Editorial Policy
This page explains how LivestockFarming.org is put together. What we publish, where the information comes from, how it gets checked, and what happens when we get something wrong.
We wrote it so you can judge the site instead of taking it on trust.
Last reviewed: 10/03/2026
What this site is
LivestockFarming.org is an independent reference for people raising animals in the United States. The audience runs from four goats on two acres to a few thousand head on contract.
Extension services and animal science departments publish a great deal of solid research. The problem is where it sits. It is scattered across state publications, split by species and by system, and written for producers who already have the vocabulary.
We gather that work and organize it by species. Figures get translated to the scale you actually work at, with the service that published them named alongside.
Six species are covered: beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses.
What this site is not
We are not a farm. Nobody here keeps animals and reports results from them. You will not find a first-person keeping claim, a claimed location, or an invented producer quote on this site.
We are not veterinarians. On a site about large animals that line matters enough to get a section of its own, which comes next.
We do not test products. Equipment coverage comes from manufacturer documentation, published specifications, and patterns across verified buyer feedback. Where a point rests on owner reports rather than a spec sheet, the article says so.
We are not a replacement for your extension office. They know your county, your forage, and the parasite pressure moving through your area this season. This site is a starting point, not the last word.
Where our guidance stops
Getting something wrong here does not cost a season of yield. It costs an animal, and sometimes a herd. Three rules follow from that, and they apply to every page on the site.
We describe. We do not diagnose. An article can explain what bloat looks like, when it usually happens, and which pasture conditions bring it on. It cannot tell you that is what your animal has. Several conditions present alike, and with a large animal the wrong guess costs time the animal may not have. A sick animal needs a vet, not a search result.
We publish no drug doses. Many livestock medications in the United States require a veterinary prescription or a Veterinary Feed Directive. Others carry meat and milk withdrawal periods set by the product and the species. Getting either one wrong puts food into the chain that should not be there. Dosing comes from the label and from your veterinarian, and nowhere else.
Species are not interchangeable. Sheep and goats look similar and are not. A mineral mix formulated for goats carries copper at a level that accumulates in sheep and kills them. Any guide that treats the two as one animal is dangerous. Ours never does, and every mineral figure names the species it applies to.
Who writes the site
Five people research, write, verify, and edit what you read here. Each covers a defined area, which keeps the sourcing consistent within it. You can see who they are on the About page.
Articles publish under a shared Editorial Team byline. Most guides pass through more than one person, so crediting a single author would misrepresent who did the work. Research, drafting, verification, and editing are often split across the team.
How we choose what to write about
We write for questions producers actually ask. A topic has to clear two tests before it gets written.
Is it a real question? If nobody is asking it, a page answering it serves nobody.
Can we answer it better than what already ranks? If the first page covers it well, we need something specific to add. A stocking rate worked through by region instead of averaged into mush. Breeding dates gathered into one calendar. A mineral difference nobody else spells out. A failure mode that costs people animals every year.
If neither test passes, we do not publish. Filling a content grid is not a reason to write a page.
Where our information comes from
Sources are used in this order.
University extension services. Land grant universities run trials on their own forage, in their own climate, and publish what they find. This is the backbone of the site.
We draw on Oklahoma State Extension, Texas A&M AgriLife, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, Kansas State Extension, Penn State Extension, Iowa State Extension, Cornell CALS, and Virginia Tech Extension, among others.
Federal agencies. USDA NRCS for soil survey and forage production data. USDA APHIS for animal health and disease reporting. USDA NASS for inventory and production statistics. FDA for feed and medication rules, including the Veterinary Feed Directive.
Manufacturer documentation. Product labels, operator manuals, and published specifications, used for equipment and feed coverage.
Aggregated buyer feedback. Patterns across verified purchase reviews, used only for durability and usability points, and always identified as owner reports.
What must carry a source
Any claim that changes by region, species, breed, or system names its source in the sentence where it appears.
That covers stocking rates and carrying capacity, feed and water requirements, mineral and trace element levels, gestation lengths and breeding windows, weaning and market ages, growth and production figures, parasite and disease thresholds, and equipment specifications.
Attribution sits in the text, not in a footnote. You should see which service backs a number while you are reading it.
Every mineral, feed, and medication figure also names the species it applies to. That rule has no exceptions here.
How a figure gets verified
Every number is opened in the publication it cites and checked before the article goes live. Not a summary of it. Not a secondary article quoting it. The publication itself.
If a claim cannot be traced to a named source, it comes out of the draft. A shorter guide beats a confident one built on something we could not confirm.
Verification happens before publication, never after. That is the whole reason the order matters.
When sources disagree
Extension services test on their own forage, under their own rainfall. They do not always reach the same number.
Stocking rate shows this better than anything else on the site. One cow and calf need roughly 1.5 to 2 acres of pasture for a season in Georgia. In the Nebraska Sandhills it is 8 to 12. In western Wyoming it can be 25 to 40. The same animal, the same question, and a twentyfold spread in the answer.
Where that happens we give the range and name every service involved. An averaged stocking rate would be wrong in Georgia and dangerous in Wyoming.
When the research is thin
Some questions have no published answer. Newer breed crosses, small-scale dairy, and shifting parasite resistance often fall into that gap.
We say so. A guide that states its limit is more useful than one that fills the space with a guess.
How we write about welfare
Welfare is not treated as an optional extra here.
Where a common practice is legal but hard on animals, the article says so plainly. Where a less painful method exists and the research supports it, we name it. Where the research is genuinely split, we say that rather than picking the comfortable side.
We are not an advocacy site and we do not campaign. We also do not write around the parts that are difficult.
How we cover products
Equipment guides follow stricter rules than the rest of the site. The risk of overstating is higher there.
- We do not claim hands-on testing, because we do not do it
- Specifications come from manufacturer documentation, not from other review sites
- Durability and usability points come from patterns across verified buyer feedback, and say so
- We name honest drawbacks, not decorative ones
- We do not publish prices, because they change faster than we can update them
- We do not link to prescription products or Veterinary Feed Directive feeds, and we publish no doses
- Every mineral, feed, and supplement link names the species it is for
If we cannot document a claim about a product, it does not appear.
How we make money, and what it does not buy
Some pages contain affiliate links. If you buy through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Our affiliate disclosure covers it in full.
No company pays for placement, for a rating, or for coverage. Nobody outside the editorial team sees an article before it publishes. A product that falls short gets written up as falling short, link or no link.
We do not accept sponsored posts, paid guest posts, or link placements.
Corrections and updates
Corrections. If we publish something wrong, we fix it. A correction states what changed and which source the fix came from. We do not quietly edit a figure and leave the page looking untouched.
Updates. Labels change. Withdrawal periods change. Extension recommendations get revised. When a source we cite is revised, the article gets revised with it.
Reporting an error. Send the page address and the figure to editor@livestockfarming.org. Telling us which publication you are comparing against speeds it up considerably.
A reader correction is a favor, not a complaint. Stocking rates and forage figures shift by region more than almost anything in farming, and the people on that ground catch things first.
Review schedule
Guides covering time-sensitive material get checked at least once a year. That covers anything citing a medication label, a withdrawal period, a mineral requirement, or a feed rule.
Articles on settled material, such as how long a ewe carries a lamb, get reviewed when a source changes or a reader flags something.
Images
Photographs show real animals, real pasture, and real equipment. We never present a person as the site’s author or as a producer speaking for the site. No such person exists.
Diagrams and charts are built from the same sourced figures used in the article they sit in.
Questions about this policy
Write to editor@livestockfarming.org. If something here is unclear, that is worth knowing.