(Radio Iowa) — An Iowa State University Extension dairy specialist says stress continues to be an issue for milk producers trying to deal with low prices. Larry Tranel is also a psychologist. “We’ve seen a lot of cycles in dairy over time — but we really haven’t seen one that had this big a tail on it where it lasted two, three, four years with the low prices,” Tranel says. “We actually take a look at the stress… even though the dairy prices have come back somewhat — we still find that the stress itself is going to have a pretty long tail on it as families try to recover from it.”

Doctor Tranel says the extended issues with low prices have taken a toll. “I’m seeing a level of stress that I probably haven’t seen in my 30-year career,” according to Tranel. “When we take a look at the magnitude of the stress — I would say it’s at a very a high level for the most part. Some have weathered the storm quite well — but there’s a lot of people that just really have a hard time.” He says dairy farmers are caught between a rock and hard place. “They can’t afford to get out for the assert values, he says, “but they really can’t afford to stay in either because of some cash flow issues that have lingered on for quite some time,” Tranel says.

He says the long-term nature of the dairy industry issues can take a toll. “When people have things we call acute stress — like you have a barn fire or a tragic accident or something just happens real quickly — you don’t have time to prepare for it,” according to Tranel. “But when you have this chronic stress — just day-in day-out for four or five years in a row dealing with that — that’s the kind of stress that eats at peoples nerve endings and gets them more irritable.”

Tranel says one of the techniques he recommends for people dealing with these situations is to write things down. He says it allows them to address the issues and move ahead. “As we do farm couple getaways where we bring in these farm couples to try to deal with communication issues, set goals on the farm, trying to transition themselves out of so much stress — the biggest thing they come back with is the fact that you made us write this down is what got us going to the next step. And if you wouldn’t have made us write this down — we’d be talking about this for the next 20 years,” Tranel says.

Tranel made his comments at the recent Iowa Farm Bureau annual meeting.

(Ken Anderson of the Brownfield Network contributed to this story.)

CLEGHORN—The DNR is investigating a manure discharge from a cattle operation in northern Cherokee County after receiving multiple complaints Friday.

DNR staff confirmed that manure runoff from the Tentinger Feedlot is reaching a tributary of Bear Creek about 4 miles northeast of Cleghorn. DNR staff will work with the owner to stop the discharge.

The investigation is ongoing, but DNR staff think runoff from recently land-applied manure is responsible. They did not see any fish in the stream—either dead or alive.

The DNR will consider appropriate enforcement action.

(Radio Iowa) — It’s feared this year’s Mississippi River flooding in the Quad Cities is damaging the population of freshwater mussels. About a half-million mussels were relocated to existing upstream mussel beds before construction started on the new Interstate 74 bridge between Bettendorf and Moline. Now, biologist Kraig McPeek at the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service says as the water rose, the current got faster and stronger.  “Mussels tend to congregate and create mussel beds in areas that are protected from some of the more significant flows,” McPeek says. “In those areas, your sheer force, that area right between where the water meets the mussel or meets the river bed, that sheer force is low enough that they can hold themselves in position but some absolutely get displaced.”

The relocation plan includes monitoring the mussels for ten years. The first “checkup” more than a year ago showed no major problems with their new home. Besides unpredictable weather and stream flows, McPeek says plans change with any construction project as big as the new I-74 bridge. “I know there are changes ongoing and we’re in communication with the DOTs and any of those changes,” McPeek says, “and certainly we would consider impacts to freshwater mussels and make sure that the laws are followed and that any best management practices or conservation plans that could be implemented would be.”

McPeek says the continued flooding made it too dangerous to check up on the mussels this year, but divers should be able to conduct more monitoring next spring and into the summer.

(Radio Iowa) — Industry officials are praising Governor Kim Reynolds for signing an executive order that all new diesel vehicles purchased for state fleets run on B-20 fuel, which is 20-percent biodiesel and 80-percent petroleum diesel. Iowa Soybean Association president Tim Bardole, of Rippey, says three new state snow plows will run on the blend.  Bardole says, “When different truck fleets and just the private consumer sees the snow plows when it’s zero out running B-20 and proves that it works and they can see it works, I’m hoping that definitely opens a lot larger market for the biodiesel industry in the state.”

