Do Movement Patterns of GPS-Tracked Cattle on Extensive Rangelands Suggest Independence among Individuals?

In behavioral studies, cattle within the same pasture are not considered as independent experimental units because of the potential confounding effects of the herd’s social interactions. However, evaluating cattle behavior on extensive rangelands is logistically challenging for researchers, and treating individual animals as independent experimental units may be beneficial for answering specific research questions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association patterns among global positioning system (GPS)-tracked cattle at six different study sites in the western United States. A Half-Weight Index (HWI) association value was calculated for each pair of GPS-tracked cows (i.e., dyad) to determine the proportion of time that cattle were within 75 m and 500 m of each other. Cattle at two study sites exhibited relatively low mean HWI-association values (i.e., less than 0.23 HWI); whereas, cattle at other study sites tended to have greater mean HWI associations (i.e., greater than 0.35 HWI). Distinguishing features between study sites with low and high association values were the management of cattle prior to the study, herd size, pasture size, and the number of watering points. However, at all ranches except one, at least 75% of all dyadic associations had HWI values of less than 0.5 at 500 m, indicating that most of the GPS-tracked cows were greater than 500 m from each other for over 50% of tracking period. While interactions among cattle in the same pasture are often inevitable, our data suggests that under some situations, movement patterns of a sub-set of individual GPS-tracked cows may have levels of independence that are sufficient for analysis as individual experimental units. Understanding the level of independence among GPS-tracked cattle may provide options for analysis of grazing behavior for individual cattle within the same pasture

Common Grasses of Nebraska: Rangeland Prairie Pasture (Including Grass-Like Plants)

Introduction 3 • Plant Groups 4 • Parts of a Grass Plant 5 • Inflorescence Characteristics 5 • Vegetative Characteristics 5 • Parts of a Grass-Like • Plant 5 • Fruit and Floral Characteristics 5 • Vegetative Characteristics 5 • Warm-Season • Perennial Grasses • Bermudagrass 14 • Blowoutgrass 15 • bluestems: • Big bluestem 16 • Little bluestem 18 • Sand bluestem 20 • Silver bluestem 21 • Yellow bluestem 22 • Buffalograss 24 • dropseeds: • Alkali sacaton 26 • Prairie dropseed 27 • Sand dropseed 29 • Tall dropseed 30 • Eastern gamagrass 32 • gramas: • Blue grama 33 • Hairy grama 35 • Sideoats grama 36 • Indiangrass 38 • Inland saltgrass 40 • Johnsongrass 41 • lovegrasses: • Purple lovegrass 43 • Sand lovegrass 44 • muhlys: • Marsh muhly 45 • Plains muhly 47 • Sandhill muhly 48 • Scratchgrass 49 • Phragmites 50 • Prairie cordgrass 52 • Prairie sandreed 54 • Purple threeawn 55 • Purpletop 56 • Sand paspalum 58 • Switchgrass 59 • Tumblegrass 61 • Windmillgrass 62 Warm-Season • Annual Grasses • Barnyardgrass 66 • Bearded sprangletop 67 • crabgrasses: • Hairy crabgrass 68 • Smooth crabgrass 69 • Fall panicum 70 • foxtails: • Green foxtail 72 • Hooked foxtail 73 • Yellow foxtail 74 • Goosegrass 76 • Poverty dropseed 77 • Purple sandgrass 78 • Sandbur 79 • Stinkgrass 81 • threeawns: • Forktip threeawn 82 • Prairie threeawn 83 • Witchgrass 84 Cool-Season • Perennial Grasses • bentgrasses: • Redtop bentgrass 88 • Spike bentgrass 89 • Winter bentgrass 90 • bluegrasses: • Bulbous bluegrass 91 • Canada bluegrass 92 • Kentucky bluegrass 94 • Mutton bluegrass 95 • Plains bluegrass 96 • Sandberg bluegrass 98 • Bluejoint reedgrass 99 • bromegrasses: • Meadow brome 101 • Smooth brome 102 • Creeping foxtail 103 • Fowl mannagrass 105 • Foxtail barley 106 • Green needlegrass 108 • Indian ricegrass 109 • Needleandthread 111 • Orchardgrass 112 • Perennial ryegrass 114 • Porcupinegrass 115 • Prairie junegrass 116 • Prairie wedgescale 117 • Quackgrass 119 • Reed canarygrass 120 • rosettegrasses: • Scribner rosettegrass 121 • Wilcox rosettegrass 123 • Squirreltail 124 • Tall fescue 125 • Timothy 127 • Weeping alkaligrass 129 • wheatgrasses: • Crested wheatgrass 130 • Intermediate wheatgrass 132 • Slender wheatgrass 133 • Tall wheatgrass 135 • Western wheatgrass 136 • wildryes: • Canada wildrye 138 • Russian wildrye 139 Cool-Season • Annual Grasses: • American sloughgrass 142 • Annual bluegrass 143 • Cheatgrass 144 • Japanese brome 145 • Little barley 146 • Northern wildrice 148 • Sixweeksgrass 149 • Grass-Like • Plants: • American bulrush 152 • Field horsetail 153 • Schweinitz flatsedge 154 • sedges: • Nebraska sedge 155 • Needleleaf sedge 156 • Sun sedge 157 • Threadleaf sedge 158 • Yellow nutsedge 160 • Glossary 161 • Ecological Sites 170 • Selected References 173 • Index 17

Spring Meadow Management Practices: What’s a Rancher to do?

