nw farm and ranch fall 2011

Boundary

Bonner

Kootenai

Benewah

Latah

Nez Perce

Lewis

Shoshone

Clearwater

Idaho

Morrow

Umatilla

Union

Wallowa

Baker

PendOreille

StevensFerry

SpokaneLincoln

GrantAdams

Whitman

Asotin

GarfieldColumbia

Walla WallaBenton

Klickitat

YakimaFranklin Farm and RanchFarm and Ranch

Northwest

FALL 2011

Turningcrop residue to biofuel4-H and lessons for life

Produced quarterly by Tribune Publishing CompanyA last ride for ‘Mr. Appaloosa’

Inside this issue

Farm and Ranch | Fall 2011| Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 | Moscow-PullMan Daily news / lewiston tribune2

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Farm and Ranch | Fall 2011 Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 | MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS / LEWISTON TRIBUNE | 3

Northwest Farm and Ranch is published quarterly by the Lewiston Tribune and Moscow-Pullman Daily News and printed at the Tribune Publishing Co. Inc.’s

printing facility at 505 Capital St. in Lewiston.

To advertise in Northwest Farm and Ranch, contact the Moscow-Pullman Daily News advertising department at 208.882.5561 or Advertising Manager

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Editorial suggestions and ideas can be sentto Lee Rozen at [email protected] or Doug Bauer

at [email protected]

Boundary

Bonner

Kootenai

Benewah

Latah

Nez Perce

Lewis

Shoshone

Clearwater

Idaho

Morrow

Umatilla

Union

Wallowa

PendOreille

StevensFerry

SpokaneLincoln

GrantAdams

Whitman

Asotin

GarfieldColumbia

Walla WallaBenton

Klickitat

YakimaFranklin

Farm and RanchFarm and RanchFarm and RanchNorthwest

Fighting terrorProf takes part in peace,

security program | 10

Petting ‘zoos’Livestock owners

get creative,grow business | 19

Tour de FieldWheat growers use tech

to limit pesticides | 4

On the cover: Harvest on the Palouse. Photo by Geoff Crimmins of theMoscow-Pullman Daily News.

Manufacture working on technology to gather crop residue for biofuel

From waste to fuelSpotlight: Hillco Technologies

By Kathy Hedbergfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

NEZPERCE, Idaho — In Rumplestiltskin-esque fash-ion, Hillco Technologies — a leading manufacturer of com-

bine levelers — is expanding its expertise to begin spinning straw into gold.

Or something akin to that.Lenny Hill, owner of the 30-something-

year-old company, said combine levelers remain the firm’s bread and butter. But Hillco is gearing up to develop technology that will gather up the residue from crops that can be converted into biomass fuel.

With regular combines, Hill said, all the residue from the crop comes back out behind the machine and is generally left behind in the field.

“We’re really finding out that that mate-rial has value to it,” Hill said. “We do a lot of work in the Midwest in corn fields and the leaves and stalk and husk that come through the machine gets spread back out on the field.

“But we’re working on technology to collect that and make it for use for the cattle industry as in feed or bedding or in collection to use it for ethanol, to convert material other than grain into biofuel.”

The issue of using corn, wheat or other grains for biofuel has garnered some criticism in the past few years because the increased demand drives prices up all down the line to other industries, resulting in higher feed costs for livestock producers and food manufacturers.

That’s why, Hill said, industries are starting to take a closer look at using crop residue for biofuel rather than the grain itself.

“They’re calling this second generation ethanol. So everybody believes that in the future it’s more in the cellulosic develop-

photo courtesy Hillco TechnolgiesHillco Technologies of Nezperce, Idaho, which for decades has produced combine levelers for hill country harvesting, may add technology to collect residue left behind in the harvesting to be used as biofuel.

ment rather than in the grain itself,” he said.

Hillco currently is working with the John Deere company to create this technol-ogy.

“The department of energy has invested quite a bit of money to major companies … that are out there working on the scientific side of how to process cellulose into ethanol,” Hill said. “You have to get that cellulose (residue) out of the field and delivered to the facilities. So the cellu-losic process is becoming more and more refined, but the equipment and infrastruc-ture to supply the cellulose to the refineries is behind the curve. We have engineers designing equipment and that is going to support the collection effort of biomass so it can be hauled in” and processed into ethanol.

Hill’s father, Arlie Hill, started the company in the late 1970s and it evolved

through the years to specialize in combine leveling systems. Those systems allow combines to traverse hilly country without losing grain yield.

Hill said the company sells its levelers throughout the United States and overseas. There are about 40 people employed at the business, which pays competitive wages for engineers and other specialists.

“Manufacturing is a real great opportu-nity for rural areas of the country to be able to create good-paying jobs,” Hill said.

“Here at Hillco we have staff that are production-related employees. But the other half are engineers and marketing people and sales people, product support people. It takes a pretty comprehensive background of people with special skills to do all kinds of things.”

Kathy Hedberg may be contacted [email protected] or (208) 983-2326.


By Connor DeVriesfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

Washington wheat growers impressed at least one fed-eral regulator recently with their meticulous attention

to the amounts, types and locations of the pesticides they are applying to their crops.

William Stelle, regional director for NOAA, said he was impressed with regional growers’ attention to quality and their meticulous record-keeping, which Stelle said was far superior to that of public agencies.

The government representatives, includ-ing Stelle; Don Brady, director of the EPA’s Environmental Fate and Effects Division; and Dan Newhouse, Washington’s direc-tor of agriculture, spent two days in June visiting growers in the region, inspecting technologically advanced equipment and learning how growers measure and track the quality and quantity of their crops.

“These are not sloppy operations,” Stelle said of area growers. “These are very well-documented, and everything is done with a high degree of precision.”

Eric Maier, vice president of the Wash-ington Wheat Growers’ Association, helped organize the tour. He said a major goal was to help inform environmental policy mak-ers on the effects of pesticides in the region.

