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Red cattle, Black cattle

Faster horses

Well-known member
Here are some photos I took last week while going to a branding.
These are commercial Red Angus cattle from our area. They are good ones and I thought worth a slot on ranchers.net. The genetics in these cattle are from Milk Creek Reds, Bruce and Tena Ketchum, but the cattle belong to Donald and Laurie MacKay.

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These are our yearling replacement heifers. Not the best pictures because I was shooting into the sun. They were fed hay and mineral this winter. Nothing else.
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Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
Pretty country and nice cattle.

FH you don't have to answer if you don't want to but would you have moved if you had found out about Vigor Tone before hand?
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
That is an interesting question, BMR. Mr. FH and I have visited about it several times. The answer would be probably not. We left because we could not stand to doctor the cattle any longer. We had reached the point where we had to change something and we couldn't get any answers as to what was going on with our calves being so sick constantly, so the only other option was to try ranching someplace else, or quit altogether. I know Mr. FH says he wishes we would have known about Vigortone when we were in W. Montana.

We had always wanted a bigger place and it wasn't in the cards for us to do it in W. Montana. But with the calves having such a problem every year, we weren't sure we wanted a place at all. We did leave because we thought we were leaving a problem, only to have it dog us over here and show up in our first sping here, the spring of 1993. Now that was a sickening feeling, I can tell you. Here we moved 500 miles and the problem was still with us. It was 1994 when we saw the improvement, AFTER we got on the mineral.

I'm not kidding you when I say Vigortone changed our life, because we were ready to quit ranching. Thanks to it and the knowledgeable people involved with that company, we have been able to continue ranching and have had basically no problems with our cattle since. I know that we would not/could not ranch without Vigortone mineral. It is the last thing we would do without.

But we aren't sorry we are here. It has worked out very well and we are much closer to our daughter and grandson than if we still lived in W. Montana. We had some wonderful friends and neighbors there, some who have passed away now, and that is hard to think about.

I guess we have added even more friends now, when you consider our friends from Wyoming, W. Montana clear across to SE Montana. It has been interesting and an adventure. Sure could have left out the 8 years of sick cattle though, and that would have made the whole deal a lot more fun!!!!!!!!

We appreciate where we are at and what we get to do when we get up every morning~and that DOES NOT include doctoring cattle that is sick.

Kind of a long-winded answer, but I'm not quite ready to go to bed yet. :wink:
 

EJ

Well-known member
I see in a picture there is a fabric laid down by the tree! Seems that is a is another plus to raiseing trees in that area too. By the way FH I did buy a couple of ton of Vigortone now too.
 

Broke Cowboy

Well-known member
Cattle in the yard!!

:D :D

Front lawn is starting to get away on us - so wife turned some out on the lawn last night. I expect she will run them back in the pen when she gets home from church.

Love that pic. Big time!!!

:D :D

Best regards

B.C.
 

George

Well-known member
You can't imagine how mad my wife and daughter get when I turn the cows in the yard - - - - I do not mow yards but I bought them each new mowers a couple of years ago and if they let it get tall I turn the cows in and laugh when they come home and have to open a gate to get to the house.

I offered to put in a cattle guard if I could leave a few on a regular basis. Normally I only need to do this about once a year and they will keep it mowed the rest of the time.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Actually, those cattle were pictured in the BACK YARD...

And EJ, we just fed mineral. Purina or Cattle-Lac mostly and not all year long. Just during calving mostly so the calves wouldn't eat dirt, which they did. But I look at the formulas they sold us and they were not right at all.
The phos-cal ratio was totally wrong among other things.

We did try Moormans and the cattle wouldn't eat it so that was the end of that. If we rode by and the mineral tubs hadn't been eaten, well, "they didn't need that obviously." Couldn't have been more WRONG. What they needed was a different blend.

But live and learn and I have learned so much...it has now turned into a passion of mine to make sure no one goes through what we did because we could not get ANY ANSWERS. It is a pretty low feeling when you have a problem and you run into one brick wall after another.

So, if what I have to say about mineral helps ONE person, IT WAS WORTH IT!!!
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
Have always found mienral consumption to be darn aggravating. One day I could put out a pound a head and it would be gone. A week later it would never get touched. Had less of a problem with the moormans than I did with a custom blend that we did two years ago that just didn't work.

Right now we are feeding some Kent Mineral until I hear from a couple of other companies on 1) availibility and 2) price. The cows are hitting it very, very hard right now. Of al the minerals I ahve seen I liked the consistancy and smell of the MoorMan's the best.... That stuff just smelled good.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
I still think a lot depends upon your area...A couple of the outfits I've fed cattle for put out only DiCal/Salt-- we for years put out nothing but salt, without any problems- and during the winter they wouldn't touch even that because of the high salt/mineral content of the River bottom wells where they were wintered...

