Travis Mulliniks, Range Cattle Nutritionist 
Greetings from the GSL crew, students, and faculty!
This last year was pretty hit and miss with moisture. We did have some timely rains that helped with forage production and cow herd performance. Dr. Jerry Volesky has an article on last year’s weather and forage data and looking forward for the 2022 grazing season later in the newsletter. Gudmundsen had a mild and open winter, which is a catch-22. We enjoyed the nicer weather, but the lack of moisture concerns us moving forward into the growing season. Jacki Musgrave and John Nollette will get you an up to date on the cattle operations with the Ranch Update.
Currently, the drought outlook for much of the Sandhills and western Nebraska is expected to be dry or in a drought this year. While we may like to be optimistic about spring moisture, making sure you have an updated drought plan will be important as we move closer to the growing season. We have already made some moves at GSL to help in case drought does occur. As Jerry points out in his article, May 1 will be a big trigger date for us to make any additional drought management decisions.
We have made some leadership changes at GSL this year. As Andy Applegarth gets closer to retirement, we have promoted and transitioned John Nollette up to be the lead. Over the last couple of years, John has taken on more and more responsibilities at GSL and has done a tremendous job leading the crew.
Our staff spotlight in this edition is on Stacy Nollette. Stacy has been an on-call staff at GSL for 22 years. Stacy is one staff member that doesn’t get enough credit for what she does behind the scenes to allow GSL to be a highly functional research and extension center. We really appreciate her willingness to set things up or clean the dorm in a moment’s notice and overall level of care and detail.
We are currently advertising for the 2022 Ranch Practicum. Troy Walz has done a tremendous job of advertising and has had a lot of interest early on this year for participants. Later in the newsletter is an article on how to register. If you are interested or know anyone, please send them Troy’s way.
Just a reminder the 23rd Annual UNL GSL Open House will be Wednesday, August 24. More information will be coming out this summer on the agenda; however, we do plan this to be a hybrid event with an in-person and virtual option as we have done the last two years. We had a great turnout and program this last year for the Open House in 2021. We had approximately 220 people attend, which includes 31 attendees watching the live stream. Of the 31 on the live stream, we reached 8 different states outside of NE (CO, TX, NC, WY, IL, IN, AR, and CA) and one Canadian. Moving to a hybrid format has really helped increase the reach of what is going on at UNL and GSL.
Please let us know how we can better serve you.