He said the EPA and NOAA, both of which regulate the use of pesticides in the region, occasionally disagree on how to best protect the environment from potentially damaging effects of the chemicals.

Stelle said the competitive market for wheat has ensured a high degree of quality.

He said wholesalers and processors put a lot of pressure on growers to provide safe, high-quality wheat, and if a grower can’t prove his product meets often-stringent safety standards, buyers won’t hesitate to look elsewhere. As a result, Washington growers keep meticulous records, docu-menting the use of water, fertilizer, pesti-cides and a host of other factors. In fact, Washington growers and their clients have developed a far better system of recording and reporting on the quality of their crops than public agencies, Stelle said.

“Everything is extremely well-docu-mented,” Stelle said. “They know what they are doing with a high degree of ac-curacy.

“The agencies don’t play well together all the time,” Maier of the WAWG said.

This sometimes results in confusing

NOAA, EPA see how farms use tech to limit pesticides

Wheat growers give federal regulators a tour

“These are not sloppy operations. These are very

well-documented, and everything is done with a

high degree of precision.”

William StelleRegional director of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which helps regulate the use of pesticides in the region

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Farm and Ranch | Fall 2011 Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 | Moscow-PullMan Daily news / lewiston tribune | 5

situations, where a pesticide might be OK’d by the EPA but condemned by NOAA.

By bringing these regulators together and showing them firsthand how Wash-ington growers are using pesticides and fertilizers, Maier said he hoped to address concerns by both agencies and perhaps al-leviate some of the confusion.

“We wanted to show them that we are good stewards when we have to use pesti-cides,” Maier said.

To that end, the tour gave the officials a chance to see some of the recent technical advances which growers have been using to prevent the over-use of pesticides.

Washtucna grower Brett Blankenship, past president of WAWG, said modern farming equipment uses GPS technology to keep track of where pesticide has already been applied to a crop, preventing grow-ers from accidentally reapplying pesticide to sections of a field, an occurrence that growers call overrun. In fact, some modern tractors even drive themselves measuring their location and path in inches, not feet.

“The same technology that gave the military a bomb that can go through a window from 20,000 feet now drives the tractor itself,” Blankenship said.

As a result, overrun has been reduced from 10 or 15 percent to less than 1 percent, meaning less pesticide is applied overall.

The technology is expensive, but thanks to Department of Agriculture cost sharing programs, more and more growers are acquiring it.

The new machines not only benefit the environment, but they also help growers by improving efficiency. Growers now waste far less pesticide, Blankenship said, and with the machines operating autonomously, farmers are free to work on other things, improving efficiency.

Stelle said the modern equipment and methods made a powerful impression on him. He noted one operation he visited in which a grower and his two sons were able to farm 15,000 acres of dry land wheat.

“The efficiency on such a scale was deeply impressive,” he said.

Blankenship said the tour was the first step in establishing an “open dialogue,” among growers and the agencies, which will continue to discuss the use of pesti-cides and other environmental concerns in light of technological advancements.

Stelle called the tour “very successful,” and said he greatly appreciated the efforts by regional growers to keep his agency informed.

“I understood the pride of the grower community in what they have accom-plished,” he said.

Connor DeVries is a Moscow freelance writer.

Cropbuster

Those farmers can be craftyA husband and wife were driving down a country lane.When they came to a muddy patch in the road, their car

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The husband accepted and minutes later the car was free. The farmer turned to the husband and said, “You know, you’re the 10th car I’ve helped out of the mud today.”

The husband looked around at the fields incredulously and asked the farmer, “When do you have time to plow your land? At night?”

“No,” the young farmer replied seriously. “Night is when I put the water in the hole.”

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By Kathy Hedbergfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

Although the cool, wet spring challenged some grain crops in the region, it made for excellent conditions for hay.

It’s been a surplus crop in northern Idaho this year, said Idaho County Univer-sity of Idaho extension agent Jim Church. As a result lots of people have hay for sale.

The same is not true in southern Idaho where the cool, wet weather cost farmers one cutting of alfalfa hay.

“It was slow growing and they couldn’t harvest when they wanted to,” Church said. “There’s more of a shortage (in southern Idaho) and in central Washington. But up here, we’re in pretty good shape.”

Most of the hay grown in north central Idaho and eastern Washington is grass hay, which is selling for about $80 to $100 a ton, Church said.

The alfalfa hay is going to be more expensive, especially if livestock owners want to ship it from south Idaho or central Washington.

That will all go toward the price of

cattle this fall, which is already high, Church said.

“The cattle prices are really good. It’s a reflection of what’s happened across the na-tion the last 10 years. There’s been a decline in the number of beef cows in the country and there’s been a sell-off of cows this year due to the big drought in Texas.

“It’s a supply and demand issue. Right now there’s just not as many beef cows and calves in the country as there were five years ago.”

Church said the nation’s cow herd is about as small as it’s been since the 1950s.

“I think for years the industry has suf-fered, in terms of profitability, and a lot of people decided it wasn’t worth it, so there was a sell-off of cows,” he said.

Church said if he were giving advice to somebody considering getting in to the cattle business for the first time right now, “it’s probably not the best time to get in because prices are really high. The industry is cyclical. We have the increases in the number of cows and then it declines and we’ve been on a declining cow herd for five years or more.

“It will turn again and when it does that might be a better time to get in,” he said. “Right now is not a good time.”

Kathy Hedberg may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 983-2326.

Cool, wet spring proves beneficial to northern Idaho hay farmers

What the hay!?Barry Kough / Lewiston Tribune

Despite a cool, damp spring the hay crop has been plentiful.

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By Katie Roenigkfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

The past few years have been good ones for farmers in the Palouse, and 2011 should be no different, according to Tim

McGreevey, CEO of the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council.

Despite a late, wet spring that delayed planting for many local farmers and prompted county officials to offer disas-ter assistance to certain producers, McGreevy said yields could come in above average this fall.

“And the quality has just been terrific,” he said Mon-day from his office outside of Moscow.