A couple years ago when we started getting moisture and having some good grass years, I ended up with some grass tetany cases- so started putting out a little mineral year around...I have tryed several brands and started using Vigortone last summer- but never have near the suggested consumption rate (except with the molasses flavored lick tubs)- even the Vigortone...

But the cows look great- no illness- and especially no tetany this year, so something is working... Its either the mineral works or the fact that with the price of fertilizer I haven't been fertilizing the hayfields I early pasture on- which I've been told can bring on tetany and cause mineral imbalances......But as long as its working, I'm happy....
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Where we are the cattle never consume the recommended amount in the summer either, yet we have no problems. We leave the mineral out year-round though and are diligent about that. Sometimes it seems the calves eat more than the cows do. But keeping mineral in front of them at all times is the key.

IL rancher, perhaps I can shed some light on consumption. Feeding free-choice mineral can cause you to tear your hair out. That is why we figure the consumption on a year-round basis, not by day, week or even month. There are so many variables as to why cows eat more mineral sometimes than at other times.

One of the most important things to remember is "QUALITY AND QUANTITY OF FORAGE DICTATES MINERAL CONSUMPTION."

In the spring when the grass is green, cattle won't eat as much mineral as they do when the grass turns brown. When the grass is green, it is easy to digest and loaded with good stuff. When it turns brown, it has lost much of it's value and is not nearly as digestible by the cow. In all the ranch trials Vigortone has done, consumption follows the grass curve. We have also figured consumption for many of our customers and they are right on target for the year.

OT, one of the problems you might have with consumption is the alkali in the creeks contains salt, as you mentioned, so if I were you I would try a mineral low in salt or with no salt altogether. We have a customer in the same boat and he is going with the 32APLUS in those pastures. 32APLUS contains no salt. Salt is a limiter so cattle usually won't eat enough mineral anywhere you see salt deposits.

And OT, this mineral will darn sure make a difference in grass tetnany problems. In fact, we sell very little Hi-mag mineral to the folks in this area. A lot of crested is grazed early here with no problems when on a good year-round mineral program. Glad to hear it worked for you!!( I remember the pictures of your cattle you posted this winter and I thought they looked great too!! Good job!!)

Grass tetnany is more apt to occur on tame pastures as they grow faster than native grass.

Enjoyed the discussion. Thanks!! And hope I shed a little light on things.
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
For the winter feeding season we feed wet gluten and other feed in a TMR so we mix a mineral and a Calcium supplement into the feedwagon. Nice way to keep consumption up...

I would have thought that spring grass would need the most mineral supplement as it is so washy. I would think early summer, when the grass slows down a bit from lack of water and heat stress that it would be a bit better on the mineral content... We have always found mid summer mineral consumption to be lower than the this time of year. This time of year is my big consumption time. Of course, we usually never go brown unless we over graze or get way behind in rotations. The grass slows down but rarely does it go completely dormat like crested wheat or or any of the other range grasses from Montana. (It has been a while since I lived out there) Again, we are probably looking at such different growing seasons/managment issues that mineral consumption is going to vary a bit.. Hard to compare a western range area that gets 16 inches of precip in a year and measures pastures in sections to a midwestern tame pasture that gets 38 inches in which a 100 acre pasture is real big one.

I wrote vigertone... Waiting to hear back from them. The headquarters isn't that far from here. I would assume there is a rep for the area somewhere around here, but maybe not.

Anthony
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
If you are feeding any kind of corn gluten it would be advisable to feed a mineral with less phosphorus. There is a lot of phos in corn and corn gluten products. When free-choicing mineral with these products we see a dramatic decrease in consumption of mineral. Phos is a limiter, like salt, and it is hard to get cattle to overeat phos.

Even if you are putting the mineral in a TMR, you can use a lesser phos mineral and save money.
 

IL Rancher

Well-known member
The mineral we feed in the winter for the most part was a special balancer mixed into a pellated form to improve distribuiton in the feeder wagon. We feed a different one for 3 weeks when we had to change to a himag mineral... If we had planned a little better we would have had a highmag balancer pellet mixed up as well.

You end up in a world of hurt with your cal:phos ratio if you don't feed a balancer with it.... Instead we needed the hi Mag stuff NOW so we had to do the added calcium instead... I didn't like it as a solution and next year will plan better... We have been changing our program every year it seems as our circumstances of feeding have changed majorly as well.. Oh well...

Now, whether that balancer is low phos or just high cal I don't know... Going to have to look at that... Or a bit of both.. I know the ratio is much different than the free choice stuff we give during the summer.
 

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