What's Your Premium on Breeding Dairy for Beef?

Advances in dairy reproduction coupled with improvements in calf management have made it possible for many dairies to sort their heifers and cows for breeding to dairy or beef. The best dairy genetics on the farm may be bred to dairy sires to reach future herd production goals, while the dairy genetics of lesser value to the farm may be bred with beef sires. Producing dairy x beef cross calves has the potential to increase the market value of these calves compared to straight bred dairy bull calves.

Victor Cabrera, Ph.D., Professor, UW-Madison Division of Extension Specialist in Dairy Farm Management, and Wen Li, MS Student have developed an online decision tool a farmer may use for making profitable decisions about mating to beef. As part of the Dairy Management Tools, the Premium Beef on Dairy Program is designed to illustrate the profit expected according to semen breeding strategies. The program is based on the total number of replacement females needed and the opportunity to obtain premium dollars from dairy and/or beef calves.

Premium Beef on Dairy Decision Tool

Video: Corn Harvest and Tar Spot

In this "Bumper Crops" episode, UW-Madison & Extension Field Crops Pathologist Damon Smith and Research Assistant Wade Webster discuss the impact of tar spot disease on the 2021 corn crop. Consequences of tar spot include reduced yield, low test weight, and lodging. Damon also answers the question: Is it too late to make fungicide applications to this year’s corn crop?

Preliminary Silage Yields for UW Corn Hybrid Evaluation Trials

Corn harvest is well underway with 32% of Wisconsin corn acreage harvested for grain as of October 17 (USDA-NASS). Corn is mostly mature (96%) with 68% good to excellent.

Preliminary corn silage yield for hybrids in the UW Corn Hybrid Evaluation program averaged across all locations was 10.6 T DM/A at 62.9% forage moisture (Table 1). Good yields were observed in spite of drought conditions at many locations. The highest yielding location was Arlington at 12.0 T DM/A averaged across 195 plots. Continue Reading

Tarspotter App

The best time to manage tar spot is during V8 to R4 growth stage. Tarspotter uses GPS coordinates to determine if weather has been favorable for the development of Tar spot fungus during corn flowering in a specific field. Models in the app use local weather (gathered through the internet) to predict favorable conditions for most corn-growing regions. Based on these predictions and crop phenology, a site-specific risk prediction is generated.

Dr. Damon Smith discusses the performance of the predictive mobile app Tarspotter during the 2021 growing season. Spoiler alert: the app worked great at predicting the need, number, and timing of fungicide applications! View Damon’s field trials and see the results in this video.

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BQA Certification In-Person Meeting

October 26 | 5:30PM

Brownsville Community Center, 871 W Main Street, Brownsville, WI 53006

Attendance may be limited based on location capacity and to follow any COVID guidelines in place at that time. NO walk-ins will be allowed. Due to limited capacity, it is encouraged that only one individual per farm attend the in-person meetings.

Registration is required by October 19

Badger Crop Connect: 2021-2022 Grain Marketing Outlook

October 27 | 12:30-1:30PM

The fall session will run in the months of September and October on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at 12:30 PM. The purpose of this series is to provide agronomists, crop consultants, and farmers timely crop updates for Wisconsin. Badger Crop Connect is hosted by Extension Crops and Soils educators. CCA CEUs available.

Pre-Registration is Requested

Pest Management Update Meeting-Virtual

November 19 | 9:00AM-12:00PM

This year’s speakers include Mark Renz, Perennial Cropping Systems Extension Weed Specialist; Rodrigo Werle, Annual Cropping Systems Extension Weed Specialist; Nick Arneson, Weed Science Outreach Specialist; PJ Liesch Extension Entomology Diagnostician; and Damon Smith, Extension Field Crops Pathologist. Topics include updates in the area of weed, insect, and disease management and a panel discussion and Q&A regarding pest management challenges related to planting soybeans early.

Registration for the virtual session includes links to pdfs of materials and a pdf version of the A3646 publication. Three in-person options are also available.

3 Pest Management CCA CEUs requested. Pre-registration is required.

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