The crops were helped along by favorable conditions later in the summer, when McGreevy said temperatures stayed low.

“So we got planted late — like the end of May or early June,” McGreevy said. “But when the lentils were flowering, which is a really critical time, it was pretty cool.”

July’s traditional hot spell stayed away until August, a month that was dry and warm and did not include any killing frosts.

“That can wipe you out,” McGreevy said of the freezing weather. “But that

didn’t happen. We’ve had great harvest conditions. If we could keep this weather through the end of September we may get our chickpeas off, and life would be good.”

Chickpeas are the last to come out of the ground in the fall, as they require 80 to 90 days to ripen. Usually, farmers wrap up their harvest of chickpeas by the third week of September, but McGreevy said most lo-cal growers are just now starting to focus on

their final crop of the season. The yield looks prom-ising, however, and McGreevy said the quality is “great” so far.

Acreage down, price up

The number of acres planted in the Palouse was down by about 15 percent overall this year due to the late spring, Mc-Greevy said.

“A lot of folks just didn’t get in the ground as

much as they had expected,” he said. “So we had some idled acres.”

The situation was similar in other parts of the United States and the world, McGreevy continued, pointing to weather problems in Canada, Turkey and Australia that resulted in below-average harvests.

In North Dakota and Montana — pri-mary producing states for peas and lentils — there was a 50 percent reduction in acreage devoted to those crops.

“That’s huge,” McGreevy said. “That’s

Though harvest is late, yields are coming in strong

Oulook positive for 2011 lentil market

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By Kristen Whitneyfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

A green scarf with dozens of neatly organized pins lies across the table as 16-year-old Aaron Ivie points out the significance of

each one. Some are merit pins, earned for completing 4-H projects, others are awards for taking home best of show at the Latah County Fair, a feat Ivie has done multiple times.

As president and a teen leader of the Mountain View 4-H club, Ivie has come a long way since he first started showing rab-bits at the fair more than five years ago.

“It has made all the difference for him,” said Liz Ivie, Aaron’s mother who is a Uni-versity of Idaho Agricultural Education and 4-H Youth Development specialist. “It really helps your kid in confidence building and helps them make goals and research them.”

Liz Ivie said that raising animals as a 4-H

project has helped teach her son responsibil-ity and about the life cycle.

“With him breeding, he got to see birth and unfortunately he has seen them die,” Liz Ivie said.

Although Ivie keeps busy by participating in a variety of sports and clubs, having the rabbits has helped him learn how to priori-tize and manage his time. Aaron Ivie goes to school though the Idaho Virtual Academy, thus giving him a more flexible schedule than some of his fellow competitors. He uses this time in the weeks leading up to the fair to handle his rabbit as much as possible so that it is relaxed during judging.

Aaron Ivie said that to get his rabbits accustomed to the constant noise at the fair, he plays the radio for the rabbits so they can feel comfortable when it comes time for judging.

“I usually try to put on classical radio … but I think they listen to jazz or UI (Uni-versity of Idaho) football games a lot,” said


4-H continues to teach life lessons

Cropbuster

Pickin’ and Groanin’A farmer owned a herd of talking horses. One day he went to

count the herd and noticed one horse was missing. He asked the remaining horses what happened, but none would say a word.

This happened several more nights in a row, and the farmer was really getting frustrated that his horses would not tell him what was happening.

Finally, he told them that every time a horse wound up miss-ing and they wouldn’t talk, he’d weed out one horse and take that animal to the slaughterhouse.

The following night another horse was missing and the farmer made good on his promise. This went on until finally the farmer had no more talking horses.

The moral of the story?You can weed a horse to slaughter, but you can’t make him

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Farm and Ranch | Fall 2011 Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 | Moscow-PullMan Daily news / lewiston tribune | 9Aaron Ivie. “It really relaxes them and get’s them ready for the fair.”

Aaron said he has had one rabbit who became so relaxed it fell asleep on the judge’s table.

Having a calm rabbit is only one factor that plays into winning best in show. Judges are looking for two main things when scor-ing; showmanship and quality.

“Showmanship... is what they know and how they handle the rabbit,” said Liz Ivie. “Quality is when they judge the rab-bit against the breed, basically... Are the ears right, are markings right and so forth. They’re two totally different categories.”

The American Rabbit Breeding Associa-tion sets the guidelines for what is most desirable in any given breed. Aaron Ivie is showing a Blanc de Hotot doe rabbit.

“There is specific stuff within ARBA that they look for,” said Aaron Ivie. “For the Blanc de Hotot, it’s a 1/8 inch or smaller ring around the eye, and the fur has to be pure white, some rabbits get smut, but this breed can’t have smut or … they get disqualified.”

Aaron Ivie said smut is any color other than white and often comes in as gray spots.

“Originally to get that breed, it was a

black rabbit and a white rabbit. So that’s why sometimes it gets those spots on there,” Aaron Ivie said.

For the showmanship part of the contest, participants are asked questions about their rabbit by the judges. In Aaron Ivie’s age group, however, the questions are made more challenging when they are asked to switch places with another 4-H member and answer questions about their competitor’s rabbit.

“You need to know the diseases, and all 47 breeds of rabbits,” Aaron Ivie said.

Even though the type of rabbit Ivie breeds is categorized as a meat rabbit, he has no intention of eating it.

Liz explains how meat rabbit is just a label to them, since they keep them as pets, unlike her grandmother who raised rabbits in Germany as a source of food.

“These are totally pets for him,” said Liz Ivie.

“Some people do eat them, we have a couple (4-H) leaders that do, and it’s a fact of life, it’s a personal choice.”

Kristin Whitney can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 236, or at [email protected]

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By William L. Spencefor Northwest Farm and Ranch

A Washington State University professor is using water and irrigation lines, rather than guns and bullets, to help in the fight

against terrorism.Gerrit Hoogenboom is director of the

Washington AgWeatherNet weather station network.

He joined WSU in August 2010; previously he worked at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.

