Left the ranch to go check cattle

[Soapweed]

Lady and the tramp

Getting ready to go tag calves

Bookkeeper, tag maker, tag putter-inner

The two-year-olds that haven't calved

Two-year-olds and their calves

Must have been a Maine Anjou in the woodpile

Enjoying life

Hay hauler

Leaving Nebraska

Looking back into Nebraska from the South Dakota side

Spearhead yearling heifers wintering at a neighbor's place

Some of the girls

More heifers

Geese on golden pond

More Spearhead heifers wintering at a different neighbor's place

Getting ground hay and a little corn

Some of our home-raised bulls also wintering there

More bulls

 

[Tap]

Now you're cooking Soapweed. More very good pictures. Those bulls look like thick well made cattle. And you baby calves look real filled out and square for calves of that age. Good work.

I got initiated into this years calving season today. We brought some real nice heifers closer to home yesterday, that we had purchased from a neighbor. They really shouldn't calve for another week or so, but today we had two calve. One early this morning, that was a surprise, and one late this afternoon. She was calving while I fed the rest some hay, close to one of our headquarters. I drove the tractor over by her to see how she was doing, and saw that the calf had a foot back. So I had my horse with me over there, and got her in a headcatch at the end of a board alley. I got the foot coming right, and pulled the calf by hand easily, but the calf bed came right out with the calf. I got some help and we sewed her up hanging from the tractor bucket in the headlights. :roll: Guess the heifers will be coming home here tomorrow where I have some facilities.

So goes another day in the ranching business.

 

[Tap]

Anybody have any good ideas on how to get a heifer that didn't get a chance to bond with here calf right at the first, to take her calf? I suckled the calf tonite, but she is not to crazy about him. :???:

I don't have any ace or other drugs around here to give her.

 

[Faster horses]

A hard pull or problems sure interferes with a heifers idea of a good time and they don't like their babies much at those times.

Let's see. We have put the calf in the next pen so they know they are there and decide they want them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Rompum works most times, sometimes it doesn't, and you don't have any anyway.

Do you have a dog with you? Put the dog in there and see if it brings up the maternal instinct in the cow. Or go in and bark like a dog yourself... :wink:

I guess you will have to keep suckling the calf until it smells more like momma. Cross your fingers...

Sorry that happened right off the bat, Tap.

 

[Faster horses]

Really nice cattle, Soapweed. Gotta love those calves off the 2-year olds. What did you breed them to?

Enjoyed the pictures, as usual!!!!

 

[Jason]

I like the length the first bull picture shows even if the EPD's are hidden :wink:

I agree the calves off the 2 yr olds look great.

I notice you are calving heifers at the same time as the cows. I do as well, but lots of guys say calve them first so they have longer to rebreed with the rest of the cows.

The heifers are also seperate, how much more groceries do they get? The hay they are munching on looks better than the cows get.

 

[Soapweed]

Tap, do you have any O-No-Mo? It is a powder to put on the calf. The cow likes to lick the powder, and it gets them started licking and liking the calf. We go through the stuff like candy, but it is one product that has definitely made ranching easier. Another thing I'd hate to go through calving without, is an esophagul milk feeder. This works good to drench the calf, if they lack the luster to suck. We just use powdered colostrum. Usually one feeding will get their taste buds functioning to the point of sucking the second time.

Our heifers were synchronized and AI'ed. This was done on May 15, 16, and 17. We turned bulls out with our cows on May 18, 20, and 21. Consequently, our heifers were calving pretty steady all through that bitter cold week, and then the cows started the next week after the weather warmed up. We are sure going to lose some ears on the heifers' calves. They were all born inside the barn, but it wasn't heated.

We have kept the heifers separate from the older cows. The heifers get our very best hay, and the heavy cows get our worst hay. After the cows calve, we give them better hay. All of the cows and heifers get two pounds of 35% cake per day, and extra magnesium was added to the last load of cake. It is easier getting magnesium into the cows in cake form than it is trying to get them to eat the bitter tasting mineral. Of course, the magnesium is to fend off grass tetany when the new green grass starts to grow.

 

[George]

Now my Gravel pit ownership is going to show.

Do you have high mag lime available in your area???? I really push good fert test with trace mineral analis. Many times limeing with hi mag lime every three years will really help if not eliminate grass tetany and has many other benifits as well. Getting the cows to eat the porper mineral is not hard if it is part of a year round program.

But while I know this is an option in this area I have know idea if it is even available in other areas.

