LCP said:
I got your sale flier the other day. I really appreciated you putting the $EN values in there. That's very important to me. Another thing I like to see is the age of the dam - tells me something about not only the individual's longevity, but by looking through the catalog I can get a feel for the herd's longevity.
How did you get started in the cattle business? I see this is your 3rd sale...are you just getting started in the registered deal or have you been doing it a while? How do you develop your bulls from weaning to sale day? I just want to learn a little more about the operation these bulls are coming off of. I have been guilty of not doing enough homework before the sale and regretting it later...not that you have said anything on this forum that makes me too nervous about your answers.
I'll probably try to run up to Mobridge for your sale as I could use another bull or two - probably have some weigh-ups to sell so might as well stay for the sale...is there a free lunch ???
About our operation. I was raised on a diversified livestock farm but my Dad was a realtor and liked fishing and hunting more than tending to business. Ended up working for a local rancher here dureing highschool. Fell in love got a job got a divorce fell in love again quit my job started building trailers on my own.
In the fall of 1994 the man I worked for in highschool made me a deal on 10 antique cows. I took the deal and the rest is history. In the spring of 1995 I traded a used 22' livestock trailer for 3 registerd cows and slowly built from there. In total I've purchased 38 registered females with the last in 2005.Of which over 1/2 never lasted more than 3 years. Our cows numbers all start with the year they are born well after the letter D a few will be for instance we have a D802 born in 1998 and a 802D born in 2008 if you see a cow in our pedigrees without the letter D in the number she's most likely a boughten cow.
We run our cows on native pasture and feed as much meadow hay as the old girls will allow. The remainder is mixed upland hay and corn silage of which this years was planted late and froze early so it's lacking the corn part.
The calves get no creep feed.The calves are weaned November 1st this year was the 9th. Many bull raiser's wean in september and push them hard to mess with the weaning epd's I don't. We feed for a 3# gain normally of which it's a mixture of corn silage,cracked corn,dried distillers,soybean meal and mineral with free choice hay.
This year is the first year I've TMR fed the bulls and at first they were gaining slowly to much poor quality silage not enough goodies.So we tweaked it a little bit and they took off.The bulls have no building to hide in dureing poor weather. I never really thought about it much as this winter a friend of mine basically made me go to several bull sales and ranch visit's. You can learn alot looking around. One such operation is most likely the best managed place I've ever been on. The bulls were in a monoslope type building on a bedding pack and it was cold and I thought well this is'nt to bad. Then we had a storm and my bulls stood with there rears to the wind and did'nt eat much that day. My mind drifted to the monoslope bulls and thought I bet those bulls are closer to the feedbunk today but still eating gain can be skewed so easy.
The one thing I kept hearing was we are'nt feeding much grain. 180 buschel corn silage is alot different than 40 buschel. Alfalfa haylage is alot different than mixed upland hay.Cows fed on a tmr with a nutritionalist figureing cow rations weekly are alot different than some broke rancher unrolling some september made meadow hay.I fall into the broke rancher part.
I also live 12 miles from where we run our cows so I check twice daily and never at night. Poor udders mean work so I don't like either poor udders or extra work. The cows had better know how to mother a calf thats their job not mine. Normally by the time I see a problem either it is'nt a problem or it's to late. Some people say how can you do that. So far this year I've had Two cows in the barn first cow aborted about 2 weeks early so I bought a bum calf for her and grafted it on. 2nd cow had her calf a month ago and a bale of hay fell off the wagon and with my luck she died. We've been feeding a bum calf that the cow got wallowed down in the mud and was dieing so I cut out that calf and that graft worked fine. Lost a 3rd calf one of a set of twins on a 2nd calver it died of pnemonia after this last bought of crappy weather.
Look me up and I'll by lunch. Thanks Denny