Beef Nutrition

Impacts of Nutrient Restriction on Heifer Pregnancy Success

Understanding the factors impacting reproductive failure within heifers is critical to implementing management strategies that will improve heifers’ chances of remaining within the beef herd and successfully producing calves.

Fetal Programming of Carcass Characteristics

Fetal programming effects on carcass traits as well as offspring growth are currently a large focus area in beef research.

Using Feed Testing to Control Variation

By now all the summer and fall’s work of getting forage harvested has wrapped up. Now comes the task of converting all of that work into animal protein (at a profit)!

Swath Grazing: Extending the Grazing Season

One proposed way to cut fall/winter feeding costs is to extend the grazing season and allow the livestock to harvest the resource instead of relying on mechanical harvest.

Resources and Options When Feed is Short

SDSU Extension offers resources to help producers find and evaluate feedstuffs to help meet their livestock’s needs.

Ditch Hay: Harvesting, Quality, and Feeding

Using ditch hay to feed cattle is a common practice across the U.S. It provides livestock producers with a source of readily available forage, which can be very useful, particularly during feed shortages.

Ergot in Western Wheatgrass and the Potential Effects for Winter Grazing

2019 has been a year fraught with challenges for ranchers across South Dakota. Abundant precipitation is usually a blessing, however, wet conditions coupled with a cool spring followed by warmer temperatures has caused another problem across the rangelands of South Dakota: ergot poisoning.

Weaning Calves on Cover Crops

What do we do if it is time to wean calves, but the pen isn’t ready? That can be a real concern during wet fall seasons, such as 2019. Putting calves into muddy pen conditions is far from desirable, but holding calves on the cows deep into fall increases the risk of adverse winter weather and tends to pull body condition off the cows.

And They’re Off! Winning the Calf Starting Race

Feeding cattle successfully is a bit like a horse race; a bad start can doom the chances of winning. Getting calves off to a great start is crucially important if we want to maintain health and performance throughout the feeding period.