Get a Horse and a Halter

Chuck Zimmerman

BLM Horse ProgramI’m not sure how badly you want a halter but you can get a free one in Illinois if you’re willing to adopt a horse or a burro. It seems like a lot of effort just to get a halter.

The Department of Interior, Bureau of Land Management-Eastern States (BLM-ES) will hold a Wild Horse and Burro Adoption at the Wild Horse and Burro Holding Facility in Ewing, Illinois on April 27-28, 2007. The adoption will be from 9 A.M. to 5 P.M. on Friday, April 27, 2007 and Saturday, April 28, 2007 on a first come, first serve basis. All adopters at this event will receive a free halter. The facility is located 30 minutes from Mt. Vernon, Illinois just east of I-57 exit 77.

Adopters must provide their own stock-type, step-up trailer. BLM staff will sort, halter and load animals onto the adopters’ trailers. Applications to adopt may be screened in advance by mail or fax and will be reviewed in person starting Friday. Call early to be pre-approved before you attend to avoid waiting in the lines.

For applications, facility and trailer requirements or other information about this event, contact the Bureau of Land Management-Eastern States at 1- 800-370-3936 or visit the web site at: http://www.wildhorseandburro.blm.gov/. Adopters’ applications must be approved by a Wild Horse and Burro Specialist prior to being eligible to adopt.

Uncategorized

Spring Wheat Yield Contest Winners

Chuck Zimmerman

SWYC WinnersNot that you may care but here’s my first photo that’s been edited with iPhoto and uploaded with Transmit3 from my Mac. I’m starting to get the hang of it. iPhoto just doesn’t let me fully format the image for the web though but it works don’t you think? These are the winners of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association, Spring Wheat Yield Contest. They would like to:

. . . congratulate Gary Heyerdahl, Griggs County (pictured left), Stuart & Katie Dilse, Slope County (pictured center) and Craig Dewald, Kidder County (pictured right) for winning in their district. Each took home a Honda Rancher 4X4 on March 8th and every participant who entered will be receiving a Carhart or Columbia jacket.

The winning variety from the west, NDSU’s Reeder was planted on pea ground using no-till and fertilized with Urea at 217 lbs per acre. The winning variety from central ND, AgriPro’s Knutson was planted on soybean ground with minimal till and fertilized with 60 lbs per acre of 1152 at seeding, and 140 lbs of Urea. The winning variety from the east, AgriPro’s Kelby was planted on pinto bean ground with conventional tillage and fertilized with 98 lbs of Anhydrous in the fall and 80 lbs of 1152 during seeding.

Ag Groups

Agriblogging Away

Chuck Zimmerman

Just two years ago when I mentioned blogs to people in agrimarketing I got blank looks or an amazing amount of skeptical comments. Since then our business has flourished and we’re seeing more and more adoption of new media channels in agricultural communications. I’ll be speaking on the subject at an ag journalism class in Columbia, MO on Tuesday. Colleges are realizing that their students need to know more about these mechanisms if they’re going to be prepared properly for the real world when they graduate. Companies of all kinds are also starting to get it.

I’ve been doing a little bit of office catch up this past week and realizing how far we’ve come already. For example, here’s a list of websites we’ve built for clients and in some cases continue to manage:

I think we may need to get beyond the fact that these are blogs and just consider them websites that can be updated easily and frequently, are highly search engine optimized, can be subscribed to and provide a direct channel of communication to customers who are searching for information and probably the thought leaders in their business.

Uncategorized

Moving To His Own Private Idaho

Chuck Zimmerman

Steve Taylor and MeI can’t believe I went a whole day without posting but it was a catch-up day after many on the road. One of the things I got to do yesterday though was help Steve Taylor load a truck to move stuff to Idaho. Steve used to be the executive director of the Missouri Beef Industry Council and is how the CEO of the Appaloosa Horse Club.

This is my first post from my Mac. I also spent a while yesterday moving all my data from my Dell. About the only thing I’ve got left is to re-format my iPod for the Mac and learn some new software.

So far I like it. Since I’ve been a Microsoft Office user for so long I went ahead and purchased Office for Mac so I’m fully compatible with anything you want to send me. I’ll be online a lot today so look for some more posts soon.

Ag Groups

My Mac

Chuck Zimmerman

My MacIs there anyone who doesn’t know what company this logo stands for? When I got home this afternoon from a blog training session in Kansas City I found that my Mac had arrived. You’ll notice that the apple is not lit up. That’s because I haven’t had time to turn it on yet and yes, I’m typing this on a PC.

As I go through my Mac conversion experience I thought I’d document it and periodically post some pictures and thoughts about it for you. I’m hoping this will be good for both of us. I’ve always thought of Apple computers as some sort of mysterious gadgets that geeky people used. If you’ve thought the same thing then maybe I can take some of the mystery out of it. We’ll find out together is this box is everything they claim it to be.

I’ve also created a photo album for the experience too. It’s just got a few unpacking photos in it right now but I’ll be adding to it periodically. I guess my first comment on the experience is when I visited the Apple store. I had an appointment with an advisor who spent a lot of time with me and not only answered all my questions but showed me how he’s personally using his Mac. When I started to unpack I was struck by how simple the unit is packaged. There’s not a ton of stuff here. You’ve got the box, the ac adapter, a remote control and a get started booklet. Simple. Not a lot of junk that seems to come with a PC. Score one for Apple in my opinion.

