The movement of faecal pathogens from land to surface and ground-water are of great interest because of the public and livestock health implications. Knowledge of canopy structure and how it might be managed to help mitigate nutrient and pathogen movement in pasture is needed to create management practices that balance livestock production with environmental benefits. An experiment was conducte...

The occurrence and persistence of OC residues in both animal fat and in soil is reviewed. These chemicals have caused problems in production of pasture and grain for livestock. Management strategies to give short term guidelines to graziers are described. Attempts to increase the rate of breakdown in the soil under Australian conditions by varying frequency of cultivation, by addition of lime o...

This study was conducted to investigate the infl uence of pasture intake on meat quality, lipid oxidation, and fatty acid composition of geese. One hundred twenty Dongbei White male geese (a local breed; BW = 878 ± 13 g; 28 d old) were randomly and equally divided into 2 treatments with 6 pens of 10 geese per treatment. The 2 treatments consisted of birds fed ad libitum a corn-based feed. One-h...

The aim of this modelling study was to investigate the effect of large herd size (and land areas) on walking distances and milking interval (MI), and their impact on milk yield and economic penalties when 50% of the total diets were provided from home grown feed either as pasture or grazeable complementary forage rotation (CFR) in an automatic milking system (AMS). Twelve scenarios consisting o...

A number of factors influence dairy cow preference to be indoors or at pasture. The study reported here investigated whether herbage mass and distance affects preference and if continuously housed cows exhibited behavioral and production differences compared to cows that had free access to pasture. Dairy cows (n = 16) were offered a free choice of being in cubicle housing (1.5 cubicles/cow) or ...

The lower montane zone of northwestern Ecuador, like many parts of the tropics, is undergoing rapid conversion from native forest vegetation to crop and pastureland. The current landscape is a mosaic of agricultural land, forest fragments and secondgrowth vegetation in various stages of development. While there is abundant research documenting the e€ects of land-use change in the lowland tropic...

Recent publications have shown that citizens in developing nations are gaining interest in farm animal welfare. The aims of this study were to assess the opinion of Chilean citizens about surgical castration without anaesthesia and lack of access to pasture in beef cattle production, to investigate how involvement in livestock production influences opinions, and to evaluate if different types o...

Optical remote sensing tools are being used in a number of agricultural applications by recording an object's transmission of electromagnetic energy from reflecting and radiating surfaces. This unique spectral information is used to characterize the features of green vegetation. With the development of proximal sensing tools, vegetation or crop health can be determined and monitored in real-tim...

Stocking density is one example of management that may impact welfare and reproductive efficiency of beef females in Oregon cows-calf systems. In spring-calving herds, replacement heifers are weaned late in the fall and exposed to their first breeding season the following spring/summer. Therefore, these heifers are often developed in drylot systems during the winter/early spring to facilitate m...

A survey of storm runoff fecal coliform bacteria (FCB) from working farm and ranch pastures is presented in conjunction with a survey of FCB in manure management systems (MMS). The cross-sectional survey of pasture runoff was conducted on 34 pastures on five different dairies over 2 yr under varying conditions of precipitation, slope, manure management, and use of conservation practices such as...