MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — An anti-Semitic poster was put up on campus at Kansas State University during Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Kansas State Associate Vice President Steve Logback tells the Manhattan Mercury that the university was alerted to the poster through social media that Monday morning and removed it from the telephone pole it was attached to.

Logback says the situation was an unauthorized posting and, as far as he knows, an isolated incident.

Greg Newmark, co-adviser of the university’s Jewish student organization, says he doesn’t believe the person behind the poster knew the significance of Holocaust Remembrance Day. He says the incident only highlights the purpose behind having such a holiday, which is “to not forget how quickly hate speech can become (dangerous).”

Logback says that university police are currently investigating the incident.

Cottonwood Falls, Kan. – Symphony in the Flint Hills just gave its audience another good reason to stay late on June 10. Following the sunset concert at Geary County’s Deer Horn Ranch, attendees can swing under the prairie sky to the western tunes of legendary Austin trio Hot Club of Cowtown.

“This is just one of the many surprises we’ve been working on to bring our Chisholm Trail theme to life,” said Christy Davis, executive director for Symphony in the Flint Hills. “The band’s most recent album Midnight on the Trail is a celebration of cowboy culture that has captured imaginations since droves of Texas cattle made their way to Kansas after the Civil War.”

For two decades, Hot Club of Cowtown has charmed audiences worldwide with its “down-home melodies and exuberant improvisation” (The Times, London). The trio has toured with Bob Dylan and opened for Willie Nelson. This international sensation also boasts some Kansas roots. The trio’s fiddler, Elana James, grew up in Prairie Village. She picked up the violin at the age of four – likely with the urging of her mother, who played for the Kansas City Symphony.

Hot Club of Cowtown will cap-off the day-long event, which includes presentations about the Chisholm Trail, covered wagon rides, cowboy poetry, stargazing and prairie art. The sunset concert will feature the Kansas City Symphony with special guest, country western singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey, who will share his passion for cowboy culture and grasslands conservation

Limited general admission tickets and patron packages remain for this year’s event. Both can be purchased at www.symphonyintheflinthills.org or by calling 620-273-8955.

TODAY
20%	High	51°	Cooler. Mostly cloudy. A 20 percent chance of rain showers in the morning. Highs in the lower 50s. North winds 10 to 20 mph.

MANHATTAN, Kan. – Researchers at Kansas State University may just have found a safety net for dairy producers during times of limited water availability or drought.

Graduate research assistant Benjamin Saylor is reporting findings of a study showing that teff hay has the potential to replace alfalfa and corn silage in the diets of lactating dairy cows.

Teff is a warm-season grass native to Ethiopia, where the grain is also used for human consumption. Due to its physiology, it is well-suited to drought conditions.

The university’s feeding trials with high-producing dairy cows included a control diet and two alternative formulations of the teff diet.

“In terms of intake, milk yield and milk fat percentage, there was no significant difference seen among the three diets,” Saylor said. “The only significant difference we saw was the two teff diets resulted in milk that had significantly higher protein concentrations.”

It’s a surprise finding in that teff grass is relatively high in fiber and somewhat lower in protein. “You wouldn’t look at the nutrients and say this is an exceptional forage, compared to something like alfalfa,” Saylor said.

But in the feeding trials, “it performed well,” he added.

The three diets were formulated for similar dry matter, crude protein and starch concentration. The researchers monitored the cows for dry matter intake, milk and component production, body weight, body condition score and other indicators of performance.

“When you go into something like that, it’s easy to say, ‘well no one is going to adopt this because everyone has been feeding ‘XYZ’ forever,’” said Barry Bradford, professor of animal sciences and industry, who supervised the project.

“For me an important initial spark for this was five to six years ago. A really well-respected dairy nutrition consultant who was working with some big herds in western Kansas, called me one day and said that we need to do something different with those herds long-term. He asked, ‘Are you guys doing anything on more water-efficient forages we can potentially use down the road?’”

Bradford said that helped to lead him and Saylor to this project, which is part of a larger collaboration with researchers in agronomy, agricultural economics and geography.

Doohong Min, an assistant professor of agronomy at K-State, was the lead investigator on a $70,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the viability of teff as a dairy forage, Bradford said.

Min coordinated a greenhouse study that helped to set the foundation for the feeding trials. In the greenhouse study, the researchers grew 240 teff grass samples to determine the effects of seed variety and the best time to harvest teff for yield, quality and digestibility.

They found that seed variety did not make a difference, and that in greenhouse conditions, cutting teff at 45 to 50 days after planting was the best time to optimize yield and quality.

The researchers are now working to incorporate an economic analysis, which could shed light on whether it would be profitable for producers to convert land to teff grass to help offset future water shortages.

“I think one of the main limiting factors is that teff has not been grown in field situations across the United States,” Saylor said. “Prior to the greenhouse study, there’s just not enough data for a farmer to say, ‘okay, if I plant this, this is the minimum yield I’m going to get.’ It’s just uncertain. Some additional field trials need to be done across the United States, looking at rain-fed and irrigated fields. We need more data.”

But, he added: “We see in the future that this might be a significant issue. There are industry people that are expressing interest, and the idea is to get some preliminary work done prior to a (severe drought) event. If that time comes, we can provide industry with some options without scrambling.”

Saylor’s work on this project is helping him to complete a master’s degree at Kansas State. He plans to continue his studies in dairy cattle nutrition while pursing a doctoral degree at the University of Florida next fall.