Loose Ends

The Texas Farm and Ranch Safety Council is now taking entries for the 1998 Rural Heroism Award.

To qualify, a candidate must have performed a heroic act of human lifesaving within Texas during 1998. The heroic deed should be related to farming or ranching. The recipient for 1998 will be named at the March 22, 1999, Texas Safety Association's 60th Annual Texas/Southwestern Conference and Exposition, to be held at the Adam’s Mark Hotel in Houston.

Submissions should be mailed to Texas Farm and Ranch Safety Council, P.O. Box 5539, Waco, Texas 76708, and must be postmarked no later than February 1, 1999.

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Most livestock producers are forced to feed based on their best guess of the nutritional quality of forage available to free ranging animals. Information on the quality of forage consumed in a range or pasture environment has been difficult to obtain or not determined rapidly enough to be meaningful. This situation has changed.

The Grazingland Animal Nutrition Laboratory on the Texas A&M University campus will analyze fecal samples using Near Infrared Reflectance Spectroscopy technology that allows GAN Lab workers to make this determination within 48 to 72 hours of receiving a fresh, chilled fecal sample. Factoring in a two-day priority mail service and a fax machine or e-mail, ranchers receive results four to five days after collecting the sample. If desired, a producer can also request a nutritional balance analysis with feeding recommendations from GAN Lab, an Extension specialist or NRCS personnel. More than 1000 ranchers in 42 states are already using the service nationwide.

More information about GAN Lab services is available at (409)845-5838; fax (409)845-2542; e-mail ganlab@rasc-sparc.tamu.edu or tolleson@cnrit.tamu.edu.

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The HRM of Texas 1999 annual meeting will be Feb. 5-6 in San Marcos at Howard Johnson Express Inn, 1635 Aquarena Springs Drive.

Registration is $55 per person at the door ($45 per person by January 30th). More information is available from Jane Moore at (512) 357-9091.

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The third in a series of four binational workshops for ranchers in South Texas and Northeast Mexico will be held Jan. 27-29. The workshop will focus on soil and water conservation, ecotourism and the use of natural resources, and the marketing of beef cattle. Speakers from Mexico and Texas will address these rangeland issues.

The meeting, sponsored by the Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management, Texas A&M University, and a group of Mexican universities, will be held at the Union Ganadera Regional de Nuevo Leon in Guadalupe, Mexico. Hotel accommodations will be in nearby Monterrey.

Information about the meeting is available from Michelle Lee, Center for Grazinglands and Ranch Management (888)799-4442, cgrm@tamu.edu; in Spanish from Alma Molina, (409)862-1979, s-molina@tamu.edu. Participants are responsible for making their own hotel reservations.