Bardole says Iowa’s 11 biodiesel plants produced 365-million gallons of the fuel last year. “Iowa’s by far the largest biodiesel producer in the nation so it’s very important to our rural economy to have a strong biodiesel industry,” he says.  The association says biodiesel supports about 4,700 Iowa jobs.

(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Department of Natural Resources says a tissue sample from a road killed deer collected on the south side of Sioux City shows a high likelihood that the deer was infected with Chronic Wasting Disease or C-W-D. The D-N-R’s Tyler Harms says that first test is enough for them to take additional action. “That test still needs to be confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Lab in Ames. But we move forward as if that deer has tested positive,” Harms explains.

He says the D-N-R has established a priority zone for tissue collection in Woodbury County extending 10 miles around where the positive sample was collected and is working to have a map available online  “We are increasing our C-W-D monitoring efforts in Woodbury in response to this new positive,” Harms says. “We are looking for assistance from hunters in Woodbury County in helping us out with that monitoring effort by providing tissues samples from any deer that they harvest in any of the deer seasons until the end of the deer season in early January.”

The first shotgun deer season opens Saturday. Harms says it is easy for hunters to provide a tissue sample. “They’re encouraged to contact their local (DNR) biologist in the area and they can make arrangements for getting those tissue samples from those hunters,” he says. Harms says Woodbury is among the counties that had already been getting some extra attention. “We’ve been doing increase surveillance in counties along the Missouri River border because there have been animals that have tested positive in Nebraska,” Harms says. “We have not had any other animals test positive — at least wild animals test positive — in any counties in western Iowa.”

Woodbury County becomes the fifth of 99 counties in Iowa where a wild deer has tested positive for the always fatal disease. Most of the other counties are in eastern Iowa and the common link between all of them is they border states where deer have tested positive for C-W-D. Harms says it is possible the Woodbury County deer that tested positive may’ve taken a swim across the Missouri River from Nebraska. “It’s really hard to know for sure. That’s certainly a possibility,” according to Harms. “It’s kind of a common misconception that deer can’t cross these really large water bodies. They most certainly can — deer can swim and at times are very good at it — and so that’s certainly a possibility. However, there are lots of other ways this disease can be spread on the landscape.”

The Iowa D-N-R says it has already confirmed positive C-W-D in samples from deer in Allamakee and Wayne counties in the 2019 testing season. Chronic wasting disease. There are a few things hunters can do to stop or slow the spread of chronic wasting disease, including not leaving the deer carcass on the landscape and not using feed or salt-mineral to attract deer. Sioux City banned feeding deer within city limits in 2012.

w/Kate Olson.

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(Radio Iowa) — Many thousands of deer hunters will be combing Iowa’s fields and forests this weekend as the first of two shotgun seasons will open Saturday. Tyler Harms, a wildlife biometrician with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, expects it to be a busy weekend and he reminds hunters to wear their blaze orange, follow the regulations, and report their harvest. “We’ll have about 40,000 or so hunters in the field during both seasons,” Harms says. “These seasons are also when we see the highest amount of deer harvested in the state. About 60,000 deer will be harvested here in the next few weeks in December.”

Harms predicts the deer harvested this month won’t fluctuate too much from 2018’s numbers. “We’ll be at least steady or similar to last year, maybe a slight increase this year, just because we’re seeing a slight increasing trend in our deer population statewide, but we’re still well within our population goal,” Harms says. “I would anticipate a very similar to slightly higher harvest.”

Mother Nature has a lot to do with those numbers and Harms notes this weekend’s forecast is for drier, warmer weather. “If you remember from last year, the first weekend of December, we had some pretty nasty weather statewide. It was really wet and snowy and cold,” Harms says. “It made hunting very challenging and we saw a pretty big decline in the harvest during that season but then the harvest rebounded in the second shotgun season when the weather cooperated a little bit more.”

The first shotgun season runs December 7th through the 11th, with the second season running December 14th through the 22nd.

