Pasture
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.
Managing Prussic Acid Risk Following Drought
Drought creates several challenges for ranchers, from reduced forage availability to declining pasture quality. It can also create concerns about forage toxicity issues resulting from excess nitrate and prussic acid accumulation.
Recent Rainfall Likely to Improve Fall Herbicide Applications for Noxious Weed Management
Under hot and dry conditions, weeds are stressed and herbicide activity decreases, leading to poor management. While recent rain events have impeded row crop harvest, the moisture is welcomed to improve the activity of fall herbicide performance for noxious weeds in pastures and rangelands.
Considerations for Fall Grazing: Strategies to Maximize Productivity and Rangeland Health
Learn about the key strategies to maximize rangeland health for fall grazing.
How the Veterinary Lab Diagnoses Anthrax in a Beef Herd
Anthrax is a serious disease of cattle that pops up somewhere almost every year in South Dakota. It’s caused by a bacteria that survives as a very tough spore form in the soil. Knowing whether a death on pasture has been caused by anthrax is important for several reasons.
Forage-Based Heifer Development Systems
Forage-based heifer development systems offer producers a practical opportunity to reduce input costs while maintaining acceptable reproductive performance. By effectively utilizing available forage resources, heifers can be developed efficiently with reduced reliance on harvested feeds.
Designing a Grazing Plan That Guides Decisions
A factsheet to help you build an effective grazing plan.
Livestock
South Dakota is home to a dynamic livestock industry.
Considerations for Pasture and Herd Health in a Mixed-Precipitation Year
Planning for drought can quickly be replaced with a false sense of security when precipitation does arrive in the middle of the growing and grazing seasons, but the long-term sustainability of your pastures and herd depends on timely, flexible management.
Testing Forages for Nitrates
Free nitrate testing is available at various locations across the state. Nitrate testing strips are used to provide a semi-quantitative value of nitrate levels in forages. It allows producers to make decisions based on the presence or absence of nitrates and appropriate timing for cutting.