From the Barns: Water is a necessity

Being prepared for winter is something you always think you’ve done until the reality of subzero arrives. The shop furnace doesn’t break when you don’t run it, water fountains don’t freeze when it’s warm out, diesel doesn’t gel above freezing and so forth. The most troubling thing for us in winter is making sure all the cattle have water. The barn has a flow-through feature — no electric heaters — to keep the water thawed out. This system works great as long as the electricity or the pumps keep working. Inevitably, on the coldest night of the year, something goes haywire. Last week, when it was warm, we started having pump issues, and with the forecast looking constantly gloomier we installed a new pump and so far have avoided any major wrecks.

The other thing we completed was our pressure washer trailer. We stole this idea from Bradshaw’s Custom Pumping crew. The trailer holds our hot water pressure washer and a 300-gallon water tank and is semi-permanently attached to a pickup, so it’s ready to go at a moment’s notice. Having an unlimited amount of hot water at the ready when you’re faced with thawing 30-some waterers beats dragging hot water from the house two or three gallons at a time. Not a fun job ever, worse at -5, but doable if you figure out how to put enough horsepower behind it.

We caught wind of a big grain bin fire from Matt down at Briney Brothers Grain Handling Experts. I made a trip over to the fire to see if there might be some damaged grain available for cattle feed. Most of the time there’s a little smoke and brown corn, but this time the bin was really tall and the fire inside was truly biblical. I had a visual that only Daniel and his three friends could appreciate.

The elevator folks and the local fire department did a great job and salvaged a ton of corn, which we bought, and then we went to work with some great trucking guys from Chatterton’s and Russell’s and moved the whole mountain to the feedlot. We wanted to get the corn processed ASAP, and our everyday grain mill could by no means keep pace with the trucks, so a couple of times Matt showed up with his monster tub grinder and cut the pile down to size.

It’s been somewhat troubling to see that monster pile disappearing day by day, but we do have a lot of big cattle on feed right now, and with the corn and feed market running to places not seen in recent memory, every little bit of help is a good thing.

The weather has been really good for feeding cattle and feed consumption and health has been excellent. We have been steadily weaning and processing our ranch calves and are ready for the last big push as soon as the weather gets right. Our standard deal once the calves have been revaccinated for two weeks is to gather and wean the calves one day and then preg-check and vaccinate the cows the following morning.

So far, the guys have chosen wisely and picked only two-day windows of 40- to 50-degree temps and it’s been great. We’ve saved the biggest group for last and are now looking for the right weather and vet availability. Beating the mud doesn’t seem too hard right now as everything is frozen really nice, but we know the mud season is inevitable and the calendar tells us it’s coming fast, so we are poised to finish weaning at the very next opportunity.

Wheat fields are usually greening up by mid-March and that doesn’t seem too far away. With this COVID thing sort of on the run, and folks getting vaccinated as fast as possible, I’m prayerfully optimistic that by summer we can return to a more normal lifestyle. I think everybody is ready for a backyard barbecue and a night out at a restaurant. We need to get these cattle ready for market. There’s a ton of people ready to celebrate, and we need to be ready to provide the beef so they can. Stay safe. There’s light at the end of the tunnel — hope it’s not a train!