32nd Beef Improvement Federation Annual
Meeting and Research Symposium
by Roger L. McCraw

Information on this year's Beef Improvement Federation meetings, to be held July 12-15, 2000 in Wichita, Kansas, is now available on the web. The web pages include the meeting schedule, information on travel, accommodations, and tours, as well as an online registration form.

The address for the BIF 2000 meeting page is http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/BIF/index.htm.

If you have any problems accessing the information, or with the online registration process, please send a message to bif2000@ksu.edu.

If you will let me know the names of folks from your county
who are going, or just how many people are going from your county, I will get information to you about a tour on Sunday that Ralph Blalock and I are working on. We are planning to take the Southwest Kansas Swing tour on Saturday and
arrange a visit to Bob Dickinson's ranch and other stops for Sunday, if there is enough interest.

We hope to see each of you in Wichita this summer. •

2001 IRM Notebooks
                   by Dale C Miller

           It is again time to place orders for the group purchase of IRM Redbooks for the year 2001. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with these notebooks, this is a pocket calendar with many useful tables of interest to cattlemen.

          We are asking that you estimate the number of redbooks you might need and send in a deposit to NCCA by June 20 of this year. We are only accepting orders of 10 redbooks or more. Kim will place one order for the notebooks by July 1 and we should receive them by early to mid-November.

          If you would like to place an order for the year 2000 version of the IRM pocket redbook, please mail a deposit of $1.50 per redbook (minimum of $15.00) to the NC Cattlemen's Association, 2228 N Main St., Fuquay-Varina, NC 27526. • 

Sheep and lamb losses from animal predators in the United States totaled 273,000 during 1999. This represented 36.7 percent of the total losses from all causes and resulted in a loss of $16.5 million due to predators to farmers and ranchers.

Coyotes caused the majority of sheep and lamb losses to predators. They accounted for 60.7 percent of the total. Coyotes were also the largest predator of goats in the three major states (AZ, NM, and TX) accounting for 35.6 percent of predator death losses. The value of goats lost from all predators was $3.4 million.

Farmers and ranchers throughout the United States spent $8.8 million on non-lethal methods to prevent predator loss of sheep and lambs. Another $1.0 million was spent on non-lethal predator controls for goats and kids.

Losses of Sheep and Lambs from Predators:
Number of Head and Total Value, United States, 1999

(This report is adapted from one released as a cooperative effort between the National Agricultural Statistics Service and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service - Animal Damage Control and National Animal Health Monitoring System.) •