Innovation & Technology

Weaning can be a stressful time on cattle operations, as calves are separated from mother cows. It’s a natural process, but ranch realities require it be herd coordinated and sped up from what would occur in nature. While much of the animal welfare research related to weaning has focused on calf stress and its implications…

The results of a four-year animal transport research study, funded in part by ABP, suggest the most important animal welfare factor in transport may be conditioning before they get on the truck. Since we last reported on this story in January 2022, researchers have completed their final year of a study to help improve animal…

The Beef Cattle Research Council (BCRC) is welcoming more than $12 million in funding from the Government of Canada for Canada’s Beef and Forage AgriScience Cluster under the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership – AgriScience Program. Francis Drouin, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, made the funding announcement on July 12 while attending…

Although Alexandra O’Connor has yet to graduate high school, this young beef producer is already conducting research on the environmental benefits of grasslands. With the guidance of a university researcher, O’Connor, a fourth-generation purebred producer from Vibank, Saskatchewan, is exploring the long-term carbon storage of grazed grasslands versus croplands. She presented her findings as a…

This is the ninth and final installment in a series of articles highlighting a selection of ABP-supported research projects that were featured at our Research Showcase in February 2023. Find the previous articles here. Whether you’re a beef producer or a researcher, accuracy is everything when it comes to analyzing the nutritional content of forage….

This is the eighth in a series of articles highlighting a selection of ABP-supported research projects that were featured at our Research Showcase in February 2023. Find the previous articles here. Having baseline data on animal health concerns is key to making improvements, and this is where the Canadian Cow-Calf Surveillance Network (C3SN) shines. The…

This is the second in a two-part series on weed control in pastures. The first part, focusing on the role of rotational grazing in controlling Canada thistle, is available here. How do you solve a problem like Canada thistle? In areas that can’t be sprayed with herbicide, rotational grazing might just be the answer. Grazing…

This is the first in a two-part series on weed control in pastures. The second part, focusing on the role of rotational grazing in controlling Canada thistle, will be available next week on ABP Daily. It’s the most common weed found in pasturelands on the Canadian Prairies, and it can seriously reduce forage availability if…

By Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada There is more to a cow pat than meets the eye. In Canada, an estimated 110 million dung pats (the weight of over 13,000 combines!) are deposited by cows every day. But what do we know about the community of insects, bacteria and other organisms that inhabit them? These critters are essential…

Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan and Lakeland College are looking for cow-calf producers in Western Canada to provide their thoughts on the use of swathgrazing and spring residue cleanup. Producers don’t have to be currently swathgrazing to participate in the survey, as the researchers want to learn from adopters, non-adopters and dis-adopters of this…