Farm and Dairy’s week in review: 9/20

Here are this week’s top stories from Farm and Dairy:

1. 2014 Farm Science Review: Farm and Dairy’s live coverage

This year’s Farm Science Review took place Sept. 16-18. Over 131,000 people came to the grounds to see thousands of products and hundreds of commercial exhibitors.

Editor Susan Crowell and reporters Kristy Foster Seachrist, Chris Kick and Brian Lisik took to the grounds to take photographs, record videos and report the latest news about crops, water initiatives and more.

2. What does the future hold for your gas royalties? A new app may be able to tell you

A team from Penn State has developed an app that can help to estimate royalties for oil and gas. In order to create the app, over 4,000 horizontal shale wells were analyzed for production.

While initial production from a well is used for estimates of future production, production rate can vary due to geology, the length of the wellbore and number of stages completed.

3. Fall facts: 12 things you may not know about autumn

What causes a tree’s leaves to change colors? And what connection does Greek mythology have to autumn?

Answer these questions by reading a list of fall facts that range from animal habits to seasonal customs. You never know what you might learn!

4. Ohio farm families honored for conservation efforts

At the Farm Science Review on Sept. 18, five farms were given the Ohio Conservation Farm Family Award. This honor is given to families who use methods like cover crops, drainage structures and nutrient management to help water quality.

The five farms represent the five soil and water conservation districts in Ohio. The Conservation Farm Family Award began in 1984. To date, 161 families have received the award.

5. Utica shale: Quarterly production reports show boom

During the second quarter of 2014, Ohio’s shale wells produced over 2.4 million barrels of oil and 86.8 Mcf (million cubic feet) of natural gas, which is a 30 percent increase from the previous quarter.

Two of the “sweet spots” of the Utica can be found in Monroe County, where a natural gas well produced 1.4 Bcf (billion cubic feet), and in Noble County, where an oil well produced 78,309 barrels of oil in the second quarter alone.