 

[Soapweed]

The only "fertilizer" that our ranch gets, is what the cattle naturally deposit. It is the inexpensive easy way out, and is completely in tune with nature. :wink:

 

[Mike]

The only "fertilizer" that our ranch gets, is what the cattle naturally deposit. It is the inexpensive easy way out, and is completely in tune with nature. :wink:

Are you saying that you never have to fertilize the grass "Hayfields"? Not even Nitrogen?

Down here after a few seasons of hay cutting, the nutrients are long gone.

 

[ranchwife]

nice pix, soapweed and some mighty fine looking bovine!! Looks like some good help ya got there, too! :wink:

 

[Soapweed]

The only "fertilizer" that our ranch gets, is what the cattle naturally deposit. It is the inexpensive easy way out, and is completely in tune with nature. :wink:

Are you saying that you never have to fertilize the grass "Hayfields"? Not even Nitrogen?

Down here after a few seasons of hay cutting, the nutrients are long gone.

We graze cattle on the hayfields after our one cutting is baled and yarded. We also feed hay on the meadows in the wintertime. Some ranchers do apply commercial fertilizer, but probably most do not.

 

[Mike]

The only "fertilizer" that our ranch gets, is what the cattle naturally deposit. It is the inexpensive easy way out, and is completely in tune with nature. :wink:

Are you saying that you never have to fertilize the grass "Hayfields"? Not even Nitrogen?

Down here after a few seasons of hay cutting, the nutrients are long gone.

We graze cattle on the hayfields after our one cutting is baled and yarded. We also feed hay on the meadows in the wintertime. Some ranchers do apply commercial fertilizer, but probably most do not.

That amazes me! Cows grazing on a pasture do not remove much of the nutrients in the soil. Especially if hay is brought in and released in the manure. But to be able to cut hay year after year on a field and still produce any viable quantities befuddles me.

How does your hay test for protein? Nitrogen and Protein are directly proportional. May be that if you nitrated the hayfield you might not need to feed as much cake and get more hay also. Of course at today's prices....you might go in the hole too!

 

[Faster horses]

I can concurr with Soapweed. We do not fertilize either. You guys might need to remember, we don't get the moisture you do and that might have some bearing on this. I do know that putting nitrogen on an old field of crested wheatgrass does boost yields. But when it gets to that point, usually everyone around here just farms it again. I'm sure your yield per acre is much higher than ours. We cover a lot of ground to get enough hay. We have a 21' swather to do the job efficiently as possible. Looking at Soapweeds pictures, I think his yields are better than ours.

And you need moisture when you fertilize. In our area that is usually the limiting factor.

In the Big Hole Valley in Montana, their hay at one time was the best in the world. Many years ago the story is that they took hay to the World's Fair back east and won with it. Today, that valley has had so much water ran through it that the hay doesn't have much nutrition in it. The Big Hole Valley is a big swamp, more or less. Beautiful, but tends to be swampy in the bottom lands and of poor quality.

 

[Jason]

Mike you need to consider the rainfall and amount of hay produced as well. The further North you head the less growing days are available.

You have put out your last hay bale while we won't be able to say that until well into May and usually June 1.

In Nebraska those sandhills get a fair bit of rain, and the grass grows fairly quickly, but not fast enough to cut multiple times for hay. The result is hay that has good volume and good protien if cut early enough. The grass that matures and dries off is basically like straw (see Faster Horses post in the hay thread).

Come further North into the short grass area and our grass doesn't achieve near the volume, but it is hard and doesn't lose its value when it dries off.

We can grow alfalfa where in the deep South it just rots. The alfalfa from this area is world class with protien as high as 24%. Alfalfa blends provide their own N for hayground.

Root mass from grass growth is available to provide the natural nitrogen cycle. And as Soapweed mentioned feeding out on pastures or meadows adds cow manure. A recent study shows there can be 50 pounds of N per acre more added by feeding on the ground. The cow urine is a major source of N lost in confined feeding.

I have had the fortune to compare differences in hay and pasture from Texas and Mississippi to the sandhills around Alliance to back in Alberta. Some things are the same everywhere (it's the bottom line that counts) but hay and feed availability varies widely. Along with traits in people that they are afraid to try something new because the neighbors might laugh at them.

I have seen Burmuda grass come off with 16% protien, but the volume suffered to a point where it wasn't econonically viable to try to get the highest protien from that grass. Waiting for volume cut the protien to 13%, still more than cows need but marginal for young calves.

The other difference between the deep South and farther North is the size of pastures hayfields etc... Soap has a mess of cows and no doubt more than a few pastures of hundreds plus acres. West Texas is the only South area that would rival acreages, but they are dry. In the high rainfall areas that get 4 cuts of hay per year as normal, can run 1 pair per acre, maybe 2 pairs with fertilizer. I can run 1 pair per 8 acres for the summer.

