Michael Raine

Recent cold weather in the West won’t reduce spring grasshopper hatchings. Entomologists say that high populations of grasshoppers can still be expected this summer. Dan Johnson of Agriculture Canada in Lethbridge said grasshoppers lay their eggs in soil two to five centimetres deep and the eggs can survive temperatures down to Ð10 C, so the […] Read more

Consignment bull sale prices are down slightly as producers face uncertain moisture conditions. Producers buying bulls at the Lloydminster Pride of the Prairies Bull Show and Sale March 10-12 said there were some good bargains on “some really good bulls.” However, they also said they faced “high prices for the best stuff.” While average prices […] Read more

Elk or deer antlers may provide future treatments for human liver disease. Susan Hemmings, a physiologist and researcher at the University of Saskatchewan’s medical school, said antlers from cervids, animals belonging to the deer family, may hold a key to liver treatment. “It was there staring everyone in the face. It was in the Chinese […] Read more

Farmers should consider the possibility of lower yields this year and fertilize based on realistic expectations, say crop researchers. A dry fall and winter have left grain farmers in much of Alberta, Saskatchewan and some parts of Manitoba with little soil moisture. Brent Flaten, a soil fertility specialist with Alberta Agriculture in Stettler, said farmers […] Read more

GUELPH, Ont. – A naturally occurring hormone in the gut of all mammals may be the key that unlocks the door to efficiency gains for hog producers. George Bubenik has known for more than two decades that melatonin, a hormone produced in the gastrointestinal tract and other parts of the body, can improve sleep patterns, […] Read more

Farmers who found gophers in their fields, pastures and yards last year should expect to find them again this year. If there were lots of gophers last year, there will be more this year, making early control necessary to avoid serious problems. Normally, half of all gophers die before adulthood, killed by predators, winter cold, […] Read more

Joe Consumer pulls the half-eaten pail of ice cream from the freezer, anticipating its cold, creamy goodness. Instead, he lifts the lid to find a coarse, hardened mass. It is a disappointment for him and an international marketing problem for the dairy industry. The solution? Add winter wheat. Not the grain itself, but a protein […] Read more

The Australian company that recently sold two cloned dairy bull calves to China won’t be selling clones to Canada anytime soon. Warwick Ashby, chief executive officer of RAB Australia Animal Genetics in Albury, New South Wales, which cloned and sold the calves, said consumers in Australia, Europe and North America aren’t ready for cloned animals […] Read more

GUELPH, Ont. – Antlers make money and good health makes antlers, says George Bubenik, who has spent the past 35 years studying deer and their antlers. An endocrinologist and medical doctor by training, Bubenik took up his father’s academic research in the late 1960s, and since the early 1970s has worked in the University of […] Read more

GUELPH, Ont. – Large sets of cervid antlers have been prized for centuries. Cervid researcher George Bubenik of the University of Guelph says German royal families owned some of the largest deer antlers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Recently, researchers X-rayed some of those antlers in an attempt to find out why they were […] Read more