From the Barns: Constant improvement

Always start out with the weather and I guess no major complaints this past month. Haven’t received a lot of rain, but we did get one good one — 2.8 inches — over a three-day span. I guess the experts would say we are dry, but we aren’t super dry. This time of year I tend to get nervous that it might start raining and not quit for six months. Temperatures been mostly good and we have had some really nice, traditional fall days to work in and enjoy.

We finally were able to get our wheat sown, albeit later than we had hoped, but we just had to wait for the right conditions to get it in the ground. We ended up doing some with the drill and some broadcast with fertilizer and disked in. After we got some rain, we decided to go ahead and drill the ground that had not been worked up. Then, after it dried up enough, we ran the disk over the worked ground again, broadcast the seed, disked it in lightly and then rolled it gently. The drilled seed sprouted quickly and looks like a really nice stand. The disked-in seed was slow to come up, so we were concerned maybe we had planted it too deep, but finally it made its way up and that is looking very good, as well. So, now if we get good growing conditions, we should have a lot of wheat pasture to graze next spring and, depending on the weather, maybe we can get on it sooner.

Over the past two weeks we finally got to do our pregnancy checks. We spent one long, hard day doing all of the 150 heifers, then the 200 cows we ended up spreading out over a three-day period. Don’t know that we’ve taken the time to fully analyze the results, but my initial thoughts are that we came up not as good as expected. Not sure if it could have been the extreme heat and dry spells that we encountered, or maybe didn’t get enough nutrition in them at the right time, or perhaps something else. A lot of things to look at and we never quit trying to solve problems and figure out what could we have done better.

Every female got vaccinated and dewormed and hauled off to winter pasture. That is sure going to alleviate a lot of the feeding with the total mixed ration, or TMR. The open heifers are now in the feedlot and transitioning to a finishing ration. The open cows that were culled are heading to the sale barn tomorrow.

Feeder cattle numbers are still down, but we did place around 100 head of calves we purchased off two different farms that are using our genetics. Super nice calves, and we have them processed and started on their growing diet. Had to treat several from the first bunch. Right after we kicked them out of the receiving barn, we got that big rain and cool temps that seemed to hit them hard. I think we are past the worst of that.

Fat cattle sales have slowed as we are staying current on marketings. We were the beneficiary of these high market prices and grateful for that. Upcoming just a few scattered loads between now and the end of the year.

Recently had our yearling bulls ultrasounded for carcass trait merit and waiting the results of that. On the same day, we got the second round of vaccination into the yearling heifers that are going to be bred in December, and dewormed, as well. Hope they are cleaned out and ready to go. They sure are looking good on a limited amount of pasture and feed.