Entrances to livestock barns can get quite messy. Depending on how often and how many animals are utilizing it, plus any heavy equipment accessing the entryway, the area can become dangerous and dirty. As with other heavy use areas, proper planning, construction and maintenance can go a long way in ...

Ben and Sharon Peckman are experienced farmers, successfully operating their Franklin County, PA, dairy farm. Sharon manages the herd of 160 milking cows and 130 replacement heifers in a free-stall system. The Peckmans grow crops on about 1,000 acres for dairy rations and cash crops. Over the years,...

It’s a fact: Consumers are several generations removed from the farm and don’t understand agricultural production. While farmers have worked hard to garner consumer trust, there’s still a gap between what happens on the farm and what consumers believe. Despite education campaigns and increased farm ...

The purpose of farming organically is to protect natural resources to produce an agricultural product. Organic growing requires farmers to work with the natural environment to promote a healthy biome – one where the balance of beneficial elements outweighs the presence of any detrimental ones and ke...

While most farmers seek to keep animals away from their crops, Nathan and Sarah Anderson work at ways to integrate wildlife into natural habitats on Bobolink Prairie Farms, their Aurelia, Iowa, farm, to increase overall profitability. Practical Farmers of Iowa offered “Using Conservation to Improve ...

Confusing and misleading claims on conventional poultry products and overall industry “greenwashing” has left consumers perplexed. An emergence of pastured egg brands such as Vital Farms and Handsome Brook Farms, which rely on regional networks of farmers to raise laying hens and produce eggs to the...

Just a stone’s throw from where men lay down their rifles at the end of the War Between the States, two former New Yorkers put down roots in 1981 and founded a Black Angus farm. A native of the Catskills region, Dick Lund and his wife and business partner, Mary, settled in historic Appomattox County...

If you want to finish your beef cattle on grass, Jamie Hostetler of Rolling Meadows Farm in Bellevue, Iowa, offered some expert insights during “The Art of Grass Finishing Cattle,” a recent shared learning call hosted by Practical Farmers of Iowa. Hostetler profits $500 per acre from selling his bee...

GALAX, VA – “I want my heifer calves to be my premium product and my steers to be my commodity product,” said Gale Rippey. That’s not the normal pattern you find in commercial cattle, but Gale Rippey is not your normal commercial cattleman. Rippey operates a commercial Balancer operation with a stro...