Finishing lambs when the rain won’t stop

By Janet McNally

Hinckley, Minnesota—Much of the Midwest received an extraordinary amount of rainfall this fall. In Minnesota, meteorologist Paul Douglass reported that most of the state had 10 to 20 inches more precipitation than normal in 2019 through October 25, making this the sixth wettest year on record. Other states also saw huge volumes of rain this year.

While the sheep in these places were knee deep in beautiful green grass, some of you might have noticed the lambs were in very lean condition and not attaining the finish required for slaughter.

December 1, 2019July 26, 2020

Telling the real story about fake meats

This stuff has lots of holes in its logic, but also lots of money backing it

By Allen Williams
Consumers are being bombarded with ads for various forms of what are being boosted as “clean proteins”, but what I call “fake meat”.

It’s pretty much impossible not to see, hear or read about fake meats. There is much publicity about these plant-based proteins and their supposed benefits for human health and animal welfare, the environment and climate change.

November 1, 2019July 24, 2020

Milking and processing at micro scale

North Country Creamery succeeding in rural area

By Martha Hoffman
Keeseville, New York — Small-scale dairy processing and marketing usually requires access to nearby urban markets.

However, in northeastern New York, far from large cities, North Country Creamery is finding success selling dairy products throughout the rural region.

October 1, 2019July 12, 2022

Regenerating soils by grazing cattle and pigs

By John Arbuckle
Grazing multiple species provides many benefits, not the least of which is enterprise stacking that allows each acre to create more than one saleable product in the same growing season.

Our topic here is how to make multi-species grazing regenerative in the biological sense. We custom graze replacement heifers in front of our pigs, with 37 heifers and slightly more than 100 finisher pigs moving in a leader-follow pattern.

August 1, 2019July 12, 2022

Controlling flies organically

A lot of little things are needed to do the job

By Hue Karreman
Flies happen. And controlling them on organic farms is an ongoing challenge. There are lots of spray products that help, but none seem to work as well as farmers would like.

Flies are parasites, and thus make the most of any situation. Almost all common parasites, external and internal, thrive in warm and moist conditions, so we need to keep those two factors front and center when thinking about fly control.

July 30, 2019April 14, 2020

The savior may be fake, but the money is real

By Joel McNair

The headline above Timothy Egan’s column in the June 21 edition of The New York Times assured that “Fake Meat Will Save Us”. I was very relieved, as it seems that we do need saving, and the idea of a fake savior is appropriate for the age, I guess.

Seriously, this was just another example of a well-known intellectual — Egan is an award-winning environmental and political writer — falling into the trap of employing trendy, but bad, information and faulty logic in reaching a popular “big picture” technological solution that makes absolutely no sense. Continue reading “The savior may be fake, but the money is real”