From the Barn: Hay crop is light

It was my great honor to act as the officiant at my grandson Ian’s wedding last weekend to Tabitha, the dairy princess, from Wisconsin. Our outfit all traveled north a few hours and left Janet, the cattle feeder, in charge for the weekend. No phone calls meant no problems, so all evidently went well and now we are back to the normal chaos of day-to-day life here at the ranch.

Our crew is pretty widely dispersed this week, with guys at football camp, church camp and honeymoon all at the same time. Prioritizing our various projects will require a little management. I see bulldozers, scrapers and various dirt-working tools heading out to distant ranch locations, so I expect prep work for the guys’ return is underway.

Our cropping work is on hold until the wheat comes out, and a little precipitation would certainly benefit all we have achieved so far this spring. Pastures are looking pretty good so far, but rainfall will determine how successful the grazing season turns out. Calving has been pretty much normal and is about to be wrapped up, with our initial calf management right around the corner.

The first hay crop is pretty light, and without moisture the second won’t be worth the bother. I expect the guys will just graze it off and rely on corn silage for our winter cow feed.

We have been culling the cow herd pretty hard lately, so I purchased some replacement heifers to supplement our own home-raised heifers and get our total available female numbers up to a more adequate group. We bought quite a few low birthweight bulls to use on the heifers and I’m excited to see the results. We will be turning the bulls out next month, and it can’t come soon enough — evenings are quite melodious with the constant bellowing of the bull herd as the boys sense the upcoming breeding season.

Fed cattle marketing has been fun with prices continuing to creep ever higher. Feed cost barely even comes into the conversation. We are certainly in a different place than ever before and managing cash both incoming and outpouring is hard to wrap your head around. If getting in the cattle business was hard before, wow, it’s nuts now.

If you can make your hobby your job, work doesn’t seem to be work at all. That’s the attitude I’ve been taking with my various brush-control projects. Russian olives, given the chance, will cover the entire planet, I’m sure of it. So, killing every one of them is my ultimate goal. Every spare moment and spare dime I can find is focused on their demise.

In all my effort I have determined that killing them standing is the best option. Drones, mist sprayers, basal bark treatment — it doesn’t matter as long as they are dead. Removing the carcass can take place whenever, but getting grass growing back underneath these bushes needs to be the No. 1 goal and total defoliation is the starting place. It’s not cheap, but so, so satisfying. Have a safe summer.