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Parents playing with their children in a living room.

All Kids and Adults Need To Play and Let Loose!

Movement and unstructured activity help increase memory, perception, attention, emotion and basic decision making. Incorporate play into your daily routine to improve your health while making memories with your kids!

Forage Crop Insurance Options

In this episode of The Grazing Toolbox, Kim Ricardo, SDSU Extension Forage Field Specialist, and Parker Witt, SDSU Extension Crop-Livestock Systems Field Specialist, sit down with Dr. Matthew Diersen, SDSU Extension Risk and Business Management Specialist, and Dr. Sarah Sellars, SDSU Extension Sustainable Farm and Food Systems Specialist, to discuss forage crop insurance programs and the benefits they can bring to operations experiencing extended dry periods.

two students look at a fish while a teacher makes an explination

Aquaculture Comes to South Dakota: Part 1

Aquaculture has expanded beyond Asia, Central America and the farm ponds of southern states up north to South Dakota. Of course, fish production in South Dakota opens a new market for the state’s soybean farmers.

Three producers having a discussion in a cattle pasture.

Keep Your Pastures Guessing: Why predictable grazing is costing you

Your cattle don't care which pasture they're in. Your pastures, on the other hand, care enormously. Give them something to work with, and keep them guessing.

Group of angus cattle grazing winter pasture.

Rotational Grazing During Winter

Winter feed represents one of the largest costs for a livestock production enterprise. Grazing pasture that has been stockpiled for winter use is a rational alternative to limit costs resulting from both harvest and feeding of hay.

A rancher and RMA agent reviewing insurance paperwork beside a off-road vehicle.

Livestock Risk Protection for Cattle

Price rallies, general price volatility and concern that prices may move lower could lead producers to insure livestock prices. Livestock Risk Protection is an insurance program that covers the single-peril or risk of lower prices on fed cattle and feeder cattle.

Rancher cleaning a cow's hear before applying an implant.

Getting Implant Application Correct

How would you like to make a few thousand dollars per hour? When cattle backgrounders and feeders use growth promoting implants correctly, those returns are not a pipe dream. The key is administering the implant correctly.

Rancher applying an implant inside a cow's ear with an implant gun.

Questions and Misconceptions Surrounding Implants

Growth promoting implants are among the most widely used technologies in the beef industry. The first implant received FDA approval in 1954, yet in spite of a long history, there are still myths and misconceptions surrounding their use.

A snowy farmyard with sunlight breaking through the clouds.

Preparing for Calving Season

Whether the calving season will start soon or is a few months away, it’s never a bad time to start preparing for the arrival of fresh calves on the ground. Here are some things to consider prior to the beginning of calving.

A small herd of cattle grazing in snow-covered, spring pasture.

Bunch the Cow Herd

Reproduction is one of the biggest drivers of economic success. Cows stressed by cold, wind, snow, and mud will put energy resources into body condition maintenance and lactation prior to recycling.