News Update
March 27, 2009

Ag Secretary Vilsack Announces Top Staff Appointments

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced March 24 the names of individuals who will hold top staff positions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in Washington, D.C.

Among those listed, John Berge was named White House Liaison to USDA. Most recently, Berge served as executive director of the Western Nebraska Community College Foundation in Scottsbluff, Neb., and state director of the Obama for America Campaign in Nebraska. Berge has worked on the staffs of former Senators Jim Exon (D-Neb.), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) and current Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (D-Neb.).

Lindsay Daschle was named confidential assistant to the Secretary. Daschle most recently was a research assistant for Commissioner Bart Chilton at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Others named to top positions include Max Holtzman, senior advisor to the Secretary; Grant Leslie, senior advisor; David Lazarus, senior advisor; Sam Liebert, staff assistant to the Secretary; Rohan Patel, director of advance; Denise Scott, executive assistant; Karen Stuck, confidential assistant; and Beatina Theopold, advance staff.

Those named to positions within the Secretary’s communications team include Bobby Gravitz, director of speechwriting and research; Nayyera Haq, press secretary, and Chris Mather, director.

For more information visit www.usda.gov.

— Adapted from a release provided by USDA.

Udder and Teat Scoring Beef Cows

The conformation of a beef cow’s teats and udder are important in a profitable cow-calf enterprise. Females with poor udder and teat conformation are a management challenge for commercial cow-calf producers. Cattle producers do not have the time or labor to manage around cows that need intervention at calving to physically “milk-out” a quarter(s) so that the calf can suckle or to save the quarter from infection. Research findings in two experiments indicate that the occurrence of clinical mastitis in beef cow herds was 17.5% and 11.9%, resulting in a reduction in weaning weights of 12.5% and 7.3%, respectively.

Poor udder and teat conformation can potentially lead to increased calf sickness as teats may be contaminated with mud and debris from a lot or calving area before the calf suckles. Although selecting and culling based on conformation of teats and udders may be considered convenience trait selection, selecting against poor teats and udders increases profit potential by increasing calf performance, reducing calf sickness, increasing longevity of the cow, and reducing labor inputs. Udder and teat conformation is moderately heritable (h2 of udder attachment = 0.2 to 0.3; h2 of teat size = 0.5), so enhancing teat and udder quality can be accomplished by selecting bulls whose female offspring have good teat and udder conformation and by not selecting replacement heifers from dams that have marginal teat and udder conformation.

When selecting bulls from your seedstock provider, request the udder score of his dam or visually appraise the udder of the dam to help reduce undesirable udder conformation in your herd.

Learn more about udder and teat scoring by going to the learning module at http://beef.unl.edu/learning/udder_score.shtml.

— By Rick Rasby, University of Nebraska-Lincoln at http://beef.unl.edu/stories/200903270.shtml.

Grazing School for Novices Grows Loyalty of Past Students

The first lesson Willis Hargraves learned when he retired from the commercial insurance business and started a cattle-raising business was an economic one, he said.

“I said to my wife one day, ‘I don't know how I lose so much money so fast,’ ” he said.
However, five years ago Hargraves attended his first three-day Grazing School for Novices at Overton, and he learned what he was doing wrong the first morning.

“I learned that we’re grass farmers, not cattlemen,” Hargraves said. “We're in the business of growing grass. We just market the grass through the cattle. Like most folks, when I got started, I didn't know that.”

Hargraves has come back to take the course every year since.

“It's like getting baptized," Hargraves said. "To really get to know the Lord, you’ve got to keep coming back.”

Ray Campbell nods in agreement. It’s the fourth return-year for Campbell, whose land adjoins Hargraves near Alto.

After retiring from Brookshire Bros. grocery stores in the 1990s, Campbell started with 60 acres. Today he owns more than 700 and leases several hundred more. He also has eight broiler houses and raises nearly 1 million broilers per year. The chicken litter allows him to maintain high-quality improved Tifton 85 Bermuda grass pastures, he said.

