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Dr. Francis Fluharty, Professor and Head – There are a lot of misconceptions about animal agriculture and its impact on environmental sustainability and food security. This really nice article by Dr. Francis Fluharty provides an overview of some of these misconceptions and highlights the importance of animal agriculture.
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Are my winter annuals going to regrow? The prolonged cold weather during the Christmas holiday has a lot of producers asking, “Are my winter annuals going to regrow?” Unfortunately, there isn’t a clear answer that we can offer to this question. Many cool season forages can handle subfreezing temps for short periods and the degree…
Posted in: Uncategorized -
Dylan Davis and Lawton Stewart As winter slowly approaches and producers are planning their winter supplementation, the question comes in each year; can I feed whole cottonseed to my bulls or will it make them infertile? This article will go over the impacts of cottonseed on bull fertility and describe how to safely take advantage…
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Francine Henry, Jason Duggin, Pedro Fontes, Lawton Stewart Over the years, commercial cattle producers have only had visual appearance and individual measurements known as phenotypes to use for heifer selection criteria. Now producers can evaluate the genetic differences known as Molecular Breeding Values (MBVs) between heifers well before their first potential breeding season. Having genomic…
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Pedro Fontes, Nathan Eason, Andy Carter, Jason Duggin – Estrus synchronization programs have the ability of inducing cyclicity in postpartum cows and can be used in combination with natural service breeding to increase the percentage of cows and heifers that become pregnant early in the season. This publication describe different estrus synchronization protocols that can…
Posted in: Reproduction -
Dr. Lee Jones, DVM. Associate Professor – Though modified live virus vaccines have been around for years and have been approved for use in adult cows for about 20 years, there’s still a lot of confusion about using them. In this short article, Dr. Lee Jones goes over some of the practical differences between modified…
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Darren D. Henry, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Very often there is a gap that exists between an optimal weaning time and availability of cool season forages for grazing in the southeastern US. As summer is coming into full swing, it is important that producers are preparing for the winter months ahead. Whether a producer buys or…
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Pedro L. P. Fontes, Ph.D. Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist The Relative Age Effect is a term commonly used to describe how children athletes born early in the academic year tend to perform to a higher level than those born later. For example, softball athletes born between May and August are 40% more likely to…
Posted in: Reproduction -
Pedro Fontes, Ph.D. – Assistant Professor and Extension Specialist – There has been a remarkable increase in beef semen sales over the last few years. While artificial insemination (AI) is a powerful tool that has really helped the beef industry make genetic progress, thisincrease in beef semen sales not necessarily reflects an increase in the…
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Jason Duggin, Dylan Davis, and Pedro Fontes – Expected progeny differences (EPD) are essential tools in the beef industry. Thus, it isimportant to understand their basic usage in beef herds. By utilizing the following keysteps, EPDs can be readily understood. Let’s overview the following three steps to betterunderstand how to use them effectively.
Posted in: Bull Evaluation and Sale