Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, eggs, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding and the raising of livestock.
Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for long-term production of milk, which is processed for eventual sale of a dairy product.
A feedlot or feed yard is a type of animal feeding operation (AFO) which is used in intensive animal farming for finishing livestock, notably beef cattle, but also swine, horses, sheep, turkeys, chickens or ducks, prior to slaughter. Large beef feedlots are called concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO) in the United States and intensive livestock operations (ILOs) or confined feeding operations (CFO) in Canada. They may contain thousands of animals in an array of pens.
Ylivieska is a town and municipality of Northern Ostrobothnia region, Finland. It has a population of 15,219, and it serves as the administrative centre for Kalajokilaakso and Pyhäjokilaakso, an area with about 90,000 inhabitants.
Fodder, a type of animal feed, is any agricultural foodstuff used specifically to feed domesticated livestock, such as cattle, rabbits, sheep, horses, chickens and pigs. "Fodder" refers particularly to food given to the animals, rather than that which they forage for themselves. Fodder is also called provender and includes hay, straw, silage, compressed and pelleted feeds, oils and mixed rations, and sprouted grains and legumes. Most animal feed is from plants, but some manufacturers add ingredients to processed feeds that are of animal origin.
Dairy cattle are cattle cows bred for the ability to produce large quantities of milk, from which dairy products are made. Dairy cows generally are of the species Bos taurus.
Different cattle feeding production systems have separate advantages and disadvantages. Most cattle in the US have a diet that is composed of at least some forage. In fact, most beef cattle are raised on pasture from birth in the spring until autumn. Then for pasture-fed animals, grass is the forage that composes all or at least the great majority of their diet. Cattle fattened in feedlots are fed small amounts of hay supplemented with grain, soy and other ingredients in order to increase the energy density of the diet. The debate is whether cattle should be raised on diets primarily composed of pasture (grass) or a concentrated diet of grain, soy, corn and other supplements. The issue is often complicated by the political interests and confusion between labels such as "free range", "organic", or "natural". Cattle raised on a primarily forage diet are termed grass-fed or pasture-raised; for example meat or milk may be called grass-fed beef or pasture-raised dairy. However, the term "pasture-raised" can lead to confusion with the term "free range", which does not describe exactly what the animals eat.
Stephen Moulton Babcock was an American agricultural chemist. He is best known for his Babcock test in determining dairy butterfat in milk processing, for cheese processing, and for the "single-grain experiment" that led to the development of nutritional science as a recognized discipline.
Baby corn is a cereal grain taken from corn (maize) harvested early while the stalks are still small and immature. It typically is eaten whole – cob included – in contrast to mature corn, whose cob is too tough for human consumption. It is eaten both raw and cooked. Baby corn is common in stir fry dishes.
Corn stover consists of the leaves, stalks, and cobs of maize (corn) plants left in a field after harvest. Such stover makes up about half of the yield of a corn crop and is similar to straw from other cereal grasses; in Britain it is sometimes called corn straw. Corn stover is a very common agricultural product in areas of large amounts of corn production. As well as the non-grain part of harvested corn, the stover can also contain other weeds and grasses. Field corn and sweet corn, two different types of maize, have relatively similar corn stover.
Beef cattle are cattle raised for meat production. The meat of mature or almost mature cattle is mostly known as beef. In beef production there are three main stages: cow-calf operations, backgrounding, and feedlot operations. The production cycle of the animals start at cow-calf operations; this operation is designed specifically to breed cows for their offspring. From here the calves are backgrounded for a feedlot. Animals grown specifically for the feedlot are known as feeder cattle, the goal of these animals is fattening. Animals not grown for a feedlot are typically female and are commonly known as replacement heifers. While the principal use of beef cattle is meat production, other uses include leather, and beef by-products used in candy, shampoo, cosmetics, insulin and inhalers.
Sorghum bicolor, commonly called sorghum and also known as great millet, durra, jowari, or milo, is a grass species cultivated for its grain, which is used for food for humans, animal feed, and ethanol production. Sorghum originated in Africa, and is now cultivated widely in tropical and subtropical regions. Sorghum is the world's fifth-most important cereal crop after rice, wheat, maize, and barley. S. bicolor is typically an annual, but some cultivars are perennial. It grows in clumps that may reach over 4 m high. The grain is small, ranging from 2 to 4 mm in diameter. Sweet sorghums are sorghum cultivars that are primarily grown for forage, syrup production, and ethanol; they are taller than those grown for grain.
The single-grain experiment was an experiment carried out at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from May 1907 to 1911. The experiment tested if cows could survive on a single type of grain. The experiment would lead to the development of modern nutritional science.
Vomitoxin, also known as deoxynivalenol (DON), is a type B trichothecene, an epoxy-sesquiterpenoid. This mycotoxin occurs predominantly in grains such as wheat, barley, oats, rye, and corn, and less often in rice, sorghum, and triticale. The occurrence of deoxynivalenol is associated primarily with Fusarium graminearum and F. culmorum, both of which are important plant pathogens which cause fusarium head blight in wheat and gibberella or fusarium ear blight in corn. A direct relationship between the incidence of fusarium head blight and contamination of wheat with deoxynivalenol has been established. The incidence of fusarium head blight is strongly associated with moisture at the time of flowering (anthesis), and the timing of rainfall, rather than the amount, is the most critical factor. However, increased amount of moisture towards harvest time has been associated with lower amount of vomitoxin in wheat grain due to leaching of toxins. Furthermore, deoxynivalenol contents are significantly affected by the susceptibility of cultivars towards Fusarium species, previous crop, tillage practices, and fungicide use. It occurs abundantly in grains in Norway due to heavy rainfall.
Animal feed is food given to domestic animals in the course of animal husbandry. There are two basic types: fodder and forage. Used alone, the word "feed" more often refers to fodder.
Happy Cow Creamery is a family-owned dairy farm in Pelzer, South Carolina that bottles and sells its own milk on site from the farm's closed herd of grass-fed Holstein cattle. The creamery's whole milk, buttermilk and chocolate milk is sold in the farm's on-site store and through grocery, convenience and country stores in Upstate region of South Carolina. The milk is not homogenized and is low-temperature pasteurized and inspected by the State of South Carolina.
The palm kernel is the edible seed of the oil palm fruit. The fruit yields two distinct oils: palm oil derived from the outer parts of the fruit, and palm kernel oil derived from the kernel.
Dairy farming is one of the largest agricultural sectors in Canada. Dairy has a significant presence in all of the provinces and is one of the top two agricultural commodities in seven out of ten provinces.
Karen Beauchemin is a federal scientist in Canada who is recognized internationally for her research in ruminant nutrition. She is developing nutritional knowledge and technologies that help improve the efficiency of producing meat and milk, while reducing the environmental impacts of livestock production.