“If you can grow (quality) grass fast enough, you don’t have to have as much land,” he said. Which is another thing he learned at the grazing school.

“This business is like any other (including retail grocery); it’s all about volume. There's an economy of scale,” Campbell said. The course is not free. Cost of the workshops, which are scheduled at the end of March and early April every year, is $350. But both Hargraves and Campbell agree that the course is worth that and more, whether for the absolute beginner or the rancher with some experience.

“If a novice (or a returning student) picks up two useful practices that he can use every day on his operation, then he’s more than paid for coming here,” Hargraves said. Course instructors are scientists and educators with Texas AgriLife Research, the Texas AgriLife Extension Service and Texas A&M University (TAMU). All have doctoral degrees related to their area of instruction. The courses take place at the Texas AgriLife Research and Extension Center at Overton in East Texas. Enrollment for the courses is limited to 50 people per class to allow for personal interaction with the instructors.

“That’s another good thing,” Hargraves said. “When you leave, you have a relationship with the professors, and you can call them when you have a problem. It’s like a support group.”

The three-day course consists of time split between the classroom and instruction in the field. In-field demonstrations cover all aspects of running a beef operation, from establishing forages and maintaining high-quality pastures, calibrating sprayers, taking soil samples, castrating and vaccinating cattle, and dehorning calves.

The first of two classes was held March 24-26. As of March 23, there were still openings for the March 31-April 2 classes, said Jennifer Lloyd, office assistant.

A full agenda for the grazing school can be found at http://overton.tamu.edu/grazingschool.htm. To register or for more information, contact Lloyd at 903-834-6191 or by e-mail at jllloyd@ag.tamu.edu.

— Release provided by Texas A&M.

Options for Saving for College

Parents who are trying to save for their children’s education but aren’t sure where to start may find guidance in a four-page fact sheet, “College Savings Options,” from the Ohio State University (OSU) Extension.

The fact sheet is free from county offices of OSU Extension and downloadable online at http://ohioline.osu.edu (search for the fact sheet title, or browse under “Home”). It offers general guidelines for choosing among the savings vehicles available and a chart to help families compare options based on eligibility, contribution rules, tax implications, how financial aid might be affected, and other factors.

“Some people know about one or two options to save money for college, but we wanted to give families a good starting point to learn about all of the options that are available,” said Chris Olinsky, family and consumer sciences educator for OSU Extension in Montgomery County and one of the fact sheet’s authors.

The fact sheet lists information on personal investment accounts; traditional Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs); Roth IRAs; 401(K) and 403(B) retirement plans; custodial accounts, such as a Uniform Gift to Minors; Coverdell Education Savings Accounts; 529 plans; and U.S. Savings Bonds.

“We think many parents and grandparents, who often contribute to college savings accounts for their grandchildren, would value this information,” Olinsky said. Although only very basic information is included in the fact sheet, it at least introduces these options. If an option seems better than the others, families can investigate it further.

The fact sheet also points out that saving for retirement should always come first, over saving for a college education. “Retirement savings should be the first priority,” Olinsky said. Funding a college education can always be supplemented with scholarships, grants, work-study opportunities and loans, but once a person retires, few options exist for additional sources of income.

“We always advise that people focus on saving for retirement first,” Olinsky said. “But still, people want to know more about opportunities for college savings. That’s why we put this fact sheet together.” Olinsky wrote the fact sheet with Jean Clements, Extension educator emeritus in Greene County.

Preparing for college goes beyond the financial aspect. For other information, Ohio State University’s Economic Access Initiative offers parents a wide range of ideas on how families can “make college happen” by doing some groundwork as early as when students are in grades 4 through 6. See guidelines at http://www.osu.edu/access/family_resources.php. The site includes a link to the national site, KnowHow2Go (http://www.knowhow2go.org) giving tips to 8th through 10th graders for preparing for college, as well as other online sources of information.

— Release provided by Ohio State University.

— Compiled by Crystal Albers, associate editor, Angus Productions Inc.