While there, Hoogenboom became involved in a NATO Science for Peace and Security project that took him to the other Georgia — the former Soviet republic of Georgia, now an independent nation of

about 5.5 million people located in the Southern Caucus region east of the Black Sea.

“It’s an extremely dry area,” Hoogen-boom said.

“The traditional method of irrigation is flood irrigation, which isn’t efficient and raises problems with soil erosion.”

The idea behind the NATO project, he said, is to introduce more modern irriga-tion techniques that will improve crop quality and yield.

The goal is to provide increased income for farmers, while easing regional tensions over water availability.

Working with a local farmer and a team of scientists from Georgia and neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan,

Hoogenboom developed a demonstra-

tion plot using drip irrigation techniques imported from Israel. The focus was on high-value crops like tomatoes, eggplant, watermelon and cucumber. He also intro-duced better quality seeds and installed a number of automated weather stations.

The experimental plot was located near Marneuli, a town about 20 miles south of the capital of T’bilisi. After three years, Hoogenboom said, other local farmers were so excited by the results that they started investing in drip irrigation lines on their own.

One aspect of the project that wasn’t so successful, he said, was the automated weather stations.

The intent was to manage the stations from Washington, similar to what’s done with the 137 weather stations that are part

Fighting terrorism with waterWSU professor takes part in NATO Science for Peace and Security project

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really significant.”The effect will be realized in lentil

prices, which will go up as supply levels fall. McGreevy said North American lentil mar-kets are strong right now, with 2011 prices coming in higher than last year’s totals and well above the 10-year average price.

“We have good, strong demand and lowered production in the major exporting countries, so our pricing has been strong,” McGreevy said. “These are good years. The last couple of years have been great.”

There were some issues with timing last spring as well, but McGreevy said the growing season made up the difference.

“It stayed really cool through the month of June and early July,” he said. “We did get some rains in August, so we got some bleaching happening. (But) we had some

pretty good yields and production.”There are no problems with bleaching

this year, he added.“Just terrific quality all the way around,”

McGreevy said.

Costs are up, tooThough higher prices represent a profit

for local farmers, McGreevy reminded Palouse residents that fuel, equipment and weed-eating chemicals cost more now than in recent years.

“So even though we are above our 10-year average (price), we also have above 10-year average expenses to contend with,” McGreevy said.

“That always has to be noted. … It costs a lot of money to operate a farm these days.”

Katie Roenigk can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 301, or by email to [email protected].

Lentils from Page 7

of the AgWeatherNet. The stations would collect data on how much evaporation occurred each day; that information would then be sent to farmers automatically via cellphone so they’d know how much water to apply the next day to replenish the crops.

The Georgian farmers “don’t all have computers at home or have access to the Internet, but they all have cellphones,” Hoogenboom said.

“We should be able to deliver informa-tion to them on their phones, but so far the system isn’t functioning. We’re having problems with incompatibility between local phone companies.”

Long-standing ethnic and religious dis-putes also became an issue in 2008, when two semi-autonomous regions declared their independence from Georgia. That quickly led to fighting between Russia and Georgia and a brief invasion by Russian troops.

“Our experimental field was near a

military base,” Hoogenboom said. “It was bombed, so we had to cancel one of our meetings.”

And since Armenia and Azerbaijan are technically at war with each other in a dispute over land, he said, all the meetings between the multi-national project team had to take place in Georgia as a neutral country.

Using science to help ease such tensions is part of the focus of the NATO Science for Peace and Security Program. It has funded dozens of projects throughout the former Soviet Union, Middle East and Mediterranean region, focusing on every-thing from water resource management to disaster mitigation, environmental cleanup and energy production. The overall goal is to improve the long-term sustainability of local economies, so people have less reason to turn to war and terrorism.

William Spence may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 848-2274.

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Farm and Ranch | Fall 2011| Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 | MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS / LEWISTON TRIBUNE14

By David Johnsonfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

Joe Harrison describes his work as having mostly been at the front end of the cow. But more recently he’s moved to the rear. And from that

position, he’s learning how to potentially make money from manure.

“The first half of my career I did a lot with pushing it in the front end,” said the Washington State University professor of nutrient manage-ment, “and now I’m working on that, plus I’m working on how to best utilize what comes out of the other end.”

More specifically, Harrison and other WSU researchers at the school’s Puyallup Re-search and Extension Center, are studying ways to retrieve a compound called struvite from cow manure.

“It’s a complex of magnesium, phospho-rus and ammonium,” Harrison said of the sand-like crystal.

The key ingredient in struvite is phosphorous, which is used worldwide in fertilizers and is in declining supply amid increasing demand.

“There are limited reserves of phospho-rus in the world and many of those reserves are not in the United States,” Harrison said. “So one could almost look at this as a food security issue. Because phosphorus is needed to grow crops and what if all of a sudden some foreign country decided to cut off the phosphorus?”

Morocco, for example, is said to have between 75 and 85 percent of the world’s phosphate supply. It exports about 28 percent of the phosphorous used in the world. The United States, by comparison, produces about 17 percent of the global phosphate supply, according to recent economic studies.

So back to cattle manure, especially in dairy cow operations where it literally piles up.

“Only about 20 percent of the phos-phorus that a cow eats actually ends up in a milk carton,” Harrison explained. “That means about 80 percent is there in the manure.” And the expelled phosphorous, if extracted from the struvite, can be used in fertilizers. To that end, Harrison and fellow researcher Keith Bowers are looking for

technologies and management methods to capture excess phosphorous at dairy farms and apply it, in the form of fertilizers, to other farm opera-tions.

“Here in western Wash-ington, a lot of the dairies buy alfalfa hay from eastern Washington,” Harrison explained. The alfalfa hay contains phosphorous that becomes part of struvite in manure — the result being a depletion of phosphorous from

eastern Washington farm lands and a excess buildup at the western Washington dairy farms.

