Debbie Furber

Managing sandy soil and brush have been part and parcel of Rob and Charlene Graham’s beef operation located in the Holland area near Spruce Woods Provincial Park in south-central Manitoba, since they started raising cattle in 1979. Today they run 275 cows, mainly Hereford-Charolais crosses with Angus added in recent years. They have been rotational […] Read more

Soderglen Ranches has added yet another element of quality assurance to its Five Star program that guides the breeding, development and sale of its purebred and crossbred bulls. The first bulls from Canada’s first Express Verified Plus herd were being prepared for the annual Soderglen Select Bull Sale at the ranch northwest of Airdrie, Alta., […] Read more

University of Manitoba agribusiness and agricultural economics masters student Tanis Sirski is currently wrapping up the economic risk and return analysis of the birth-to-weaning phase of the time-of-calving study reported in our story “A Tale of Two Calving Systems on the Canadian Prairies” on page 10. She reported her findings at the recent Manitoba Grazing […] Read more

Dr. Patsy Houghton sees heifers as a mixed blessing. In fact, she has thought of little else but heifers 365 days of the year for the past 20 years. Houghton is the owner and general manager of Heartland Cattle Company (HCC), the first professional heifer development centre in the U.S., which she and two former […] Read more

Milking one beef cow can be a trying chore, let alone milking 106 of them— twice! That’s what researchers at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine (WCVM) in Saskatoon were up against during a study to gauge the prevalence of mastitis in a beef cow herd in Western Canada and determine the effect of a […] Read more

The Agri-Trend Group of Companies is in the process of launching a new program for livestock producers under the umbrella of its Agri-Trend Agrology network. Founded in 1997 by Alberta native Rob Saik, Agri-Trend has evolved to encompass five companies: Agri-Trend Agrology, Agri-Trend Aggregation, Agri-Trend Marketing, Agri-Trend Data Corp. and Agri-Trend GEO Solutions. Headquartered at […] Read more

Helen Finucane made a life-altering decision to take over management of the family farm after her father’s passing late in 2003. John Brown Farms — a mixed grain and beef operation near Carlyle, Sask., — now bears his name. Her decision to carry on with the farm settled by her grandparents in 1925 wasn’t made […] Read more

Euthanizing animals when they are too ill or injured to make a timely recovery is one part of livestock management everyone faces, yet no one discusses. The heart of the matter is what researchers have described as the “killing and caring paradox,” says Jennifer Woods of J. Woods Livestock Services. “The job of a livestock […] Read more

Les Peterson considers himself fortunate to have been able to make farming his career and to now be bringing a fourth generation into Prospect Hill Shorthorns near Meeting Creek, Alta. His grandfather settled on the home quarter purchased from the railway in 1910 and his dad was born there in 1913. The family ran a […] Read more

* ern and Vivienne Pancoast have never shied away from striking out in new directions. Their openness to trying new ideas and technology has seen their first-generation farm, * &* Farms, near Redcliff, Alta. grow from one quarter and a few cows back in the 1970s into a mixed grain and beef operation with 300 […] Read more