Animal Welfare

Jason Baldes drove down a dusty, sagebrush highway, pulling 11 young buffalo in a trailer from Colorado to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming.

A Delaware animal shelter is trying to care for and rehome thousands of chicks that survived being left in a postal service truck for three days.

If a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak occurs in the United States, the day-to-day operations and how beef producers do business will be different.

Merck Animal Health announced the commercial availability of Armatrex silane quaternary ammonium salt, an Environmental Protection Agency-registered, spray-on antimicrobial solution.

Limiting stress and maintaining a strong relationship with a veterinarian are vital for a rancher’s success in fighting bovine respiratory disease.

This is the first in a series of columns featuring conversations with state Farm Bureau presidents about current issues in agriculture.

The mill has been busy. We have received a lot of new fiber orders and working through the ones already had.

Although U.S. beef producers have met the challenge of reducing injection site lesions in beef carcasses, one issue they have not fixed is eliminating foreign objects.

A lot of growth has occurred in the agricultural department at Peotone High School since Abby Cowger started teaching and advising the FFA chapter in 2018.

Down in southern Illinois we could almost make the claim that it hasn’t stopped raining since December.

May is National Beef Month, a month-long celebration to kick off the unofficial start of summer grilling season and, of course, promote America’s favorite protein — beef.

Cow comfort and herd health are nonnegotiables for achieving higher milk quality and production. Bedding plays a critical role in both, which is why many dairy farms have long relied on sand as their go-to bedding.

Janna Morgan is the fifth generation of teachers in her family.

Heat stress not only impacts lactating dairy cows, it also affects dry cows, as well as first-gestation heifers.

To McCord Snider, FFA is not just a club, organization or another group at school.

Authorities in Central Europe are working to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among cattle populations that has caused widespread border closures and required the killing of thousands of animals.

The focus at TWG Ranch is to raise reproductive, maternal cattle with longevity and product merit.

Science plays a massive and multifaceted role in the world today. It is woven into pretty much every aspect of our lives, whether we notice it or not.

Cow size has been on the rise for decades. Cows today weigh 1.4 times as much as their predecessors in 1980. In fact, cow weight is rising 100 pounds every 10 years.

Shepherds should consider what diseases are on their farms to develop a disease prevention strategy.

Tags on bags of livestock feed must meet specific standards.

Animal monitoring systems are a trusted solution for accurate heat detection, but their impact extends beyond that.

Some of the highlights I came away with from the Illinois Grazing Lands Coalition’s 2025 Grazing Conference are: soil microbes help the water percolate through the soil and cover crops help feed the soil microbes which make them multiply.

We have faced several consecutive days over a six-state area where there have been multiple tornados causing damage, a lot of rain, lightning, hail and serious flooding and washouts of roads and bridges.

Vegetation management is a vital part of the development plan for solar arrays since shade is the No. 1 enemy for collecting sunlight by the panels.

If you ask most working adults about their required annual certification processes, you may get an eye roll with their response.

Illinois cattlemen have an abundant supply of low-cost feed available for their herds with the millions of acres of corn grown each year in the state.

Over 35 million birds, mostly egglayers, have been lost in the United States by highly pathogenic avian influenza since Jan. 1.

There have been 985 confirmed cases of avian influenza in dairy cattle across 17 states since first confirmed in March 2024.

More than 2,400 students attended a virtual field trip to a dairy farm during National School Breakfast Week.

March is a month that I sometimes struggle with. The weather is starting to warm up, then a cold snap comes through. It is a month of anticipation for the upcoming spring and summer projects.

We continue to have lamb customers since March is Ramadan and they come out before, during and after that holiday, and they all want eggs, too, but our supply was limited until just this week when I was able to get some hens from a fellow emptying his barn.

The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture held its 2025 Winter Policy Conference. Members adopted 16 policy amendments and 10 action items.

I saw robins, snow geese and green grass all in the same frame last week — it must be spring!

As March hit, we finally got some relief on the weather and had some nice days that first week. February stayed ugly until the end and muddy, muddy, muddy.

Members of Illinois Agri-Women gathered for their annual meeting to elect new officers, conduct association business and learn about several Illinois agricultural organizations.

Raising cattle is both demanding and fulfilling. Each day offers new possibilities for producers to improve their herd and work toward greater profitability.

With egg prices soaring, the Trump administration is planning a new strategy for fighting bird flu that stresses vaccinations and tighter biosecurity instead of killing off millions of chickens when the disease strikes a flock.

Gov. Mike Braun announced Kyle Shipman as the new Indiana state veterinarian.

The National Institute for Animal Agriculture will host its 2025 annual conference “Securing Our Future: Don’t Just Talk … Act!” in Kansas City. The agenda focuses on maintaining trust across animal agriculture’s value chain.

So far, this winter has been pretty friendly to the winter chores. We might be concerned about the lack of moisture for next spring’s crops, but right now dry is good.

Brrr, it’s cold outside. My sheep need good hay in their bellies to keep them warm during this time. That’s why I tested my hay and found out it averages only 8.75% crude protein.

Resource availability has a significant impact on optimizing genetics that fit into an environment to make a perfect cow.

Dairy cattle in Nevada have been infected with a new type of bird flu that’s different from the version that has spread in U.S. herds since last year, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials said.

We shipped two loads of fat cattle this past week and will ship another this week. Two of these loads were sold cash, and for the first time ever, we sold cattle for more than $200 per hundredweight.

We have completed the shop renovation project we started a year ago and got the heaters installed. This overdue improvement is a game changer.

The weather hasn’t presented too many challenges this winter, so far, but we know better than to celebrate just yet. We are still in a near-desperation need for runoff rain.

A pair of activists with the animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were arrested while attempting to dump a truck’s worth of manure outside the Manhattan offices of a rival animal welfare group.

Agricultural students at Belvidere North High School learn a variety of skills, including how to raise and care for quail and chickens.

The Purdue Animal Sciences Department is celebrating its 125th anniversary during the 2024-2025 school year.