“It’s sort of like making Kevin Garnett one of the best professional basketball players in the world. That took some time, just as it takes time to build the genetics of your herd, too.”

With competitive meat supplies abundant, the likelihood that beef cutouts could surpass their resistance area of $150 per hundredweight is not good in the months ahead.

In some countries it has been found that people exposed to livestock — including pigs, cattle and horses — are at higher risk of carrying methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus in their noses, and therefore are likely to be at elevated risk of developing MRSA infections.

Sitting with nearly 100 people March 14 in the Renville County Commissioner’s Chamber at the county office building, I witnessed a most interesting demonstration of grass-roots activism.

The cattle market has not had much good news lately, and prices have slipped accordingly as we finish out the last week of March.

The livestock markets have not started March on a very positive note. Both cash cattle and cash hogs have been under pressure as prices have slipped for the first few weeks of the month.

Glycerol could serve as an energy source for pigs, but limited research has been reported on its nutritional value in swine diets. Preliminary research done in Iowa with nursery pigs and growing-finishing pigs suggests that glycerol contains nearly as much energy as that found in corn.

I climbed aboard the Revier Feedlots 1994 International Eagle hitched to a 40-foot Trail King live bottom trailer at 7:30 a.m. Feb. 13. Forty-four miles later Jim Schweinfurter piloted this big rig into the “trucks only” entrance to the Bushmills Ethanol plant in Atwater.

As we start March, cattle prices have rallied slightly back to the top end of the range they have been in for the past several months. Tighter numbers have helped produce this firmness, along with increasing boxed beef cutouts. With this increase in beef cutouts, however, the volume in the boxed beef has dropped off once again as the prices increased.

With the packer margin continuing to remain just barely satisfactory, their bids for live inventory are tentative at best, thus the sluggish cash trade over the past several weeks.

Although the initial reaction of pork producers in times like these may be to look at cutting corners, the best plan is to evaluate the various areas of costs and returns, and determine how to more efficiently produce pork on the farm. One area to evaluate is energy usage and expense.

The cattle market continues to struggle as prices have remained defensive through the first month of the new year. Beef demand has been a real drag on the overall market as boxed beef trade has continued to be sluggish forcing the packer to scrutinize their bidding for live inventory.

Chronic wasting disease and tuberculosis are two concerns elk breeders face, but according to Tom Gidlewski, with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, they are testing as many animals as possible to keep the numbers down.

Elk antlers are put to good use on Brenda and Lance Hartkopf’s Splendor Ridge Elk Farm in Howard Lake. The Hartkopf family sells the antlers in their soft “velvet” stage for medicinal purposes.

The cattle market continues to struggle as we get further into the new year. Cash prices remain weak as packers have turned less aggressive in accumulating live inventories.

The "country of origin labeling" issue has been the topic of much debate. Concerns over foreign animal diseases, including avian flu, bovine spongiform encephalopathy and a variety of food safety issues with food products imported from China have really pushed the COOL issue into the spotlight.

The cattle market has been an interesting study so far this year. It appears the cash is starting out in one direction, while the futures market is heading in another.

The past few weeks in the livestock market have seen prices steady to lower for both cattle and hogs as the holiday-period approached. This trend will likely remain until we move into the new year.

Individual stalls are the current primary housing system used for pregnant sows in the United States. Public sentiment, however, has been pushing to move away from individual housing toward group housing of gestation sows.