Center for Grassland Studies Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources
222 Keim Hall P.O. Box 830953 Lincoln, NE 68583-0953
Non Profit U. S. Postage Permit 46 Lincoln, NE
PAID
Newsletter for the Grazing Livestock Systems Major Vol. 8, No. 2 Fall Semester 2007
Caring Faculty – You’ll Find Them Here!
A common theme in exit interviews with graduating GLS seniors is the importance of the relationships the students develop with the GLS faculty – inside and outside of the classroom. In addition to academic activities such as seminars and roundtable discussions with local and national leaders in the grazing industry, it has become a tradition to kick off each semester with a social event. In September it is a picnic and volleyball match at a park near the East Campus. When the students return for second semester in January, they are invited to GLS bowling night at the East Union. The students say it helps them get to know the professors as real people!
Record Number Present at GLS Internship Symposium
Each fall, students who conducted their GLS internship during the past year give a presentation at the GLS Internship Symposium. In the audience are GLS faculty, students, advisory board members, administrators – and sometimes, parents and even grandparents, as was the case this year when eight students described their varied experiences, which included: assisting with the management of yearling cattle on irrigated pasture in western Wyoming, invasive plant control on Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado; touring and surveying beef cattle seed stock operations throughout the central and northern Great Plains; revising and improving UNL’s livestock budget worksheets; assisting with the management of a cow-calf operation on introduced grass pasture in Florida; being involved in the operations and management of a large, diverse Wyoming ranch (including irrigated cropland, irrigated pasture, private and public rangeland, and hay meadow); conducting daily operations of a feedyard and planning the conversion of irrigated cropland to irrigated pasture (including partial budgeting); and conducting daily operations of a feedyard and touring several Nebraska feedyards focusing on ration development and environmental concerns.
For more information or to receive GLS materials, please contact: Center for Grassland Studies University of Nebraska 222 Keim Hall P.O. Box 830953 Lincoln, NE 68583-0953 p: 402-472-4101 f: 402-472-4104 e: grassland@unl.edu w: gls.unl.edu
College students are always ready for food!
Um, do you think the volleyball will ever come down?
Come on, guys, just pretend you’re putting up pasture fence.
Tony Klein discusses his internship in Wyoming.
Center for Grassland Studies
Student Profiles ......
Lacy Anderson Hoks-
bergen from Angora is our first GLS student to have been home schooled. She says her extracurricular activities included moving cows, and she learned biology in the field when it was time to semen-test bulls and pregnancy-check Lacy Anderson Hoksbergen cows. She and her siblings were given a portion of the family’s cow herd as their “savings account,” so learning was serious business! It prepared her well for what came next – Western Nebraska Community College, where she was a member of the Phi Theta Kappa honorary society and student government president. She received an associate degree in business in May 2006. Working the following summer and fall at a feedlot/ranching operation gave her more practical experience and helped to confirm what she wanted to do. She applied to UNL, and with the help of GLS scholarships, began the GLS program in January 2007. “I’d been considering the GLS program since high school because I wanted an education that focused on ranching. WNCC did not offer an agricultural program, but it provided general and business courses as well as documentation for applying to UNL. I was pleased that my credits transferred well to UNL.” Lacy will graduate in 2009. Her goal is to own, with her husband, a cow-calf and yearling operation. In the meantime, she is keeping plenty busy. This summer she was married, and although she and her husband worked for an operation in Montana, she still found time to participate in the High Plains Ranch Practicum and Nebraska Grazing Conference. She is a member of the UNL Range Management Club, and is this year’s GLS student ambassador.