(Radio Iowa) — The Iowa Farm Bureau opened it annual meeting Tuesday, in Des Moines. I-F-B president Craig Hill, says farmers are looking forward to turning the page on 2019.  “We’ve had a difficult year. One, we’ve had to fight Mother Nature a bit to get our seeds planted. That was a difficult time — harvesting was a difficult time,” Hill says. “We’ve been challenged with uncertain markets, trade agreements. The lack of some progress on U-S-M-C-A and a number of other policy issues that we are all concerned about.”

Farmers are used to dealing with the weather conditions — but Hill says up and down trade talk added to the concerns. “You get your hopes up with an announcement, and then you find out it’s stashed away because it’s not actually real or it’s not happening. You can’t trust what you actually hear,” Hill says. He says there is always optimism the new year will be better.

“Folks are looking forward to turning the page on next year — they’re starting to make plans for that,” according to Hill. “It’s time to kind of celebrate our success, acknowledge our blessings and also look at those challenges and how we are going to address them going forward.” Hill says a resolution of trade issues, including U-S-M-C-A and China, would give farmers a boost heading into 2020. But he is concerned that the polarized political climate in Washington will halt any progress.

“I don’t know that anybody really thinks it will get much better any time soon. so, we want to get what we can done, manage our affairs the best we can… we hope Washington improves, but with impeachment and all the things around what’s going on in D-C, it’s going to be very difficult getting anything done in 2020,” Hill says. The Iowa Farm Bureau’s annual meeting runs through today (Wednesday).

AMES, Iowa – Beef cow-calf producers recognize the importance of staying informed on all aspects of their operation, and a new four-part webinar series from Iowa Beef Center will help them do just that. Iowa State University extension program specialist Beth Reynolds says the series is intended to provide timely topics for beef cow management and the opportunity to access the information when it’s convenient for them, even if that means they cannot attend a meeting in person. The first session of this series is set for Wednesday, December 11 at 6 PM, and focuses on winter feeding management.

Producers have two options to view the webinar- online at home, or at a local extension office viewing location. In Southwest Iowa, the Cass County Extension Office in Atlantic will be hosting a viewing location. Immediately following the webinar, area beef specialists will be at host sites to discuss local feed quality issues and ration needs specific to individual producers. Erika Lundy, ISU Extension Beef Field Specialist for Southwest Iowa, will be hosting the viewing location in Cass County and leading the follow up discussion.

“The weather pattern of 2019 has created several challenges for putting up hay, corn silage and other forage resources in ideal condition,” Reynolds said. “Producer data from our recent Iowa Beef Center Cow Systems Project demonstrated that approximately 40 percent of total production costs were devoted to stored feed costs, and since we can’t control the markets, focusing on controlling feed costs is really important to the profitability of the beef cow enterprise.” Producers can access the Cow Systems Project manual on the Iowa State Extension store at https://store.extension.iastate.edu/product/15561 for more information.

Speakers will share information on assessing feed quality and determining nutritional management strategies of beef cows as they enter the third trimester of gestation. Garland Dahlke, IBC associate scientist, will present “Winter Feed: Considering the Feed Quality Forecast” and Katy Lippolis, assistant professor of animal science at Iowa State, will talk on “Winter Nutritional Management for Beef Cows.”

There is no cost to attend an in-person location or to view the webinar at home, but you are encouraged to preregister for both options by either calling your preferred host location or completing the online registration form for viewing access information. If you plan to view the webinar online, please visit http://www.iowabeefcenter.org/news/WinterCowWebinars.html prior to the meeting and click the “online registration” link. You can enter your email address and a link to join the meeting will be emailed to you. Walk-ins for the in-person meeting are welcome. If you’re not able to attend either, but are still interested in the information, the plans are to record each webinar and provide links to those recordings when they’re available.

The full list of webinar dates and topics is as follows; all sessions will be held from 6 to 8 p.m.:

Dec. 11, 2019 Winter feeding management

Jan. 22, 2020, Preparing for calving season

Feb. 18, 2020, Market trends, tracking and improving profitability

March 10, 2020, Pasture renovation, forage management

For more information or to pre-register for the in-person viewing session in Cass County, call the Cass County Extension office at 712-243-1132 or email Lori Anderson at lander@iastate.edu. You can visit the webinar series program page at http://www.iowabeefcenter.org/WinterCowWebinarSeries.html for additional information and links to archived recordings after the meetings.