Visitors will find a smorgasbord of forage topics awaiting them at the Summer Field Day, Wednesday, June 23 at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Marshfield Agricultural Research Station.

The Wisconsin Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Association held its annual senior breakfast Sunday May 16. Twelve graduating seniors received Leadership and Activity Awards for their participation in student organizations in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Three seniors also received

Reductions in tobacco allotments have slashed production and income for Wisconsin tobacco farmers, and many are looking for alternative crops to replace tobacco. Echinacea (commonly known as the coneflower) has become a popular herbal supplement, and reports of high profits have some tobacco growers thinking about switching to Echinacea production. That could be a very risky switch, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.

The amount of nitrogen that leached from two corn fields during a three-year study was many times greater than that leaching from a restored prairie, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists.

The soil under a restored prairie in southern Wisconsin received much less moisture but retained more of it than two nearby corn fields, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison research.

Among the first to identify bacteria that break down nitroglycerin, the active component of dynamite, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers now have identified two enzymes that enable bacteria to degrade both nitroglycerin and TNT, another explosive. The scientists have sequenced the genes that code for the two enzymes.

Ten students have received Outstanding Sophomore Awards from the Wisconsin Agricultural and Life Sciences Alumni Association. They will each receive a $750 scholarship for the 1999-2000 academic year. Applicants were selected based on scholarship, school and community activities, work experience, and a personal interview. Students are nominated for the award by faculty and student organizations at the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin’s highest producing dairy farms get the most out of their cows, and they do it without high feed costs. Feed costs averaged less than $4 per hundredweight of milk on six farms with rolling herd averages exceeding 30,000 pounds of milk, according to results of a survey by University of Wisconsin-Extension specialists.

There’s cash in contented cows, a survey of the highest producing dairy herds in Wisconsin has shown.

Overfeeding phosphorus costs dairy farmers about $12 to $15 per cow per year in added feed costs, according to Larry Satter, a dairy scientist with the U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center at UW-Madison