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Tree stand accidents can happen to deer hunters regardless of skill level or experience and result in serious injury or even death. Unfortunately, in nearly every case, these incidents were preventable. To help prevent injuries, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, in partnership with Tree Stand Safety Awareness, is encouraging hunters to practice the ABC’s of Tree Stand Safety:
“Hunters should take tree stand safety seriously, every time you hunt from, hang, or move a tree stand. By performing these three simple steps, tree stand users can virtually eliminate their risk of falling to the ground as the majority of falls occur outside the stand,” said Megan Wisecup, hunter education administrator for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Nationally, the estimated number of falls from tree stands requiring emergency room visits decreased by 28 percent in 2017. In Iowa last year, there were four tree stand incidents and all resulted in injury. “That’s a significant, positive move on the tree stand injury prevention front but we still have room for improvement,” Wisecup said.
An estimated 60,000 hunters will be heading to the timber in the next few weeks as Iowa’s archery deer season gets underway today (Oct. 1st). Forest wildlife research biologist Jim Coffey with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources said hunters who spend time on preseason scouting should improve their chance for success later this fall. “Deer are habitual animals – their traditional trails now will be traditional trails later this fall and with all the rain over much of the state hunters have the opportunity to see the deer trails in the mud,” he said. “Even though food is plentiful now, hunters should still pattern the food sources and bedding areas.”
One food source deer will likely key on is acorns from white oak trees and Coffey said the white oaks in southern Iowa had an excellent crop this year. “Once you identify hunting areas, take advantage of the leaves being on the trees, knowing that once the leaves fall it will look a lot different to both hunters and the deer. It’s that time in the stand observing nature, seeing what makes the squirrels start barking or what it means when blue jays are calling that improves your skills as a hunter,” Coffey said. “Check your shooting lanes from both the ground and from the tree stand because it will look a lot different depending your angle.”
Coffey also advised hunters to inspect their tree stand and safety harness before heading out. “Make sure to check the straps and tighten the bolts on the tree stand and try on the safety harness to make sure it still fits. If it’s worn out or no longer fits, get it replaced. No one wants their hunt to end because they fell out of a tree stand,” he said. Part of preseason scouting includes preparing for a successful harvest. If planning to hunt in early October, or anytime the temperature is warm, hunters should bring large chunks of ice to put in the deer cavity to cool the meat. Freezing gallon milk jugs with water is a method often used by hunters. Then, get it to the locker as soon as possible.
Bow hunters harvested an estimated 23,000 deer in 2017. Iowa’s archery deer season is Oct. 1 to Nov. 30 and Dec. 17 to Jan. 10, 2019. Hunters who harvest a deer are required by law to report it by midnight of the day after the deer is recovered. Harvest may be reported online at www.iowadnr.gov, by phone at the toll-free number printed on the harvest report tag or through a license vendor during their regular business hours.
(Radio Iowa) — Plant researchers at Iowa State University are working together with counterparts at the University of Florida, Wisconsin and Washington State University to improve the breeding of a summer favorite. I-S-U agronomy professor Thomas Lubberstedt has worked on improving field corn varieties and says sweet corn research has some new variables. “You’re very much focused on eating quality traits besides the general yield and resistance and stress tolerance traits — so it’s adding to the complexity of finding the best varieties,” Lubberstedt explains.
Roswell Garst developed the first hybrid field corn in Iowa back in the 1930’s and Lubberstedt says there have been years of developments and thousands of dollars spent on improving field corn. Sweet corn has not gotten as much attention in part because its production is small compared to the millions of bushels of field corn grown each year. “Field corn has a much bigger market because it has a lot of acreage, which means it’s (sweet corn) not that big of a business, which means the breeding programs involved in sweet corn breeding are usually smaller — the budget is smaller than field corn — that makes it a little more difficult to deal with more traits,” according to Lubberstedt.
He says finding the right tasting sweet corn varieties is still done in an old-fashioned way. “Currently that still has to be done by persons ultimately who do bite tests or who really taste it. That is part of this project to find methods that can quantify taste ultimately, and at least pre-qualify the most promising candidates,” Lubberstedt says.
Lubberstedt’s research is trying to use technology from field corn that more quickly produces inbred lines of corn that create the hybrid varieties. It is hoped they can incorporate the good tasting qualities needed for sweet corn into those quick breeding methods. “There are groups in the project focusing on trying to replace taste panels by biochemical methods that can be applied instead and help to predict which of those plants have likely the best tastes that correlates what has been found in test panels,” Lubberstedt says.
Those chemical methods could then be used to incorporate the taste into the faster breeding process. The researchers are sharing a four-year seven-point-three million dollar grant from the U-S Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture Specialty Crop Research Initiative.
The smelly reality is that cows will always pass gas. But if farmers had more access to seaweed, cow flatulence might just stink a little less for the planet. That’s the thesis of a New England-based aquaculture company which is launching a drive to become the worldwide leader in an emerging effort to thwart climate change by feeding seaweed to cows.
The concept of reducing livestock emissions by using seaweed as feed is the subject of ongoing scientific research, and early results are promising. University of California researchers have found that cows that eat seaweed appear to emit less methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, when they belch and pass gas.
But one of the big challenges to implementing the seaweed solution is getting enough of the stuff to farmers, and the kind of seaweed that has shown results in cows isn’t commercially farmed.
Enter Australis Aquaculture of Greenfield, Massachusetts, which is in the midst of research at facilities in Vietnam and Portugal that is part of its push to become the first farm to produce the seaweed at commercial scale. The company calls the effort “Greener Grazing” and it expects to be operating at commercial scale in two years, said Josh Goldman, the company’s chief executive officer.
“If you could feed all the cows this seaweed, it would be the equivalent of taking all these cars off the road,” Goldman said. “Greener Grazing’s mission is to cultivate this, and accelerate scaling of this kind of seaweed.” The type of algae in question is a red seaweed called Asparagopsis, and it grows wild in many parts of the world.
Researchers from the University of California, Davis, found earlier this year that methane emissions were reduced by 24 to 58 percent in a dozen cows that ate one variety of the seaweed, depending on dose. The seaweed constituted only a small percentage of the cows’ food, but researchers found that the dent it could make in emissions would be significant if it were available to farmers. The methane from cow’s burps makes up 25 percent of methane emissions in the U.S., according to the university. The seaweed interrupts the bacterial process of producing methane in their guts, Goldman said.
Challenges remain, said Ermias Kebreab, a professor of animal science at UC Davis. The seaweed needs more tests to determine if it would impact meat and milk quality from the animals. The challenge of producing enough of the seaweed is staggering, leading Goldman to call it an “aquatic moonshot.” He estimated that the amount of seaweed needed to reach every cattle operation would be greater than the amount presently farmed in the world. “We need to have a consistent product. We need to find a way to grow it in a more consistent way,” Kebreab said.
That’s exactly what Australis Aquaculture is working on. The company has collected different strains of Asparagopsis seaweed to establish a seed bank of seaweeds that can grow in different climates, Goldman said. The next step will be to reproduce the seaweed on the company’s farms, Goldman said. Creating the seed bank will make it possible for farmers to grow the seaweed elsewhere, he said.
The effort has attracted the attention of the World Bank, said its senior aquaculture specialist Randall Brummett. He said scaling up farming of the seaweed in the developing world could make livestock operations more climate friendly and boost the economies of poorer nations.
Skeptics remain. The seaweed has yet to be proven palatable to cows, and the milk that they would yield hasn’t proven to be safe for human consumption, said Frank Mitloehner, a professor and air quality extension specialist in the animal science department at UC Davis. “When you look at it a little deeper, some serious concerns have to be addressed before it can be considered a serious mitigation tool,” he said.
There’s also the question of whether it will find acceptance with farmers. Jenni Tilton-Flood, a dairy farmer at Flood Brothers Farm in Clinton, Maine, said she’d be willing to try it, but cost and availability are also important. “As long as the nutrition would be valuable to our animals. We don’t just throw food at our cows. We have nutritionists for our cows,” she said. “If it can be a food source for livestock, that’s great.”
(Radio Iowa) — Western Iowans are divided about the merits of industrial wind projects being planned in the region. Chicago-based Invenergy wants to build almost 170 wind turbines in Sac and Ida counties in the next year, enough to power 90-thousand homes. Mason Fleenor, an Ida County farmer, says he’s worried about the noise and the view of large turbines on the horizon. “If you know anything about cattle, when it’s real windy, cattle don’t work real good in the wind. They can’t hear what’s going on around them,” Fleenor says. “I’m the same way, I don’t like to listen to these things every day.”
Invenergy developed another wind farm in the county that’s been operating for about two years. The county estimates it gains more than two-million dollars each year from industrial wind energy after taxes. Ida County Board of Supervisors Chairman Rhett Leonard says revenue from the turbine property values benefits road infrastructure projects. “The good thing about this is, we were to the point where our roads and infrastructures were deteriorating so quickly and it’s such a high priced item to replace and maintain,” Leonard says, ” we were getting to the point where we weren’t sure what we were going to do with these.”
After the first phase of Invenergy’s initial project in the area was complete, about 500 residents petitioned the county to have wind turbines be at least one mile away from a house. The county established a code saying they have to be at least 15-hundred feet away. In a statement, Invenergy said it builds projects where landowners have voluntarily signed easements or leases.
In Adair County, an amended ordinance setting a 2,000-foot setback from non-participating residences and an 800-foot setback for participating property owners associated with two Mid-American Energy wind farms, has a third its third and final reading set to take place at the next meeting of the Adair County Board of Supervisors. When complete, a total of nearly 500 turbines will be spread throughout the County. Construction began last summer, but the erection of turbines has been met with public push-back over noise, visual pollution and bird safety concerns.
(Thanks to Katie Peikes, Iowa Public Radio)
John Whitaker has recently been selected to serve as the Executive Director of the Conservation Districts of Iowa. Mr. Whitaker most recently served as the State Executive Director for USDA Farm Service Agency in Iowa under President Obama.
“I am honored to be working with CDI which is dedicated to conserving our soil, natural resources and improving water quality in Iowa” said Whitaker.
In addition to serving in USDA, Mr. Whitaker served ten years as County Supervisor in Van Buren County and seven years in the Iowa House of Representative. During his legislative service, he served two years as an Assistant Minority Leader and three years as an Assistant Majority Leader. He also served three years as Vice President, and nine years as President of the Iowa Farmers Union.
“We are thrilled to have someone with John’s conservation ethic and public service background join CDI” stated Alex Schmidt, President of CDI.
John continues to be actively engaged in their family farm operations with his brother Bruce and son Gabe. They raise corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rye, and hay by no till methods. They feed hogs for Niman Ranch in a deep bedding system and have a cow/calf herd.
John and his wife Lorrie are both graduates of ISU along with their three children Gabe, Daniel and Becca. He is active in both the Hillsboro Baptist Church and First Baptist Church in Ames. John is also active in his local Masonic lodge, Order of the Eastern Star, Pheasants Forever, and serves as chair of Veterans in Agriculture (John is a non-veteran member).
The mission of CDI is to inform, educate and lead Iowans through our local soil and water conservation districts to promote conservation of our natural resources. CDI is the nonprofit umbrella organization representing the 100 local soil and water conservation commissions and the 500 locally elected commissioners who make up those local commissions.
Image credit: M.H. Shour, ISU Extension & Outreach
Red Oak, Iowa – Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Montgomery County office will host an Aquatic, Forest and Right-of-Way Continuing Instruction Course (CIC) for commercial pesticide applicators on Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2018. The program provided by the ISU Extension and Outreach Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP) can be seen at office locations across Iowa.
The local attendance site for the Oct. 17 CIC is the Montgomery County Extension office located at 400 Bridge Street Suite #2 in Red Oak. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. followed by sessions from 9 to 11:30 a.m. The registration fee is $35 on or before Oct. 10 and $45 after Oct. 10. To register or to obtain additional information about the CIC, contact Katie Hart at the ISU Extension and Outreach Montgomery County office at (712) 623-2592.
In Shelby County the local attendance site for the Oct. 17 CIC is 906 6th Street. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. followed by sessions from 9 to 11:30 a.m. The registration fee is $35 on or before Oct. 10 and $45 after Oct. 10. To register or to obtain additional information about the CIC, contact Shelby County Extension & Outreach at 712-755-3104.
The course will provide continuing instruction credits for commercial and public pesticide applicators certified in categories 2 (Forest Pest Control), 5 (Aquatic Pest Control), 6 (Right-of-Way Pest Control), and 10 (Research and Demonstration). Topics to be covered are: equipment calibration; phytotoxicity; pesticide drift reduction; principles of limited area application; aquatic invasive species update; control of tree of heaven and red cedar; white oak mortality; and Phragmites control. Additional information and registration forms for this and other courses offered through the PSEP Program can be accessed at www.extension.iastate.edu/PSEP.
Shelby County Extension & Outreach will host a Seed Treatment Continuing Instruction Course (CIC) for commercial pesticide applicators, Wednesday, October 10, 2018. The program will be shown through the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP).
The local attendance site is 906 6th St., Harlan. Registration begins at 8:30 a.m., and the course runs from 9 to 11 a.m. The registration fee is $35 on or before October 10. To register or to obtain additional information about the CIC, contact Shelby County Extension & Outreach by phoning 712-755-3104.
The course will provide continuing instruction credit for commercial pesticide applicators certified in categories 4 and 10. Topics to be covered include equipment calibration and safe application techniques; pests, pest management and pesticides; and issues concerning treated seed, including disposal of unused treated seed.
Certified Crop Advisor (CCA) Continuing Education Units (CEUs) will be offered. Interested participants should bring their CCA number to the program.
Additional information and registration forms for this and other courses offered by the PSEP team can be accessed at www.extension.iastate.edu/PSEP/.
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