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Some late haying pics and Dec 17th snowstorm

Wyoming Wind

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 4, 2011
Messages
270
Location
Merna, WY
It's been awhile since I've posted; our two year old son keeps us busy! Here are a few late haying season pics (August). We had a decent hay crop even though we were in a drought like many of you. We have a week of rainy weather mid July that saved us and a relatively nice fall/early winter has kept us from feeding our cows until yesterday. One of the later dates for us to have to start---thank goodness :) Our calves made weight on shipping day and although we had to contend with deathloss due to the wolves and grizzlies, we had the least amount of overall deathloss in our calf crop in years. I think our nice spring and pneumonia shot did the trick!

Here is my little guy and his ranching Grandpa...out for a stroll in the hayfield prior to the hay being ready to bale one morning.
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Tator, our mutt of a cowdog, part black mouthed cur and who knows what else he has in him. He's one hell of a heeler and header. And pretty good at chasing down coyotes and even helped tree a mountain lion a few weeks back a hundred yards from our house. An invaluable dog!
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We leased a tractor for the first time this hay season to pull our roundbaler---worked out pretty good and nice to "test drive" a new tractor to see what we like and don't like about it.
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We put 2 fields up in small square bales. We thought we might sell a little but ended up keeping most of it. We are feeding it out by hand now with our team of Belgian workhorses. Helps to keep us in shape too! Here's my husband and little guy with our bale stacker loading bales.
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Fastforward to this past Monday. The weathermen actually underforcasted, if that makes sense. We were supposed to get 3-7 inches. We got almost 18 inches and the head of our creek chaulked up 25 inches. This was 8am in the morning...replacement heifers and a few horses.
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Catching up our wheel team in the snow (my husband, Dolly and Bert)
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Taking off down the driveway with the 4 up...my husband, little guy, and Grandpa
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At the haystack...my two year old wants to help do everything but usually is a tad bit in the way. We tied a small sled on the back of the hayrack for him to ride in. Helps to keep him warm too!
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One of our 4 ups. We will use this team up at our home ranch until we run out of small square bales. My pa in law bought a bale feeder for the tough blizzards we can sometimes get and for when he just doesn't feel like chucking 80pound bales around by hand!
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We will feed 150 replacement heifers, 30 bulls, 180 coming 2 and 3 year old cows, and a few horses up here at the home ranch this winter. Down below at our leased ranch we will feed 450 cows...once it snows up down there. That very well could be this week according to the forcast. But it's about that time :) Merry Christmas to everyone and Happy New Year!
 
Pretty neat I'll admit I'm to lazy to feed cows that way but it looks cool. That snow will make grass were starting to accumulate some an inch at a time..Merry Christmas
 
I'm so glad you posted pictures! I've been wondering about you, and how things were going. Great pictures. Have a very Merry Christmas!! :D :D
 
3 M L & C said:
Nice pictures. What size was that tractor you rented? I tried to zoom in but was to blury
We rented a JD 6140D. Enough horsepower to run our round baler...the only thing we didn't like on it was that the hydraulics were slow. And I really liked the cost effectiveness of paying a rent bill than a whole tractor payment :) We think we might try a Kubota tractor...we have a dealer who we might rent one from in Feb or March so we can see how well it starts in the cold!
 

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