 

[Jinglebob]

Mike you need to consider the rainfall and amount of hay produced as well. The further North you head the less growing days are available.

Yes you and i get less days, but we also get longer days of sunshine. when does the sun rise and set about June 21, jason.

I have a friend about 150 m iles north of me, by medora. He would be about the same laditude or longitude(I never remember which is which) as Faster Horses. I am always amazed at much shorter their grass growth is than ours in the spring. But then it catches up and I think they get about the same amount of forage growth, on compareable land, as we do.

Not many fertalize around here either and most are careful to only graze hay ground, after a hard frost and getting them off early in the spring.

I grazed my hay ground late one year, all but one patch that wasn't fenced, from the road. The next year it all was fenced and we hayed it all. I was sureprised that there were very similar yields, until I factored in the fertalizer that the cattle were spreading.

Grazing is good for the ground, if done right. Arpund here at least, tho' I'm sure there are variations, in different soil types and amount of rainfall. What works here at a given time, probably wouldn't work in Soapweeds, country, at the same time of year.

We have a pasture that is about 200 acres. It is mostly, high, sandy, rocky soil. Mostly crested wheat grass. Dad always made me get the cows off early in the spring so we could hay it. On a good year, we'd get about 3/4 of a ton to the acre. It was always rough and bouncy to hay, from all of the clumps of the crested.

When I took over the ranch, we had a dry spring, so I left the cattle on it 'till it looked like I'd farmed it. I thought that if I ruined it, I would just have to farm it up and replant. It helped me stay off the rest until it was in better shape and had grew up more.

The crested greened up at the first rains and it was amazing how smooth the field got. Didn't seem to diminish the yeilds nearly as much as I had thought. I found it was the best thing to do to old, rough crested ground.

I've tried to let my cattle do the farming, ever since. :wink:

 

[katrina]

I wonder do to the fact that the water rises in the spring on the meadows, then lowers till fall then rises again makes any differance. Soap your meadows get soft right?? Ours did, early spring you couldn't ride a horse across with sinking to their bellys. Yet in July a guy could go in and harvest the hay with very few problems. ONly to realize you have to get your hay yarded early fall as to the water would rise again.........

 

[George]

I feel the high cost of ground around here would cause people to fert more. It seems almost any ground is bringing from $3,000 to $5,000 per acre. If you pay that muchyou need to maximise the output.

Now even if you don't apply much fert do you check for lime needs????

If your PH gets out of wack you can grow great tonnages but many of the needs of the cow will not be met.

In most of the areas where a grass ( corn is a grass) we seem to need hi mag lime but in aeas where legumes ( alfalfa, clover, soybeans ) we need a hi cal lime. And while fert cost are thru the roof lime is still a bargan. Most times it will pay for itself in the first year of a three year program. Also lime will cut the application rates for herbicides ar the need to clip pastures as most weeds will not tolerate the sweet soil.

 

[Jason]

As for the soil science, I have not had to opportunity to see soil tests from anywhere but in Alberta.

As you get closer to the mountians the calcium levels are much higher. I have seen land with over 7000 pounds of calcium per acre.

In my area the PH stays high, just its natural balance I guess as I have tried almost everything to lower it. Lots of raw manure will lower it but it takes a pile.

Pushing the chemical fertilizer through the ground has had side effects that many don't realize. It has depleted the natural N cycle and the P cycle is starting to suffer. Much of the P applied ties up soon after application.

On good moisture years, the fertilizer still shows a boost, but on drier years the fert even in small amounts is burning the ground. With the cost of fertilizer climbing (N is close to $500 a ton here) the benefits are becoming questionable. ( Although much land won't produce without fertilizer anymore) The key is going to be finding the new (old) technologies that help the soil do what it has done naturally for thousands of years, build organic matter and decompose it for N release.

A healthy soil will respond better to chemical fertilizer as it still takes microbes to convert Urea into a plant available source. But chemical fertilizer is hard on the same microbes it needs to work.

There are commercially available microbe packages that help "mine" or release tied up P in the soil. Chemical companies are working with this "technology" but it has been occuring naturally since the soil was put there.

 

[Jinglebob]

The key is going to be finding the new (old) technologies that help the soil do what it has done naturally for thousands of years, build organic matter and decompose it for N release.

I feel the key is in letting cows do what is natural. Eat the forage and poop out the fertalizer. Been working out in these parts since the buffalo roamed. :wink: