Summary of the History of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway

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River of Broken Promises : A Report on State Management of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Under the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968

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Processed Corn Silage Effects on Digestibility and Production of Growing Beef Replacement Heifers

Forage is generally the principle feedstuff in feedlot diets for growing cattle and, as such, its nutritive value will determine weight gain, feed intake and feed efficiency. In feedlot diets for growing cattle, corn silage can constitute up to 60% of the diet (DMB)

Nutrient Requirements of Beef Cattle

Feed cost has been estimated to account for approxi¬mately 70% of the expenses associated with a beef cattle operation. The consequences of under- or overfeeding beef cows can be substantial. Underfeeding cows can result in thin body condition, poor reproductive performance, and poor milk production. On the other hand, overfeeding can be unnecessarily expensive, increase calving difficulty, reduce milk production, and potentially have a negative impact on the environment. To effectively balance diets, it is essential to know the nutrient requirements of the animal. Demand for nutrients can vary by numerous factors. However, the requirements defined in this publication will only address variability associated with animal size, stage of production, and milk production. When applying these requirements to cows in excessively cold or hot climates, adjustments will be neces¬sary to achieve predicted animal performance. Throughout this publication, all nutrient requirements are expressed as either % or parts per million (ppm) of the diet dry matter (DM). Parts per million may also be expressed as milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg). With the exception of water, nutrients are supplied to the animal only from the DM portion of the diet. As such, it is essential to convert the amount of each ingredient from an as-fed basis (AF) to a DM basis. A worksheet has been included at the end of this publication to facilitate that conversion

Being a Good Teaming Partner

Today’s project development process requires firms to regularly team together, necessitating development of strategies that result in maximum collaboration and coordination. As a traditional prime firm (American Structurepoint, Inc.) and a traditional sub firm (Kaskaskia Engineering Group, LLC), we will share best practices that we’ve learned from working with each other and a variety of other firms across the Midwest. We will elaborate on communication and documentation, project schedule and roles, joint QA/QC procedures, maximum responsive-ness, and trustworthy relationships

Bull Management and Nutrition

Proper management and nutrition of bulls is essential to ensure cow/calf producers maximize reproductive efficiency and genetic improvement of the calf crop. In addition, the herd bull influences overall herd fertility more than any other single animal, and loss of fertility by a bull can cause substantial loss to a potential calf crop. Each cow produces one calf per year; however, bulls should contribute to the calf crop by 25 to 60 times via siring 25 to 60 calves. Additionally, bulls influence their daughters’ production in the cow herd. Therefore, bull selection can be the most powerful method of genetic improvement in the herd, but bulls with low fertility, structural problems and low libido reduce the percent calf crop weaned

Auto-Surprise: An Automated Recommender-System (AutoRecSys) Library with Tree of Parzens Estimator (TPE) Optimization

We introduce Auto-Surprise, an Automated Recommender System library. Auto-Surprise is an extension of the Surprise recommender system library and eases the algorithm selection and configuration process. Compared to out-of-the-box Surprise library, Auto-Surprise performs better when evaluated with MovieLens, Book Crossing and Jester Datasets. It may also result in the selection of an algorithm with significantly lower runtime. Compared to Surprise's grid search, Auto-Surprise performs equally well or slightly better in terms of RMSE, and is notably faster in finding the optimum hyperparameters.Comment: To be presented at RecSys '20 Fourteenth ACM Conference on Recommender Systems, September 21-26, 2020, Virtual Even

Bull Management and Nutrition

Proper management and nutrition of bulls is essential to ensure cow/calf producers maximize reproductive efficiency and genetic improvement of the calf crop. In addition, the herd bull influences overall herd fertility more than any other single animal, and loss of fertility by a bull can cause substantial loss to a potential calf crop. Each cow produces one calf per year; however, bulls should contribute to the calf crop by 25 to 60 times via siring 25 to 60 calves. Additionally, bulls influence their daughters’ production in the cow herd. Therefore, bull selection can be the most powerful method of genetic improvement in the herd, but bulls with low fertility, structural problems and low libido reduce the percent calf crop weaned

MODELING ANIMAL AND FORAGE RESPONSE TO FERTILIZATION OF ANNUAL RANGELANDS

The response functions for forage, animal gain, and stocking rate were estimated from data obtained in a three-year fertilization experiment on California annual range. Degree-days; the interactions between degree-days and nitrogen, between degree-days and phosphorus-sulphur, and between nitrogen and phosphorus-sulphur; and the lagged forage variable were significant in explaining the variations in forage growth, animal gain, and stocking rate. The impact of PS was more important in interaction with DD or N than by itself. The correct impact of moisture was not found due to misspecification of the variable in the model. The models for the first year and the three years combined were well behaved; however, the models for the last two years combined neither explained adequately nor behaved well.Livestock Production/Industries,

Heavy Winter Patch Grazing as an Alternative to Prescribed Burning on the Northern Great Plains

Among management systems intended to increase heterogeneity on the landscape, patch burn grazing (PBG) is by far the most prominent and researched method. Though prescribed burning is seen as a healthy disturbance in grassland ecosystems, many landowners in the Northern Great Plains have an aversion to fire. This is due to safety and liability concerns as well as concerns over forage losses and limitations of labor, equipment, and insurance to successfully carry out prescribed burns. Therefore, there is a critical need to evaluate alternative, non-fire management strategies that will encourage rangeland heterogeneity. A study was conducted in 2017-2018 at the Cottonwood Field Station in southwest South Dakota to test the effectiveness of heavy winter patch grazing to simulate fire. The objectives of this study were to determine the extent to which WPG can serve as an alternative management strategy to patch burn grazing to 1) increase vegetation structural heterogeneity and 2) alter livestock grazing behavior to maintain structural heterogeneity through time