• Subirrigated meadows are a valuable forage resource to ranching operations in the Nebraska Sandhills, being used for both hay production and livestock grazing. • The water table of these meadows is within one meter of the soil surface during the growing season. • In some years, wet conditions hinder meadow utilization, resulting in a buildup of standing dead and litter plant material which can lower forage production. • Investigate if burning and mowing are effective strategies to remove dead plant material from meadows • Determine if burning or mowing interact with grazing to influence end of season forage production Burning or mowing effectively removes dead plant material from meadows with no later loss in forage production. Burning and mowing do not interact with grazing to influence later forage production. Spring grazing acted independently to significantly lower end of season forage production. Conclusions • Ranchers can use burning or mowing to effectively remove dead plant material from subirrigated meadows in the Nebraska Sandhills with no later losses in forage production (Fig.1 & Fig.2). • On the other hand, spring grazing reduces end of season forage production (Fig.3). Therefore, caution should be used with spring grazing if a rancher’s goal is to maximize hay yields from meadow forage

Effects of Movement and Activity Behavior in a Pasture System Compared to Time

During the summer of 2016 seventeen cows were fitted with Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking collars to evaluate activity characteristics of cattle on rangelands. Data collected included daily distance traveled, average distance from water, daily time spent at water, daily area covered, and percent of day spent active (traveling or grazing). These variables were analyzed weekly to assess changes in behavior as time within pastures increased during three time periods of the growing season. Based on data collected from mid-May to mid-September, cattle showed little changes throughout the grazing season as to levels of activity through different periods of a 24-hour day. Daily patterns indicate that cattle are most active during mid-morning and evening hours. Periods of greatest inactivity occur during early morning hours and late afternoon prior to an evening grazing bout. Distance traveled showed a general downward trend as week within pasture progressed with the exception of the early grazed pasture. Average distance of cattle from water increased, and average time at water decreased at the end of the growing season. There were no statistical differences in activity levels or average area covered as time within a pasture increased. The greater distance traveled at the beginning of grazing on a pasture suggests that cattle are more selective in their grazing patterns and go to more grazing locations

Impact of Increasing Level of Milk Production on Cow-Calf Performance in Nebraska Sandhills

In a 2-yr study, data were collected on 118 crossbred cow-calf pairs from March and May-calving herds. On approximately 30, 60, 90, 120, and 210 d postpartum, individual cow 24-h bilk yield was estimated through weigh-suckle weigh techniques. Cow body weight (BW) and body condition score (BCS) were collected weekly through breeding. Calf BW was recorded at each milking. Individual cow milk area under the curve (AUC) values were calculated and data were analyzed using linear regression analysis. Results from this study illustrate that increasing total milk produced throughout the lactation period had minimal influence on the cow production parameters assessed in the Nebraska Sandhills forage environment. However, the lack of differences found in this study may be due to years of selecting for low milk production genetics and the cowherd may not represent the US average for milk production

Comparison of diets collected from esophageally fistulated cows to forage quality estimated from fecal analysis

Differences in forage quality (crude protein and energy) were analyzed between esophageally fistulated diets, analysis of fecal samples with Nutrition Balance Analyzer (NUTBAL) analysis, and analysis of handclipped forage samples. On upland range sites, hand- clipped samples provided forage quality estimates that were closer to esophageally fistulated diets than samples analyzed with the NUTBAL analysis. Aft er one year of data collection, it appears that there may be some inconstancies with the NUTBAL analysis for estimates on rangeland forage quality in the Nebraska Sandhills. More data is needed to verify these results; however, making management supplementations decisions solely on the NUTBAL analysis may not always be accurate on Sandhills rangeland

“some kind of thing it aint us but yet its in us”: David Mitchell, Russell Hoban, and metafiction after the millennium

This article appraises the debt that David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas owes to the novels of Russell Hoban, including, but not limited to, Riddley Walker. After clearly mapping a history of Hoban’s philosophical perspectives and Mitchell’s inter-textual genre-impersonation practice, the article assesses the degree to which Mitchell’s metatextual methods indicate a nostalgia for by-gone radical aesthetics rather than reaching for new modes of its own. The article not only proposes several new backdrops against which Mitchell’s novel can be read but also conducts the first in-depth appraisal of Mitchell’s formal linguistic replication of Riddley Walker

Three Year Summary: Comparison of Diets Collected from Esophageally Fistulated Cows to Forage Quality Estimated from Fecal Analysis

Inconsistency was found in forage quality (crude protein and energy) when esophageally fistulated diets were compared to Nutrition Balance Analyzer (NUTBAL) analysis of fecal samples. On upland range sites, hand-clipping of samples (not a recommended practice to measure forage quality), was closer to fistulated diets than NUTBAL analysis. If cattle managers are solely utilizing NUTBAL for estimates of forage value, incorrect supplemental energy and protein decisions will likely be made resulting in the purchase of unnecessary supplements, thereby reducing the profitability of the operation

Neutron Resonance Spectroscopy of 117Sn from1 eV to 1.5 keV

Parity violation has been studied recently for neutron resonances in 117Sn. The neutron resonance spectroscopy is essential for the analysis of the parity violation data. We have measured neutron resonances in 117Sn for neutron energies from 1 to 1500 eV using the time-of-flight method and the (n,γ) reaction. The sample was enriched to 87.6% 117Sn. Neutron scattering and radiative widths were determined, and orbital angular momentum assignments were made with a Bayesian analysis. The s-wave and p-wave strength functions and average level spacings were determined