only natural to talk about grazing lands. But I have to remind myself that it is still March. I guess, as the eerie, warm weather persists, we might as well enjoy it and make plans for improving our pastures going into the next grazing season. Around our place, one of the easiest, simplest and cheapest things we’ve done to improve our pastures has been adding red clover or alfalfa to the grazing mixture, even with…

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I was honored recently to take a photo of shareholders and their living ancestors who saved Valentine Livestock Auction nearly 20 years ago.     This job affords me the luxury of meeting some of the best farm and ranch folks in Nebraska. I freely admit that every day is a new adventure, and the people I meet along the way are the real perks of my job. But for me, a Thursday in early July is a day to remember, one for the books. I was able to witness history. A group of…

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The numbers are great, but visual appraisal and common sense go a long way in selecting bulls. Bull sale season is starting to heat up around the state. So we’re sticking with a beef theme in this week’s blog, talking about the most important animal in your herd – the bull. I was visiting with a rancher recently about his criteria for selecting bulls. He told me that before he goes to a bull sale, he looks over all the data available and chooses the bulls that fit into his…

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If my cows are my employees, do I have to negotiate benefits?     I enjoyed listening to acclaimed grazing consultant, researcher and author, Jim Gerrish, when he stopped in O’Neill recently, courtesy of University of Nebraska Extension and the Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition. One of the most interesting points made by Gerrish was that our cows should be viewed as employees. So, we should think of a job description for them and understand in detail what we want our…

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