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The horrible thing you never knew about ducks

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The horrible thing you never knew about ducks

On the Venn diagram of strange animal mating behaviors — from lobster golden showers to garter-snake orgies — duck sex is on the border between cartoonish and sadistic.

That’s right, our beloved mallards engage in some seriously disturbing mating behavior. The “dark side” of duck mating has its own chapter in the new book “The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us” by Yale ornithology professor Richard O. Prum. It’s a controversial subject, earning notoriety in 2013 after news leaked that the federal government contributed $400,000 to study the mating habits of ducks — dubbed “duckpenisgate” by Mother Jones.

Ep. 194 – Austin Troyer – Grazing Reclaimed Mine Land

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Ep. 194 – Austin Troyer – Grazing Reclaimed Mine Land

6/14/21 by Clay Conry

Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/124417387
Episode: https://chtbl.com/track/115875/https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/http://storage.googleapis.com/providers.globalagnetwork.com/podcasts/working-cows-podcast/episodes/Working-Cows-Ep.-194-Austin-Troyer.mp3

Austin Troyer is a first generation rancher in Ohio. He and his wife have gotten their start by finding undervalued land and putting the work in to make it usable. We talk about the process of obtaining these leases as well as getting them ready for livestock and finding the right class of livestock to take advantage of the topography and forage.

This is a fascinating podcast about recovering formerly mined areas for cattle grazing – not only turning mined areas into good use but also helping to rebuild the soil with hoof action, grazing encouraging growth and manure fertilizing the land.

NPR

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A Giant Organic Farm Faces Criticism That It’s Harming The Environment : NPR

Hardly a week goes by, it seems, without a big food company making promises to deliver products from green, sustainable farms. Turning those promises into reality, though, can be complicated.

Take Gunsmoke Farms, a vast property that covers 53 square miles just northwest of Pierre, S.D. The food company General Mills, maker of Cheerios, announced in 2018 that it would convert the farm to organic production. The company planned to turn it into an educational hub to teach other farmers "how to implement organic and regenerative agriculture practices."

Now, some of Gunsmoke Farms' neighbors say that the farm is doing more environmental harm than good.

A Farmer’s First Foray into Hemp

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A Farmer’s First Foray into Hemp

4/15/2020 by Field Work

Web player: https://podplayer.net/?id=102128754
Episode: https://play.podtrac.com/APM_Fieldwork/play.publicradio.org/itunes/o/the_water_main/field_work/2020/04/15/fieldwork_20200415_6_128.mp3

Growing hemp was illegal in the U.S. for decades. But recent changes in federal law have opened the door to growing the crop. So as farmers across the country begin to experiment with hemp, hosts Zach Johnson and Mitchell Hora decide to learn more about commercial hemp production. In October, Mitchell visited Scott Thellman at Juniper Hill Farms in Kansas to hear about his first stab at growing industrial hemp. They talk sourcing seeds, keeping hemp under legal THC limits, harvesting with chainsaws, and much more.

I’ve heard a lot about hemp farming in the past but didn’t know much about it. Apparently it’s a good thing for farmers to live in a state that also has a recreational system in case the hemp comes in too hot. Also, since hemp has become federally legal the growers have greatly expanded while the market have grown more slowly, leaving it hard to market some of the production. Definitely interesting interview.

Agriculture can be a bit of a misnomer 🌾

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Agriculture can be a bit of a misnomer 🌾

Agriculture means field cultivation. Cultivating fields is a big part of farming but a lot of agriculture, is not field crops as much as grasses.

Grasses for pasture and hay, converted by rumens, especially beef cattle 🐮 into meat 🥩. A lot of areas aren’t really well suited for field crops and tillage due to slope and shallow soils but grow grass pretty darn well. Some corn silage 🌽 is a required for high performance Holstein dairy cattle but not so much for beef and other breeds.

You can see that well on the National Land Cover Dataset for New York. There are far more acres of pasture and hay (yellow) than cultivated crops (brown) even in many rural farming parts of the state. 🗺