PARSONS, Kan. Growing cover crops offer potential benefits, including improved soil health, but these crops can be expensive to establish and manage. Establishment and management costs can be recovered by integrating crop and animal production and grazing cover crops as forage.

Jaymelynn Farney, a Great Plains Grazing team member and a Kansas State University Extension beef systems specialist, will present “Integration of Livestock and Cropping Systems,” a free webinar at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Webinar participants can expect to learn:

A). The benefits of integrating crop and animal production.

B). The cover crop types and their forage production potential.

C). The best utilization of these crops for cow herd or stocker grazing.

Farney is based at KSU’s Southeast Agricultural Research Center in Parsons. She grew up in Fort Sumner, New Mexico where her family had a cow-calf operation.

She completed her associate’s degree in agriculture from Butler Community College where she was a member of the livestock judging team and then continued her education at KSU in animal science.

Farney attended Oklahoma State University to complete her master’s degree in ruminant nutrition with an emphasis on receiving calf management.

She returned to KSU to complete her doctorate in ruminant nutrition, using the dairy cow as the model for how inflammation impacts production.

Farney’s research interests include alternative forages and management practices to improve cowherd efficiency.