“So, if we could capture some of the ex-cess phosphorus that we don’t need here in western Washington and we could get that transported to eastern Washington where they use it for crops, then we can begin to reconnect this broken nutrient cycle,” Har-rison said.

A 1,000-cow dairy, Harrison calculated, could produce about 106 pounds of stru-vite per day.

Eventually, Harrison said, researchers hope to come up with production methods that warrant an “organic” seal, thereby increasing marketability, even into green-house and horticulture areas.

The struvite research is actually a spin-off of a larger research effort revolving around different technologies. One study includes the use of anaerobic digesters, where manure is used to produce methane gas that is burned in an engine that runs a generator to produce electricity that’s sold on the grid.

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Money from manure

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See Manure Page 22

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By Holly Bowenfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

Beef cattle producers of all sizes are invited to attend a Sept. 30-Oct. 1 conference in Boise about increasing the quality and

efficiency of their herds through the use of modern breeding technologies.

The conference, titled “Applied Repro-ductive Strategies in Beef Cattle — North-west” is hosted by the Univeristy of Idaho Extension, Oregon State University Extension and the Beef Reproduction Task Force in cooperation with the University of Missouri Extension, and will take place at the Boise Hotel and Convention Center.

In addition to beef cattle producers, the conference will be of interest to veterinar-ians, Extension educators and industry per-sonnel who work with beef producers, said John B. Hall, superintendent of the UI’s Nancy M. Cummings Research, Extension and Education Center in Carmen, Idaho. The Cummings Center maintains a herd of nearly 400 cows on more than 1,000 acres along the Salmon River.

Producers can, Hall said, “really reap the benefits of some of the experts across the nation in beef cattle reproduction manage-ment and artificial insemination. … We don’t get all those people in one place in the Northwest very often.”

Artificial insemination (AI) will be a major topic at the conference. Hall said AI is common throughout the dairy industry but isn’t as popular with beef producers.

“Some of it is time and labor issues asso-ciated with doing AI,” he said. “That’s one of the big aspects this conference addresses. The new system we have for synchronizing cows really helps address that time and la-bor issue and makes AI much more feasible for beef operations.”

The conference will feature informa-tion about estrus synchronization, where producers attempt to get all of their female cows ovulating at the same time using

a combination of approved hormones that mimic the reproductive cycle of the animals.

Hall said in addition to saving time and labor, estrus synchronization gives produc-ers an extra element of control over calf weight.

“We end up getting cows that may not be cycling to cycle and shift them to the front end of the calving season, so that calves are older and weigh more at weaning time, and therefore are of greater value,” he said.

AI provides opportunities for beef pro-ducers to save money, as well.

“We can choose genetically superior sires that we could not afford otherwise,” he said.

Instead of purchasing an entire bull, the producer purchases the bull’s semen to use in AI.

Another benefit of AI, he said, is producers can breed heifers with bulls that produce small calves, reducing stress in cows that are birthing for the first time.

Hall said inbreeding isn’t too much of a concern among AI proponents, especially within the beef industry.

“We still utilize a lot of crossbreeding

Hosts eager to share benefits of artificial insemination

Boise conference focuses on beef cattle reproduction

“We end up getting cows that may not be cycling to cycle and

shift them to the front end of the calving season, so that

calves are older and weigh more at weaning time, and therefore

are of greater value.”

John B. Hallsuperintendent of the Univeristy of Idaho’sNancy M. Cummings Research, Extension

and Education Center in Carmen, Idaho

See Cattle Page 22

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Farm and Ranch | Fall 2011| Friday, Sept. 30, 2011 | MOSCOWPULLMAN DAILY NEWS / LEWISTON TRIBUNE16

By Joel Millsfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

Stemming this year’s equine herpes outbreak was a perfect example of the public and private sector working together to solve a prob-

lem, according to the Washington Depart-ment of Agriculture.

“It’s really a case of folks understanding the risks presented by this highly contagious disease, and taking appropriate steps to miti-gate those risks and reduce the chances of continued infection,” department spokesman Jason Kelly said.

Fast, voluntary restrictions on horse movement by horse owners was the main factor in stopping the disease’s spread, Kelly said. And that was made possible by the quick dissemination of information from state veterinarians around the West.

The outbreak began during a National Cutting Horse competition in Ogden, Utah, May 8.

Animal health officials in the affected states came together quickly to discuss the handling of the outbreak, then just as quickly moved to distribute information to the public about the risks of the disease, and how to avoid its transmission.

Owners were instructed to look for mild symptoms like fever, sneezing, slobbering, and in more serious cases staggering, hind-end paralysis and even death. They were also told that the virus migrates through direct horse-to-horse contact, their feed, tack and other equipment, and that they should wash their hands and equipment to prevent the spread.

Nine horses in Washington were eventu-ally diagnosed with the disease, four of which

attended the Ogden show. No horses in Washington died, but a Washington State University-owned horse that was euthanized for long-standing lameness did test positive for the equine herpes virus, according to WSU.

Two horses in Idaho were euthanized shortly after the disease was discovered. Seven total cases were diagnosed in Idaho.

Kelly said concern about the potentially fatal disease led to some “hard choices” in May to cancel horse shows and rodeos in order to keep animals from spreading the disease to one another.

“These were events that people had been looking forward to for months, or even years,” he said. “But without voluntary movement restrictions by the horse-owner community, things could have gotten out of hand quickly.”

By the end of June, it was clear to the Washington state veterinarian’s office that be-cause horse owners were consulting their vets and making risk-based decisions on handling and transporting their animals, the spread of the disease had stopped. “We were able to nip this one in the bud,” Kelly said.

Overall, he said state animal health of-ficials learned that information is a powerful tool when a disease outbreak strikes.

“Moving forward, the state veterinarian is committed to making the public a partner in disease response, and recognizes that the more information that we can issue around what we know and where the disease has been found — and what the risks of trans-mission are — the more the public can help contain the disease.”

Joel Mills may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 883-0564.

