Episode Description
Mary-Jane leads a dedicated team at MBFI to advance Manitoba’s beef & forage industry through engaging stakeholders, evaluating on-farm innovation, and extension for sustainability of farmers, the public, and the environment. She deeply values the opportunity to collaborate with producers, researchers, education providers, extension specialists, conservation groups, and all stakeholders in field-testing management practices and growing understanding of improved production in Manitoba. Mary-Jane holds a PhD from Purdue University in soil microbial ecology in agricultural systems, is a Professional Agrologist, and Certified Crop Advisor. Her experience in ecology and field agronomy gives her a unique perspective on the challenges facing agriculture today.
To start off today, Mary-Jane shares some of the things she considers when planning winter feed for MBFI’s cattle herd. We then discuss some of the alternate winter feeding ideas they have used at MBFI to reduce winter feeding costs and how this might vary year to year based on the growing season. Knowing how high winter feed costs can be, we chat about ways to reduce feed waste, and which strategies have yielded the most and least “waste.”
Mary-Jane also shares information on feed testing. Beef Cattle Research Council has an excellent resource page on feed testing practices, you can find the link below.
We also discuss the 2024 silage variety trial and what the preliminary outcomes of this research, as well as what is next to come for this in the 2025 growing season.
