Blkbuckaroo said:
Hereford,happy calving hope that montana weather is starting to shape up in your favor!!Nice animals.
Yeah - its shaping up real nice. Not a flake all winter and this hits right when my cows are synchronized and due to start calving.
check out this link - shows what blew in late last night. Scroll down to the videos section and click on March 29, 2008.
http://www.ngrbulls.com/drh_photo_gallery.htm
I had to shot this video this morning to send to my dad. He's always giving me a hard time about how much easier I have it than he did growing up. He's got his feet up in a nice toasty house in the Flathead valley - while I get to deal with this.
I will take it though - as long as it doesn't last more than three days. I don't care how tough a hereford is after three days of this it will kill calves. We have had April storms like this for a few years now and last season I plum could not find a three day old calf in a storm just like this one. June of 2001 we had a three day storm just like this one that dumped 14 inches of snow and on the fourth day it rained 4 plus inches. Seems like extremes around here any more - bone dry all year and then something like this. Atleast this should get the grass going.
This all brings to mind an issue I have heard a lot of people talking about not only on this site but in person. Everyone claims to run cattle ruff and their cattle are this and that. There are only a hand full of purebred breeders that I know of that run cattle the way I do and make their cattle keep their own. The cows in that video get "ruffed" out all winter as I say it. When we say we don't spoil our cows that is exactly what I mean. In the last four winters I have fed 120 purebred cows less than 40 round bales combined. When I bring cows home in mid March to the calving pastures that the cow are on in that video I split off the heifers and calve them around the barn and they get self choice hay - nothing else. Then when their calves are 10 days old they go right back out with the cow herd. I guess my point in sharing this is that I have always thought that purebred herds run like this is the way it should be. There are no hiding spots for a poor cow in any aspect in this setting. How do you really know what you have for cows if their environment is provided for them. Sprinklers over their backs all summer, with creep feeders, everything they need within a 100 feet no matter where they are in a pasture. That part of the purebred buisness has always puzzled me. I can't understand taking home genetics out of the bottom half of most places like that.
Am I crazy or does anyone else feel that way?