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By Brandon Maczfor Northwest Farm and Ranch

Last year Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire launched an initiative seeking to increase the number of state companies

exporting by 30 percent by 2015, and small businesses can now turn to a new tool for help.

The Washington Small Business Devel-opment Center Network has been hosted across the state by Washington State Univer-sity for more than 30 years. Together they’ve launched an online export portal that walks prospective exporters through the process and offers resources to get them started.

The portal will address manufacturing and service industries on the SBDC’s end, but WSU’s IMPACT Center through the School of Economic Sciences addresses agricultural export opportunities as the small business center cannot by congressional rules.

“We’re sort of the middle joint between SBDC and Washington Department of Ag,” said Andrew Cassey, a WSU econom-ics professor and IMPACT Center member. “Our role is to mimic SBDC’s portal except to tailor it for agricultural exporters.”

“The object really is to grow them up and get them to a point of sophistication where they can be passed off to the (state) Department of Commerce,” said Terry Chambers, network training director for the SBDC in Spokane. “We’re all about making sure that they’re going where they need to be going and that they’re completely prepared to start the exporting process and to initiate it.”

Thousands of helpful documents are circulating the web, Chambers said, and the export portal not only organizes that information, but also uses mind-mapping technology that allows businesses to plot a course for becoming export ready. Follow-

ing one path or cell creates additional cells that provide another level of resources and information.

“It’s basically the exporting philosophy,” Chambers said. “What we tried to do has never been done before.”

Cassey said growers usually don’t make export decisions as crops such as wheat, bar-ley, peas and lentils are distributed through co-ops, which have already tapped into the export industry.

“This is more for specialty crops, I would say, not for bulk commodities,” he said. “Usually bulk commodities are done through traders that don’t need our as-sistance.”

The portal was made possible through a $1.3-million grant through the Commu-nity Economic Revitalization Board export assistance program, which also opens up additional exporting seminars where small business leaders can build a relationship with their local international trade specialists through the SBDC and meet with entre-preneurs who have successfully entered the export world, Chambers said.

“We try to keep it below 22 companies that are represented there,” he said. “A lot of it is getting them over that fear that something really horrible is going to happen instantly after beginning to export.”

The SBDC plans to begin filming the workshops it offers, and add them to the portal for those who can’t make it to them in person. He said taht becomes just another resource for small business owners looking to go international.

A seminar in Spokane is slated for Oct. 5-7 and registration can be completed at http://wsbdc.org/specialty-training.

To get started or just learn about the WSU-SBDC portal, go to http://export.wsbdc.org.

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Barley retains fizzAssociated Press

Americans are drinking less beer, but the outlook for Idaho barley remains strong.

Malt barley still represents the vast majority of barley acres grown in Idaho, but strong feed barley prices are enticing growers to put barley back into their crop rotations. A shrinking national corn crop means feed grain prices will likely remain strong through 2012.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s lat-est estimate of the 2011 corn crop dropped yields to 148.1 bushels per acre, down 4.9 bushels per acre from the August estimate and 16.6 bushels per acre below the 2009-10 record.

Production losses have tightened pro-jected ending stocks to 672 million bushels, which translates into less than three weeks worth of demand. The USDA now projects the national average corn price at a record $6.50 to $7.50 per bushel.

Feed barley prices are following corn higher. In the Magic Valley, open market feed barley prices have more than doubled in the past year, rising from an average of $2.87 per bushel in July 2010 to $5.75 per bushel in July 2011.

But malt barley, which traditionally has been more profitable, has lost some of its fizz despite relatively tight supplies.

Fewer barley acres were planted this spring, and weather problems across the Northern Plains have hurt malt quality. Malt companies began contracting acres for the 2012 season at the end of August, reflecting both the need to secure acres early and the recognition that winter barley is an option for some growers.

However, beer demand remains sluggish. The research firm 24/7 Wall St. looked at the 23 largest selling beer products in the U.S. and found that eight have lost 30 percent or more of their sales in the past five years. Most of the beers that showed the greatest decline are full-calorie beers that have 145 calories a can. Beer drinkers prefer light beers with 100 calories a can and ultra-lights, which are closer to 90 calories.

Budweiser, the best-selling beer in

America for years, was on that list at No. 8 after sales declined 30 percent, but sales of Bud Light have held steady over the five-year period. Budweiser sold 18 million barrels last year, down more than 7 million barrels compared to 2005 sales.

Several other Anheuser-Busch InBev products were also on the list, including Old Milwaukee (5), Bud Select (3), Michelob Light (2) and Michelob (1). MillerCoors brands rounded out the list: Milwaukee’s Best Light (7), Miller Genuine Draft (6), Old Milwaukee (5) and Milwaukee’s Best (4).

Kelly Olson, administrator for the Idaho Barley Commission, said that while Budweiser sales have slipped in the U.S., the brand is fast becoming the “King of Beers” worldwide. Given the large malt plant located in Idaho Falls, she expects Anheuser-Busch to continue to have a presence in Idaho despite the gloomy sales news.

In fact, Olson sees strong support for malt barley prices in Idaho. Although U.S. beer consumption is down 1.1 percent for the first half of 2011 (after dropping 1.5 percent in 2010 and 0.9 percent in 2009); craft beer consumption was up 9 percent in 2010 and was up 14 percent for the first half of 2011.

Craft beer accounts for only 5 to 6 per-cent of the overall beer market, but craft beer makers prefer to use two-raw malt barley grown in Idaho and the western United States.

But perhaps the greatest challenge to barley production in Idaho remains acreage.

Barley acreage has seen a steep decline in the past 20 years. Although Idaho growers seeded 510,000 acres this year, up 4 percent from 2010, nationwide growers seeded just 2.82 million acres -- the lowest acreage on record.

“It’s very challenging to get barley back into crop rotations,” Olson said. “Growers have increased risks with growing barley and can often get better returns from other crops.”

Higher payouts for crop insurance for wheat versus barley and barley’s temperamen-tal nature in responding to weather condi-tions have typically made wheat a better bet for growers.

