Livestock
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Fast Company has an interesting story about cows in Puerto Rico that have a natural mutation that allows the cattle to thrive in hotter conditions than other conventional varieties of cattle. This might allow producers to grow cattle in areas that in the future will be too hot for cattle to do well. The mutation…
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As the temperature rises with this week’s heat wave, humans and animals both experience discomfort and potential harm from heat stress and other heat diseases. For livestock like cattle, the heat makes them less likely to want to eat, reducing weight gain and milk production. Prolonged periods of heat can reduce fertility in cows, further…
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While a lot of the hype on social media this week (at least among meteorologists) has been the potential for snow somewhere in the Southeast or on the East Coast, the bigger story for most of us is going to be the coming cold weather, according to James Spann, well-known Birmingham meteorologist. The conditions he…
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The string of weather-related disasters that has hit the United States this year has caused a lot of problems for farmers across the country, leading to big decreases in the yield of citrus and rice as well as the culling of cattle due to drought. Here are a couple of articles that described some of…
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Here is a story you might not expect to read in this blog, but it was too good not to mention. Newser posted a story about the remarkable tale about three cows that were swept out to sea from North Carolina’s Cedar Island in the 2019 Hurricane Dorian and found, much to everyone’s surprise, weeks…
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I’ve been getting quite a few phone calls from Georgia cattle producers noting the very dry conditions have made feeding cattle very difficult right now, with no relief in sight, and some farmers having to cull their cattle because of the lack of feed. Here is a similar story from MyPanhandle.com about cattlefolk down in…
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While residents of southwest Florida as well as the Carolinas are currently still picking up from the incredible destruction of Hurricane Ian, and Puerto Ricans are dealing with power losses and damage from massive flooding that fell during Hurricane Fiona, extension agents and farmers are starting to assess the toll that the wind and rain…