Behavior

  One of the challenges your livestock face on a daily basis is picking out something safe to eat without the benefit of food safety labels, or any labels at all for that matter. They’ve solved this dilemma by eating what those around them eat. But when we haul them to a pasture with forages […]

We’ve covered some of this information in other articles, but I thought it would be helpful to gather it in one spot for you so you can begin to plan your winter management.

We’ve probably all experienced that scary moment when the animals we care for become dangerous to us because they’re just excited to be fed. Here’s how to break that cycle and be safe.

Weaning may be the biggest stress that a calf endures in its life. When calves are abruptly separated from their mothers, they bawl, they don’t eat, and they pace their pens and fence lines, walking an average of 25 miles a day in one test. They also become more vulnerable to respiratory infections. How do […]

For the last 8-10 years I have been working on an efficient method to move new born calves and lambs from pasture to pasture. This is something that scares many people and keeps them from managing grass at the same time they are calving/lambing. Most people will have a birthing pasture that gets hammered because […]

If you’ve ever seen your animals eating soil, bones, feces or other unusual items, you probably took this as an indication that they may have a mineral imbalance. Yet many animal nutritionists will tell you, based on past studies, that ruminants are incapable of eating minerals in correct amounts to prevent or correct mineral deficiencies. […]

Because he usually works stock by himself, John Marble has modified his handling facilities to make it easy and safe for a single man/woman. Check out his tips and then share yours with the On Pasture Community.

If you want to develop your stockmanship skills, you’re in the right place. Thanks to the talents and contributions of Whit Hibbard, there’s a whole library at your fingertips. Today, we’re adding more with some summaries of his instructions, along with videos illustrating his points. (Some of these were taken on horseback, so you’ll notice […]

This piece comes to us from Whit Hibbard and Dawn Hnatow. In their first piece in this pen-working series, they described how to move cattle into a corral, how to empty pens from the front and the back, and how to get cattle out of a corner. Now, we move on to what to do […]

Animal handling can go a lot more smoothly with the proper facilities. Here’s how On Pasture author John Marble made that happen at his place.

It’s important that we talk about corral work for the simple reason that that’s where we spend a lot of time with our livestock, and it’s often a very stressful time for both animals and humans. Also, it’s unfortunately a great place to hurt performance and to teach our cattle that being in a herd […]

Back in March of 2015, On Pasture published an article about Richard Turere, a 11-year-old Masai boy from Kenya, who invented a way to keep lions from nearby Nairobi National Park from attacking his village’s cattle. Using an old battery, a broken flashlight, an signal light switch from a motorcycle and a solar panel, he […]

Thanks to Dawn Hnatow for co-authoring this article! A few weeks ago we discussed fenceline weaning as one low-stress way to wean calves. The next question folks ask is, “What should we do with our calves post-weaning?” Conventionally, stockmen will look after their calves’ nutritional needs and monitor their health, but otherwise leave them alone. […]

A lot of producers look forward to weaning with nothing but dread because it’s so often a bad experience for them, their cows, and sometimes their facilities. Many producers can tell stories about their corrals being torn down by the cows post-weaning, and not being able to sleep for three or four nights after weaning […]

Thanks to Dawn Hnatow for co-authoring this piece! A lot of ranchers have trouble gathering their cattle; that is, it takes a lot of riders multiple days and they still end up short. If done properly, however, one or two people can gather even large pastures in one day and miss none. Conventional gathering In […]