Well you know what I’ll be doing this weekend. I’m going to set it up myself and tranfer all my PC data to it. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Uncategorized

A Skateboard in Your Farm Plan

Chuck Zimmerman

Farm Plan Skateboard AdI guess this is a magazine ad for John Deere’s Farm Plan program. I’m not sure how many farmers are skateboarders but it caught the attention of Adrants which is where I saw it.

Adrants links to larger pictures of the ads. There’s one for Skateboards and one for Disco Ball.

You can catch Disco Ball in action on the Farm Plan website.

It’s nice sometimes to see creative that’s creative.

Advertising, Agribusiness, John Deere

WildBlue Down on the QuickFarm

Chuck Zimmerman

QuickfarmI haven’t heard anything from or about Wild Blue in a long time. I guess they’re doing okay though if they’re hiring Quickfarm to handle a customer web portal for them. This also makes you realize how important the rural market is to a satellite internet access provider. I wonder how many farmer customers WildBlue has.

WildBlueQuickFarm announced today an agreement with WildBlue Communications to provide content and hosting services through the WildBlue Customer Portal.

QuickFarm will provide WildBlue retail subscribers with robust market commentary, national radar weather with zoom and animation, commodity market quotes, Ag news, LDP information, cash grain prices and local news and agronomic information.

An always-on broadband Internet connection, WildBlue’s service offers access speeds that are up to thirty times faster than dial-up. WildBlue’s two-way broadband service provides high-speed data in both directions, upstream and downstream.

Agribusiness, Internet

Big Thinkers Thinking About NAMA

Chuck Zimmerman

NAMA Convention 2007The NAMA Convention Trade Show Committee is meeting right now. We’re hoping you’re “Thinking Big” and planning on being there this year in Dallas.

We’ve got some great plans coming together for the Trade Show. Right after the Best of NAMA you’ll be able to go downstairs to the show and enjoy several varieties of good wine and food, sponsored by DTN. Don’t forget to come look for your AgriMarketing Magazine toy tractor too.

Then we’ll be open for lunch on Thursday of the convention and have a unique game for you with an awesome prize. More on that later. We’re still looking for a sponsor for the Trade Show Lunch session. Interested?

Finally, on Thursday evening we’ll have the closing session and lets just say that you probably have never seen the kind of activity we have planned. It involves animals. It’s sponsored by NAFB. Again, more on that later.

I almost forgot to add that we’ll have a door prize at each session which will be a digital picture frame and one final session prize which will be a 30GB Video iPod!

NAMA

Alltech Symposium on Food, Feed or Fuel

Chuck Zimmerman

Alltech 2007 SymposiumIf you don’t have an invitation to the Alltech 23rd International Feed Industry Symposium, May 20-23, 2007 in Lexington, KY, then you need to contact your local Alltech representative. I’ll be there along with the whole International Federation of Agricultural Journalists (IFAJ) executive committee.

In fact, besides covering the event here on AgWired I’ll be conducting a blogging/podcasting workshop for the IFAJ. This is going to be fun. I hope they all speak at least some English.

The theme of this year’s Symposium is “The New Energy Crisis: Food, Feed or Fuel?” It’s a subject on everyone’s mind.

The shift in corn use toward fuel ethanol has wide-ranging implications for the animal feed industry in terms of feed costs, availability, and ration formulation. It also raises the crucial question of whether ethanol production might place an important human food source out of reach of the world’s population, particularly the poor.

As such, a special goal of this year’s Symposium is to look at how practices, products, and programs will ultimately affect how we utilize feed energy as well as protein ingredient resources.

Agribusiness, IFAJ

2007 PRRS Research Awards

Chuck Zimmerman

2007 PRRS Research WinnersThe folks at Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. have announced the recipients of its 2007 Advancement in PRRS Research Awards.

This year’s selected research programs focus on the development of monitoring and sample diagnostic guidelines, risk factors and transmission of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS). Each year $75,000 is awarded to support three separate studies by independent swine researchers and practitioners in their investigation of new ways to diagnose, control and eradicate this costly swine disease.

The following are the 2007 award recipients and their research proposals recognized at the American Association of Swine Veterinarians (AASV) Conference in Orlando, Fla.:

Jeff Zimmerman, DVM, PhD, Iowa State University, Ames (pictured on left) – research award to develop an inexpensive and convenient method for PRRS virus monitoring; to evaluate the stability of PRRS virus; and to develop guidelines for handling and diagnostic monitoring of oral fluid samples.

Derald Holtkamp, DVM, MS, Iowa State University, Ames (pictured in middle) – research award to conduct a cross-sectional study of PRRS-positive swine breeding herd sites to evaluate the association between risk factors and a case definition based on number and severity of clinical PRRS episodes.

Bob Morrison, PhD, MS, University of Minnesota (pictured on right) – for his research proposal to estimate, quantify and compare PRRS virus transmission information between pigs of different PRRS vaccination status.

Agribusiness