

You Can’t Manage What You Don’t Measure: Range Record Keeping
Range record keeping helps detect and demonstrate landscape changes that have a direct impact on your ability to maintain or grow your herd.
Range record keeping helps detect and demonstrate landscape changes that have a direct impact on your ability to maintain or grow your herd.
South Dakota is home to a dynamic livestock industry.
Home to more than 1 million head of cattle, South Dakota’s producers can rely on SDSU Extension for research-based information, best management practices and resources to support healthy and profitable herds.
Virtual fencing (borders without physical barriers) has started making waves in the cattle industry, and it can be used to implement precision grazing management. Our team is researching its use and utility at the SDSU Cottonwood Field Station starting this summer.
With the percentage of women in agriculture expected to grow over the next few years, SDSU Extension will be launching a new program called South Dakota Women on the Range. The program will educate women about the importance of range management, while also empowering them to become leaders in the agriculture industry.
Two of the main environmental conditions that drive post-wildfire rangeland recovery include health of the rangeland ecosystem prior to the wildfire and climatic variables, such as precipitation or drought after the fire event.
AgritourismSD is an intensive educational program designed to provide farmers and ranchers with the opportunity to create an enterprise that utilizes resources in different ways to generate new income streams.
Swath grazing can be utilized with various crops and can improve utilization of the crops for feed, while decreasing fuel, harvest and feeding costs and also improving soil health.
One of the most-important traits in the beef herd is reproduction. Any female that ends up open at the end of the year is costing the operation additional money. Strategic management decisions should be made within the reproductive herd to help maximize revenue.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and good management practices begin by taking good records.