Hope everyone had a nice Fourth of July. Hard to believe it is July already. If only January would go as fast as June. The rain has been infrequent in northern Illinois. Our pastures could use more moisture.

Hello from Graze-N-Grow. Nowadays it seems like the COVID issue is taking a backseat to the weather. For us here, the rain is welcome. I wish we could share some of it with our farming friends north and west of us.

Hello from soggy central Illinois. The rain keeps coming, the grass keeps growing and I can’t get my wheat combined. The dry hay I’d made on the summer pasture finally got put inside the barn in between rain events.

Todd and Cynthia Carlson are no strangers to their cows having more than one calf. But when friends who were over visiting in mid-May suggested that the Carlsons’ Red Angus cow Minnie looked like she might be expecting more than one, they said no.

Colostrum provides protection for dairy calves against bovine respiratory disease. Timing and volume are the most important factors for feeding colostrum to newborn calves.

The sheep industry will never be any better than the genetics of the flocks. The goal of the new Sheep Genetics USA group is to focus on improving genetic tools to enhance profitability.

Purdue University researchers are looking for ways to understand and control vulture predation. If you’ve lost livestock in Indiana or Kentucky, here’s what you can do to help.

I need to talk about the weather first, of course, as 2021 continues to be an eventful year. We have been fortunate to be spared more flooding. The river has been bank full all week and water trapped inside the levee is too much, but all in all we have been missing the heavy rains or storms.