Aaron Dinklage has lived and gone to high school in both Sargent and Orchard. While working on an associate degree at Northeast Community College, he was on the livestock judging team. That is how he met GLS Aaron Dinklage faculty member Bryan Reiling, who heads up UNL’s judging team. Aaron had plans to transfer to a four-year college in another state to obtain a bachelor’s degree, but Dr. Reiling, who recognizes a good student when he sees one, helped Aaron obtain scholarships, and he entered UNL as a dual GLS/ Animal Science student in Fall 2006. Because most of Aaron’s life was spent in the Sandhills, he wanted to go elsewhere for his internship to see how things were done in a different place, to meet new people, have new experiences, and gain new contacts. He included this desire in the goals he developed during the internship planning phase, which he found to be a very useful aspect of the GLS internship program. The GLS faculty helped Aaron through that planning process, and he ended up on a ranch in Florida. While he enjoyed the newness of the experience, Aaron says living in that humidity convinced him that he wants to be back in the Sandhills, either owning his own ranch or managing someone else’s operation. He will graduate in May 2008. Aaron is pleased with the quality of instruction he is receiving at UNL, as well as the amount of oneon-one interaction he has with the GLS faculty.
Students Use GLS Scholarships to Help Further Their Education Outside the Classroom
The Center for Grassland Studies, which administers the GLS degree program, offers scholarships to qualifying GLS students who attend the Nebraska Grazing Conference, Ranch Practicum, or Nebraska Range Short Course. Lacy Anderson Hoksbergen and Jason Warner received event scholarships in 2007, and we asked them to share their comments with our readers. GLS students who might be interested in exploring the possibility of applying for a scholarship and participating in one or more of these events should first check out the web site(s), and then speak with a GLS faculty member. Nebraska Grazing Conference, grassland.unl.edu/grazeconf.htm High Plains Ranch Practicum, hpranchpracticum.com Nebraska Ranch Practicum, panhandle.unl.edu/ranchpracticum Nebraska Range Short Course, agronomy.unl.edu/rangeshortcourse
Ranch Practicum
by Lacy Anderson Hoksbergen
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln does not discriminate based on gender, age, disability, race, color, religion, marital status, veteran’s status, national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.
I’m participating in the High Plains Ranch Practicum, which is an extension program that seeks to provide a “systems approach” to ranch management. This cooperative effort between UNL and the University of Wyoming happens during eight days over the course of a year. Sessions take place in Scottsbluff, NE and Lingle, WY at their respective extension centers. It is a spin-off of UNL’s Nebraska Ranch Practicum, which is conducted mostly at the Gudmundsen Sandhills Laboratory near Whitman. The High Plains version is adapted to better meet the needs of producers in western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming. The GLS major provided a $250 scholarship to cover half the cost of this practicum. That made a huge difference for me, as I likely would not have been able to attend without it. I recognize that for many, $250 is still a lot of money, but I think it has been worth it. Each session is a full day of speakers, discussion, and “hands-on” application. The first day, each of us received two three-ring binders full of publications, and we have received papers to add to that collection with each subsequent meeting. The instructors are extension educators and faculty at UNL and UW, as well as other people with individual expertise. Many topics were covered, from choosing a mineral supplement to figuring the cost of producing 100 lbs. of calf. We talked about using Body Condition Scoring as a management tool, and we have a group of cows whose BCS we monitor each time we are there. We have learned about range evaluation, feedstuffs analysis, cattle handling, and much more. My dad is participating in the practicum, so we discuss how to apply what we learn each session to our
operation. The groups are small – 20 to 30 people, and diverse, with everyone from owners to employees to students, and ages ranging from “thinking about slowing down” to “just getting started.” This provides for a lot of interaction and discussion. We talk about a lot of hypothetical situations as well as actual experience – “I tried this and that happened” sort of thing. Overall, I think one of the best things about the practicum has been exposure to a lot of resources and tools that I didn’t know were available. It has also been nice to hear from people who are optimistic about the future of ranching.
Nebraska Grazing Conference
by Jason Warner
The 2007 Nebraska Grazing Conference was held August 7-8 in Kearney. The conference brings together those interested in the management and use of grasslands and rangelands through livestock grazing. Numerous speakers and presenters of all occupations provided a wide array of information on topics such as livestock production, conservation, economics, weed and brush management and technology. I was impressed with the quality of the presenters and the relevance of the information provided. The presentations made by Harlan Hughes of Wyoming and Jim Gerrish from Idaho were the most applicable for cowcalf and yearling beef producers to learn how to manage their operations in a changing industry. The panel of “developing” and “seasoned” producers allowed people to learn new concepts from other operations. Overall, I really enjoyed attending this year’s conference, and I encourage other interested GLS students to attend in the future.