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An adult wheat stem sawfly in wheat at the High Plains Ag Lab.

Hosted by Samantha Teten and Jackson Stansell — graduate students in UNL's Department of Biological Systems Engineering and Nebraska Extension Digital Agriculture team members — FarmBits Podcast is a weekly series highlighting new innovations and trends in digital agriculture through interviews with academic experts, farmers and industry specialists.

Figure 1. Stripe rust in a state variety trial at the Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center (ENREC) near Mead, Sauders County, on June 2.

Thursday, June 3, 2021

Nebraska Extension’s efforts to assist farmers and ranchers to achieve profitable outcomes continue with a series of workshops that will offer strategies and tools to reduce risk exposure associated with cattle production.

In June and July, Extension specialists and educators will conduct “Managing Cattle for Profit in 2021” in Thedford, North Platte, Alliance, Norfolk and Ainsworth. 

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Image source: Pixabay.com

This special blog was authored by our dear colleague and friend, Leanne Manning who lost her battle with cancer on April 9, 2021. Leanne dedicated 34 years of her life’s career to Nebraska Extension, and to the Learning Child Interest Group. Leanne was passionate about education, helping others through educational programming, and watching youth develop into their potential. She loved spending time outdoors in nature and watching blue birds. Leanne will be missed, but her work will live on in those who knew her well and had the opportunity to be instructed in her care. This is the last blog she had written and requested that it be published in June 2021. Thank you and a fond farewell to Leanne Manning.

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Remember when you were a kid and you had fun playing in the mud?  Turns out that was good for you!  Some of the benefits* of playing in the mud follow.

1. The bacteria, Mycobacterium Vaccae, found in the soil or mud, has been found to reduce anxiety and increase serotonin (the endorphin that is used to regulate mood and makes you feel happy) in the brain.
2. Mud play increases brain activity by stimulating a child’s senses.
3. When children play in the mud outdoors, physical activity increases which helps children maintain a healthy lifestyle.
4. Regular exposure to mud will reduce a child’s vulnerability to depression.
5. Mud play reduces allergies and asthma symptoms.
6. By experiencing outdoor mud play, children learn a sense of self and belonging in the natural world around them.  It provides a chance to explore nature, ground themselves, and learn to care for their world.
7. Children exposed to playing in the mud have more opportunities to be creative.  There is no end to the amount of games and uses for mud in child’s play.  This can lead to an increased ability to problem solve, think critically, and be innovative.

   Ideas to get kids involved in mud play are:  

• mud hand-prints or footprints,
• use fingers, paintbrushes, or old kitchen tools like potato mashers to paint or make prints,
• hang a large white sheet and have kids throw mud balls at it to create splatter painting,
• set up a mud kitchen with pots, pans, and more to make mud pies or other culinary creations such as mud stew,
• use a plastic kiddie pool and create a mud pit supplying them with shovels, bowls, and spoons for digging and let the children squish mud through their bare toes in the mud pit,
• make mud castles or mud bricks,
• make mud buddies by forming mud into people or pets.

   Ask children questions that help them think about what is happening during this experience such as: What would happen if we used sand instead of mud? What would happen if we left this mud out in the sun? What would happen if we added more water?  At Prince Edward Island in Canada, they use their famous red mud to dye t-shirts.  Maybe you could experiment with mud dying on inexpensive pieces of fabric with the children.

   Clean up after mud play can be as much fun as playing in the mud.  Take a garden hose and have children hose off.  There is no better time than now to go outside and have some fun playing in the mud….it is good for you!  International Mud Day is Tuesday, June 29, 2021…have fun getting dirty!

*Source:  https://natureplayqld.org.au/

LEANNE MANNING, EXTENSION EDUCATOR | THE LEARNING CHILD

Peer Reviewed by Lynn DeVries, Sarah Roberts, and Erin Kampbell, Extension Educators, The Learning Child

Make sure to follow The Learning Child on social media for more research-based early childhood education resources!

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Are you planning to plant a summer annual grass, maybe to build hay supply or have some extra grazing?  Which one will you plant? 

It can be confusing because there are six different types of major summer annual forage grasses.  These include: sudangrass, sorghum-sudan hybrids, forage sorghum (which we often call cane or sorgo), foxtail millet, pearl millet, and teff.  Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.  So, base your choice primarily on how you plan to use it.

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Tuesday, June 1, 2021 The historical demand from China and domestically low stock-to-use ratios has led to the most recent run-up in grain prices. The direct impact of higher grain prices is that it increases the cost of gain (COG) for feedlots. In other words, it costs more dollars to put on the same amount of weight. Higher COG generally creates incentives for feedlots to place heavier feeder cattle and to ship cattle at lower finished weights. These two incentives combine to require less feed and effectively limit the impact of higher feed costs.Spanish: 

Hosted by Samantha Teten and Jackson Stansell — graduate students in UNL's Department of Biological Systems Engineering and Nebraska Extension Digital Agriculture team members — FarmBits Podcast is a weekly series highlighting new innovations and trends in digital agriculture through interviews with academic experts, farmers and industry specialists.

Attendees tour the wheat variety plots at the 2019 High Plains Ag Lab June field day.

Figure 1. A flooded section of a grower’s wheat field in excellent condition in Deuel County on May 25.

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Is your average cow size greater than it was ten or twenty years ago? As breed genetics and harvest weights change, the cows grazing pasture today tend to be larger than they were 10 or 20 years ago. Larger cows eat more, and if an operation is running the same number of cows today for the same amount of time on the same amount of rangeland as 10 or 20 years ago, the stocking rate has increased. But has the forage production increased to match the stocking rate? 

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Digging in skips showed soybeans unable to push through hard no-till soil in this field (left). Plumule emerging from the epicotyl on a seedling that had cotyledons stripped from crusting during emergence (right). A 5% yield loss is assumed for that soybean when this happens. (Photos by Jenny Rees)

Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Free choice mineral mixes are commonly used to provide the mineral that grazing cattle need. However, ensuring that cattle are getting enough mineral without overconsuming can be a struggle. Being on either side of the spectrum can be costly either in reduced performance due to deficiency or in increased feed cost due to over consumption.  An extra 1 oz per cow per day can cost $4 to 8 per cow per year. If your mineral mix is designed to meet the cows needs at 4 oz per day, intake above this only adds unnecessary cost.

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Tuesday, June 1, 2021

The following is a summary of the webinar “Are Livestock Producers Willing to Pay for Traceability Programs?” given on February 4, 2021, as part of the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension Farm and Ranch Management team’s weekly webinar series. The webinar can be accessed at https://farm.unl.edu/webinars.

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Tuesday, June 1, 2021

This article was first published in the May 11, 2021 edition of “In the Cattle Markets.”

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