Working at the Stockyards LOTS of PICS

[Blkbuckaroo]

Thanks for the pics Randi.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

In the barn I work at we have a large "barn" that can house about 1000 stockers undercover on site. The calves are fed the morning of the sale and given time to eat. Ounce given time to eat they are pulled out and put into smaller pins where we sort them. So they might be standing in the mud, but it isnt for very long. I take alot of pride in sorting the calves and believe that the way I handle them can have a direct affect on how healthy they may or may not be the next 48 hours.

Great pictures of the sale barn! BTW, I would be interested to know if this is a weekly sale? and I would be curious to know if the sorting is done similair to how I described above?

Here is how these sales work. Wednesday and Thursday are the sorting days. People bring their cattle in and they are penned. No feed, no water. They are sorted through in approximately the order they came in, depending on the day, some of the cattle may stand for a few hours, if we have a big backlog. They are brought up to the barn, and usually are roughly sorted outside (sexed and color sorted) Then those groups are brought in under the barn where they sort on size, weighed and then penned (My job). There, if they are not on an overnight stand, they have feed and water for the rest of their stay. Most cattle are weighed with a pencil shrink here. The only exceptions are cull cows and sometimes yearlings, will be on an overnight stand. And, yes we grade cull cows here too.

We rarely have a ton of mud here, we are pretty dry in general. When we do have mud, the cattle are bedded as best as they can be. You can hardly tell from those pics, but those pens were ALL bedded the night before. But, there is still a bunch of snow to melt in some of the pens, we need some warm weather to melt it off and dry things off.

The biggest problem they have is dust on the freshly weaned calves in the fall.

 

[little bow rancher]

WR, glad to take you along. The yards have just been upgraded and enlarged over the last 10 years or so. We can handle up to 4000 calves in the fall, pretty full at that, but we can squeeze them in.

D' Those critters just can't wait for the green grass, neither can we :wink: . Calving is going quite well, have about 35 left to go, and we are 1 short of 100% right now (better find some wood to knock on :wink: )

How's your calving going? You've gotten some snow too lately or so I heard??

Hay randi,

we haven't had the snow that everyone else has got. Out of those storms that got everyone else we got just a dusting. Run off has been good and things are starting to green up and dry out.

Calving is going good. Due date was Mar 15 we had 1/2 doze by then and are now at the half way point. I have never had a calving season go this fast or steady, we ave 3 - 5 calves/day and 9 on a good day. No days with no calves.

Will post some pics later today.

D'

 

[Soapweed]

That was a very interesting tour of the sale barn. Thanks for posting the pictures, randiliana.