News Update
March 18, 2016
Out of the Ashes
It was a hot, dry August day, typical of the Idaho summer, when lightning struck a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) grazing allotment in Owyhee County.
“We got the call on Monday, Aug. 10, 2015, that Cow Creek was on fire,” says Angus breeder Doug Burgess. “I ran up there because we had commercial heifers in a deeded pasture about 5 miles from where it started. It didn’t look like fire was coming that way, so I left them and went up to the fire line and stayed until 1 a.m., helping neighbors move cattle.”
Doug and his wife, Janice, raise purebred and commercial Angus cattle in Homedale, Idaho, and Jordan Valley, Ore., on both deeded and public lands. They market 70 bulls annually to commercial cattlemen, many of them within 150 miles of their place and also affected by the fire.
The fire started 3 miles from the Burgess’s place in Jordan Valley, Ore., which is right on the state line. It burned around 6,500 acres the first day.
Continue reading the story online.
FDA Announces Final Rule on Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) March 17 issued a rule finalizing three previously-issued interim final rules designed to further reduce the potential risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), sometimes referred to as “mad cow disease,” in human food.
The final rule provides definitions for prohibited cattle materials and prohibits their use in human food, dietary supplements and cosmetics, to address the potential risk of BSE. These materials include:
- Specified risk materials (SRMs ): brain, skull, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, vertebral column (excluding the vertebrae of the tail, the transverse processes of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, and the wings of the sacrum), and dorsal root ganglia (DRG) of cattle 30 months of age and older, and the tonsils and distal ileum of the small intestine from all cattle.
- The small intestine from all cattle unless the distal ileum has been properly removed,
- Material from nonambulatory disabled cattle,
- Material from cattle not inspected and passed, or mechanically separated (MS) (Beef).
For more information, please view the full FDA news release online.
Federal Disaster Assistance Applications
Missourians in 33 counties designated for individual aid have until Monday, March 21, to register for federal disaster assistance. The declaration covers eligible losses caused by flooding and severe storms between Dec. 23, 2015, and Jan. 9, 2016, for those living in the following counties: Barry, Barton, Camden, Cape Girardeau, Cole, Crawford, Franklin, Gasconade, Greene, Hickory, Jasper, Jefferson, Laclede, Lawrence, Lincoln, Maries, McDonald, Morgan, Newton, Osage, Phelps, Polk, Pulaski, Scott, St. Charles, St. Francois, St. Louis, Ste. Genevieve, Stone, Taney, Texas, Webster and Wright.
Applicants may be eligible for grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as well as low-interest disaster loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). FEMA grants are available to help eligible individuals and families pay for rent if the disaster displaced them from their homes, cover disaster-related losses and make basic home repairs. SBA low-interest loans are available to help businesses of all sizes, homeowners, renters, and most nonprofit organizations.
Applicants can register online at www.disasterassistance.gov, or call toll-free 1-800-621-3362 (FEMA).
For more information, please view the full news release online.
Kansas Forest Service to Conduct Planned Burns
The Kansas Forest Service fire staff will conduct planned burns March 20-26 as part of its 12th annual Hazardous Fuels Mitigation Project. In this case, the fuel is accumulated brush in the Hutchinson, Kan., area. This is the second year in a row this project has been located in Hutchinson.
The burns are planned for Sand Hills State Park, Prairie Dunes Country Club and Dillon Nature Center. The purpose of the project is fuel reduction on public lands where adjacent life or property could be harmed in the event of a wildfire.
The Hutchinson area was chosen because of its susceptibility to wildfire.
For more information, please view the full K-State news release online.
Upcoming Webinar: Ultra-High Density Grazing
Ultra-high stock density grazing is the management tool of grazing livestock in much higher-than-normal concentrations to achieve landscape-focused objectives. The long-term goal is to enhance soils, forages and livestock production.
Great Plains Grazing team member and Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation consultant Hugh Aljoe will present “Ultra-High Stock Density Grazing: 5 Precautions Before Implementation,” a free webinar at 1:30 p.m. (CDT) Tuesday, March 29. The webinar is open to anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of a practice known as “mob grazing.” It is hosted by Great Plains Grazing, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agriculture and Food Research Initiative-Coordinated Agricultural Project (USDA-AFRI-CAP) grant.
Webinar participants can expect to learn about infrastructure needs; setting production goals and measuring them; and differences between stocking density and grazing intensity.
For more information, please visit the Angus Journal Virtual Library calendar of upcoming events here.
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