From the Barns: The season of mud

Everyone sure needed to cowboy up this past month. What a ride it has been. According to the meteorologists, we have had the first-ever ride from 80 degrees-plus to below-zero wind chill in a month. Then we almost did it a second time, except it did not drop down quite so low. And that wind? That is certainly challenging weather for beef producers.

We have continued to have a few health problems here with the insurance calves and now we have more mud. That’s right: mud, right here in River Oak — it starts with “M,” it rhymes with “flood” and it’s trouble, right here in River Oak. Oh, my, I didn’t really mean to take off spoofing that good old-time musical song about pool and trouble, but we do have a big change, maybe, in the works. Some mud, some flooding, some simple challenges brought on by some real downpours and quite a bit of runoff. Just hoping we continue in that mode some more to fill our eight ponds for cattle watering during the grazing season.

And, speaking of the grazing season, we are watching the cereal rye closely to have a proper turn-in for the feeder calves. I feel it will be a real challenge to keep up with the growth of 65 acres with the 200-plus calves we will have available, then pull them back somewhere while we kill the cereal rye and get the sorghum-sudangrass seeded and growing. My inexperience on that scenario will be of little or no help to Carson. I guess we can always rely on the fallback to mechanical adjustments.

The permanent pastures are all looking good, but then suffer from the low nighttime temperatures. We finally had to remove the remaining cows from winter pasture due to green growth beginning. March 25 was a new record for us to winter graze stockpiled fescue with only a couple of days of round bale roll out all winter. One negative there, I am certain we will see no red clover in the two paddocks we did not get winter grazed. Too much fescue residue leaves little space for red clover, frost seeded, to germinate and compete.

Carson has a new feed storage area with geotextile, gravel and lime already in use with a round bale perimeter. It holds some good piles of shucklage, ground hay and gluten or distillers. As simple as that all is, it has worked well to feed all the calves every day. That is an impressive modern-day jump from small bales and buckets of grain in my day to a system that can feed five times as many calves in less time and minimal physical effort. Maybe the new generation of beef producers won’t be suffering from joint pain when they reach old age.

As usual, my same caution for spring grazing. Don’t start turnout too early. Too early results in damaged forage and killed or stunted plants and a long-lasting reduction in production. And stay safe and sane.