The Importance of Monitoring Livestock Water Quality

By: Deke Alkire

Rains in early 2008 have resulted in green pastures and full ponds for many cattle producers. This could ease your worries about water supplies for the summer, but will you have enough good quality water to get through the year? Early summer is the time to have your livestock water sources tested to be sure.

Water is the most important nutrient for livestock. Water is needed for all metabolic processes essential for life, growth and reproduction. The quantity of water that animals consume is affected by many factors including growth, pregnancy, lactation, activity, diet composition, feed intake and environmental temperature. The quality of water offered can also affect consumption and performance.

Many producers rely on wells and surface waters such as ponds and streams to provide water for livestock, but these sources can be contaminated by many pollutants within the watershed. Nitrates, bacteria, organic material and suspended solids are common sources of pollution. Additional factors that affect water quality and consumption are salinity, sulfates and mineral concentrations. If cattle are allowed to stand in water sources, fecal and urine contamination will decrease water quality and can spread diseases. In addition, allowing cattle unlimited access to ponds will usually result in suspension of sediments that can decrease water quality and consumption.

To read more, please visit the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation Web site.

Ag Forum Speaker Raises Prospect of Corn Rationing for Livestock

Courtesy of Texas and Southwestern Cattleraisers Association.

Record corn prices are creating major concerns for the livestock feeding industry, and if the run-up continues, corn rationing for animals may be an option, according to one expert at the 2008 Texas Ag Forum in Austin this week.

Cattle feedlot operators are becoming less tolerant of record corn prices, and some feedlots are on the brink of putting themselves up for sale or going out of business, the speaker said.

Gregg Doud, chief economist with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, explained in economic terms this is the result of an "inelastic demand function" where there's no replacement for a good or commodity. For the livestock industry, that commodity is corn.

“The producer picks up the tab," he said. "The feedlot folks right now – their red ink will flow at some point into the laps of the cow-calf producers."

Corn futures continue a big rally on the Chicago Board of Trade at more than $6.50 a bushel, heightened by excessive rainfall in the U.S. Corn Belt. By comparison, corn was trading at just over $4 a bushel a year ago.

There's even concern there could be rationing of corn supplies for livestock if prices continue to escalate, Doud said.

"Can you imagine what will happen to the livestock industry?” he said, noting it would be the deathblow.

To read more, please visit the Texas and Southwestern Cattleraisers Association Web site.