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By Andrew WeeksThe Times News

Jack Beck stepped into the pasture and the alpacas raised their heads, wonder-ing who the stranger was following behind him.

As we walked to the small barn where a baby alpaca stood with its mother, some of the adult animals scattered while others drew close. Most had fluffy heads of hair, but a couple sported hairdos more suggestive of a janitor’s mop.

Alpacas are generally docile, said Beck, who with wife Viki VanRoekel owns more than 70 of the animals at their Twin Falls ranch, Lost Shaker Alpacas. Though the two raise the alpacas for their fleece, selling it at markets in Boise and the Wood River Valley, they’ve come to enjoy an alpaca-filled lifestyle.

Children and their parents are welcome to visit the ranch as long as they call ahead. It’s a chance for city folk to give their kids a free, fun taste of farm life.

The alpaca ranch is one of several local livestock businesses that, unofficially, serve as petting zoos for the young and curious. Here, we describe three of those adventures.

Quirky Alpacas“See that little one there, she’s a baby,”

Beck said, as we approached the barn. “She’s just a few days old.”

The baby alpaca ran a few steps before Beck grabbed it and held it up. Feel how soft the fleece is, he invited, as its mother drew near to make sure everything was OK. Besides selling the fleece, the business makes hats, rugs, scarves and other items from it.

Each alpaca on the 12-acre spread has a name.

“They’re named after Jimmy Buffett songs,” VanRoekel said. So is the south-Twin Falls ranch.

Alpacas aren’t difficult to raise, but they

do like attention. So it’s good whenever children and their parents stop by. When visiting the ranch, you might notice a few of the animals’ quirks:

They do spit, Beck said, sometimes at strangers but mostly at each other. When the couple conducts pregnancy tests on the females, they’ll stick a female in a pen with a male. If she spits at him, she most likely is pregnant, Beck said.

The animals also use the same spot to defecate.

“Notice how when we walked out here there’s not a lot of piles,” he said. “I think there are just three or four in the whole area.”

The couple often work with area 4-H groups, allowing children to train and show their animals; 31 youth showed the animals during this year’s Twin Falls County Fair.

Hungry GoatsLike in the children’s story “The Three

Billy Goats Gruff,” goats can be stubborn animals. And they have a reputation of eating everything in sight.

Both perceptions are spot on, said Evelyn Simon, who with her husband, Joe Bennett, raises goats and sells their lean-and-healthy meat at a Hagerman ranch.

Goats are fun animals to have around and are good with children, she said. That’s why goats often are included at petting zoos.

Simon and her husband welcome families at the five-acre farm as long as they call ahead. The farm is involved with 4-H groups and other activities to educate kids and promote the goats.

As for the animals gobbling everything, Simon said that has an upside: “They eat a lot of noxious weeds.”

Affectionate MinisVicki Stephens loves her horses. She used

to raise large breeds but switched to raising miniatures about six years ago.

Livestock owners educate families, grow businesses through petting ‘zoos’

See ‘Zoos’ Page 22

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Idaho Press Tribune

PARMA — As the world’s popula-tion grows, the competition for water, land and food could lead to a crisis. It could also lead to an

opportunity for innovative farmers in South-western Idaho.

“The future of modern agriculture depends on thinking smart and using every square inch of land and every drop of water,” explained professor Esmaeil “Essie” Fallahi of the University of Idaho’s agricultural research center in Parma.

Fallahi and his colleagues, who work to discover new and improved fruit-growing techniques in Idaho, led hundreds of visitors through the center’s 89 acres of orchards and vineyards Tuesday for the 16th annual Parma Fruit Field Day.

It was a chance for the researchers to show off their most successful experiments. These included a buried drip irrigation system that reduces water use by 60 percent, a spray applied to blooms that results in larger fruit and a variety of peach that grows to the size of a volleyball.

“It is important to let the public know what we’re doing here,” Fallahi said. “We are at the cutting edge of agricultural advance-ment.”

Global CompetitionWith some 186 varieties of fruit grow-

ing at the research center, Fallahi said his researchers have proven that Southwestern Idaho’s ability to be a world-wide exporter of fruit.

One of the biggest challenges, however, will be competing against China’s booming agricultural production. Fallahi said this will require not only new ways to produce more fruit with less water and land — but more efficient harvesting techniques as well.

“The challenge from China is that they have flooded the market with cheap labor,” he said.

For an example of how they’re meet-ing this challenge, the researchers unveiled

Tuesday a roving, mechanized ladder they developed that allows a single fruit picker to reach several trees without touching the ground.

Local PerspectiveWhile the University of Idaho’s research-

ers might look at pomology — the study of fruit crop physiology — with an eye toward the global market, most of the visitors for Tuesday’s field day had more local concerns. They wanted advice for their own gardens and orchards.

Richard Claiborne, of Nampa, went to the field day with questions about growing onions in his garden. His questions were quickly answered, he said, and he was left with other food for thought.

“It’s all very interesting. They have fruit that was developed here that will compete with Chile. They have apples from Idaho that are grown all over the world,” Claiborne said.

Cheri Hammond, of Caldwell, got some practical advice for controlling the aphids in her backyard orchard, while her daughters, 4-year-old Rachel and 2-year-old Sarah, had a chance to stroll around in the sun and eat some fresh peaches.

“The kids like it when we come home with boxes of fruit,” Hammond said.

Jon Trail, who farms an orchard between Payette and Weiser that has been in his fam-ily since 1901, said that most Idahoans don’t realize the state has such an abundant fruit crop.

Fruit for thoughtResearchers show off fruit growing innovations in Parma

“The future of modern agriculture depends on thinking

smart and using every square inch of land and every drop

of water.”

Essie Fallahiprofessor at the University of Idaho’s agricultural research center in Parma.

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By David JohnsonLewiston Tribune

MOSCOW — George B. Hatley, known worldwide as “Mr. Appaloosa,” was remembered here for his

tireless promotion of the spotted horse breed.He was also remembered for his dedi-

cation to the Appaloosa Horse Club and Museum, his compassion as a friend to many and his tenacious love of life.

“We were married 64 years. And you know, we worked together all of our lives,” Hatley’s widow, Iola Hatley, said at the couple’s home. “George was really a famous person, but he never cared about things like that. He was humble. He was just a guy who enjoyed people.”

George Hatley died Sept. 16 at the age of 87.

Hatley took the reins in 1947 of what is today an Appaloosa Horse Club headquar-tered here with an international membership.

Armed with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Idaho in animal husbandry, an innate love of horses and a wife “who could type,” Hatley hand-wrote extensively about the Appaloosa and became known as the foremost authority on the breed and its history.

“He meant almost everything to the club. For 30 years, while he was executive secretary, he established so many of the great programs and traditions that we still take advantage of today,” said Steve Taylor, the club’s current executive officer. “But even more than that, he had such a love for the breed and the people, and he worked so hard to make sure that was contagious.”

A memorial service is planned at the University of Idaho. Burial of ashes will be at the Hatley Cemetery south of Pullman.

Julie Thorson, editor and associate publisher of Horse & Rider magazine and a long-time Hatley family friend, said Hatley left a hand-written epitaph for his grave that reads: “He has returned to the hills he loved as a boy and will be a part of them forever.”

Thorson, of Moscow and a UI journal-ism graduate, said Hatley gave her her first

job with the horse club’s magazine. “There’s a reason why he was known throughout the world in the Appaloosa community as Mr. Appaloosa,” said Thorson, describing Hatley as the architect of what evolved into the modern club. “He’s been a legend for decades. His name and Appaloosa were basi-cally synonymous, which is why he came to earn the colloquial title.”

King Rockhill of Harvard, a retired cler-gyman and member of the horse club who’ll officiate at the memorial service, said the late Claude Thompson, founder of the Ap-paloosa Horse Club in Oregon, recognized Hatley as the man to take the club beyond its humble beginnings.

“George had a special dream about a horse,” Rockhill said. “And he was able to communicate that, and share it with an incredible number of others.”

Iola Hatley said her husband suffered a recent stroke, after having two earlier strokes, and didn’t recover this time. She recalled a re-cent conversation with George when the two were watching a cable television news show that featured squabbling political pundits.

“He looked over at me and said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful that we’ve lived all this time together and we still really like each other.’”

George Hatley, who was executive sec-retary of the Appaloosa Horse Club for 31 years, started the club’s magazine, “Appaloosa News,” which now called the Appaloosa Journal.

He published its first studbooks, orga-nized the first National Appaloosa Shows in Lewiston in 1948 and 1949, and started the Appaloosa Museum. He wrote scores of articles and several books, including “Pio-neer, the Life and Times of Riley B. Hatley,” “Riding the Nez Perce War Trail Twice,” and “Horse Camping,” a classic now in its third printing.

Iola Hatley remembered they were mar-ried just one year when George went against advice from her and others who said the club was too small to have a national show. But 65 horses competed in the 1947 Lewiston event and afterwards she and George were so exhausted they fell asleep with their boots on and didn’t wake until morning.

Last ride for ‘Mr.Appaloosa’George Hatley, an advocate for spotted breed, dies at 87

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As a result of the research, a number of questions arose. “Not so much about the methane and making of electricity,” Harri-son said. “But what happens to the manure as it goes through the digester?”

Does it have less pathogens in it, and therefore it’s a safer product when applied to land? Does it have a different availability of the nutrients for crop growth?

What might be any concerns as to air and odor issues?

“So I worked on the front end of the

cow,” Harrison said, putting the research in perspective. “Mid-career, I got more inter-ested in environmental aspects. That led to managing nutrients at the whole farm level, rather than just thinking of the front end of the cow. Now we work on both ends.”

In the end, Harrison said, struvite could prove to help reduce the cost of manure disposal, ensure groundwater quality around dairies and maybe put more money in the pockets of farmers.

David Johnson may be contacted at [email protected] or (208) 883-0564.

Manure from Page 14

and use several different breeds to make up calves,” he said. “Because of environmental differences under which we raise cattle, there’s not going to be one bull that’s the perfect bull for beef operations.”

The conference will also feature exten-sive information about cattle nutrition, health, handling, diseases and genetics, in addition to a trade show featuring about a dozen genetic, animal health and reproduc-tive management companies.

Producers may register for the confer-ence online at http://goo.gl/9Afu3 or by calling (866) 682-6663. The cost to register through Sept. 29 is $175 for both

days, which increases to $200 on Sept. 30. One-day admission for the general public and two-day admission for students and educators costs $100. Hall said there is no cap on conference enrollment.

Conference participants may be eligible for 11 continuing education units through the Idaho Board of Veterinary Medicine or nine units through the American Registry of Professional Animal Scientists.

For information, visit http://goo.gl/9Afu3, or contact Hall at (208) 756-2749 or [email protected].

Holly Bowen can be reached at (208) 882-5561, ext. 239, or by email to [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter: @DailyNewsHolly

Cattle from Page 15

Her love for them was apparent after she opened one of the gates recently at her Twin Falls ranch, complete with barn and show ring.

“This is Thunderpants,” she said. Before long, the 29-inch-tall gray-and-white horse nuzzled close to her, seeking her affection. She bent down and, nose to nose, gave it a kiss.

Horses are like that, she said: Each has its own personality but they all like attention, some more than others.

Stephens and her husband, Jack, own 14 miniature horses — along with pigeons, game birds and dogs.

The Stephenses work closely with 4-H groups and senior citizen homes, often bringing a miniature horse to the care centers where the animal receives a warm welcome from residents.

Stephens said she’s happy to entertain visitors at the ranch, where they can learn about the horses and see the other animals. But please call ahead.

“I’ve seen people’s faces when they see the minis,” she said. “The kids’ faces light up.”

‘Zoos’ from Page 19

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