Category: Cows

 

While all the big cows were worked in the head gate, the little calves just born at our leased farm were mainly processed on the ground in the corral. It’s easier that way as there is more room to work and they are just little dinky calves so we can just catch them and put them on the ground. I’m used to just grabbing a calf and tossing it on the ground like it’s nothing. Once we tagged them, we walked them through the head gate to be weighed. I was surprised to see these calves go across the scales at over 100 pounds. No wonder people struggle doing it their first time. I guess years of wrestling Spork has paid off, or maybe it’s the other way around.

#60 was a bull calf so he had to be castrated as well. Normally we band calves the day they are born but since he was a few weeks old we had to manually castrate. Luckily I’d had lots of experience doing this with the vet because that’s the way we did it when I was growing up. I still prefer banding on day one but he was none the worse for wear.

#61 had a problem coming back to the farm. The cut gate in the trailer didn’t hold as it was supposed to and this little guy got caught under the gate. It was choking him and he was in real trouble. Luckily the ride back to our farm is only a few minutes and we were able to get him out quickly. He seems to be favoring his neck (where he was trapped) but otherwise is acting normally, nursing and running around. We elected not to castrate him on Saturday because he’d already been through enough. I checked him Sunday and all was good with him still. We’ll get him back this coming week if he’s doing ok. It was really scary having him in trouble like that. We are all really pulling for him.

And with that everyone was home, weighed, tagged, castrated, and back out on pasture. The little calves immediately went out into the high grass and disappeared, causing momma and farmers both to worry. I rode the pastures the next couple of days flushing calves and running them back to mom so everyone knew they were ok. Now things have settled down and everyone is doing well. The next post will be our detailed records of the cows.

 

The day before we were to move the cows, we got word from the row crop farmer that leases the rest of the farm that we could graze his millet field as he wasn’t going to be able to get another cutting off of it.

I turned the cows into the field, which was about 6 acres, and they went to town. It’s funny watching cows go into an area like that. The flow across the paddock back and forth like ripples on a pond. They are always moving trying to be the first one to that bite of good food. They really enjoyed the treat and it was a last hurrah before we loaded them the next day.

Adam and Spork helped load the cows, staying on the outside of the paddock. Miguel and I went inside with the cows and pushed them onto the trailer. Well first we tried to push them ourselves. That didn’t work. Then we tried rearranging the cattle panels to make more of a chute. That didn’t work. Then we tried a few other iterations until finally Miguel said, let’s just get an extra panel and push then with the panel between us. Bingo! That was the way and how we’ll do it going forward. We were able to get 12 cows on the first load, 13 on the second load, and 15 on the last load all while cutting the time to load in half, and in half again.

This was with our new (to us) 24′ stock trailer. The best we’ve ever had with our old trailer was 11 cows and they were packed like sardines. The new trailer cut out at least one trip and probably two so it was a success. The only problem is, it doesn’t fit my truck. I’ve creased the tailgate in a couple of places where it rubbed. We’ll be cutting off the current mounting for the gooseneck and making a new one as soon as we can this winter. Luckily the cows should be home all winter so we should have time to get it done.

Once we had the cows on the trailer, we took them to our main farm and offloaded them into our corral. We then worked them one by one into the head gate where we weighed them on our new scales, checked their body condition, their ear tags, and castrated them if need be since we had new calves born on the leased farm.

Once we’d processed a cow, they were turned into the paddock to start grazing. Once the entire trailer load was processed, we went back to get another load and wash, rinse, repeat. Everything was the same, except for our new little calves, but that is our next post.

Saturday, after being gone for two months at various farms, we brought our cows back to the main farm. The newest farm didn’t have a loading facility so we had to buy temporary panels to make a corral. The idea with these panels is they will mount to the side of our new trailer making for a self contained cow moving rig.

While the cows were gone, we’ve stockpiled about a month’s worth of grass at our farm so that our cows will have grazing into the beginning of winter, which is a first for us. Normally by November we are out or nearly out of grass. By grazing our leased farms the last few months, we were able to let our grass grow and get lush. Hopefully our farmer on our big leased land will plant rye this winter as a cover crop, meaning we would have some grazing this winter as well which would help the cows and us.

Regardless of all the above, we are bringing in more hay than normal this winter, 119 bales with 68 already on the ground and more coming when I get time. We only brought in 68 bales last winter and I ended up scrambling all over trying to get another couple of loads late in the winter. I don’t want a repeat of last winter when we ran short of hay.

Plus, we are going to be purchasing a group of feeder calves shortly so we will need to make sure we are stocked up and ready for extra mouths to feed in case grazing doesn’t go as planned. But before all that, we need to get the cows from the leased farm back to our farm.

But that is our next post.

 

Once the concrete had set up, we moved the head gate into the shop and welded studs onto the load bars so we could bolt the head gate to the load bars. Once everything was bolted up and we’d done a test run (Miguel and I weighed each other, there was some mockery), it was back to the new concrete pad to set everything up.

The load bars are the blue things under each end of the head gate. Now the head gate sits in the air on top of the load bars. The load bars transmit the load to a display unit we hang when we need to weigh something big. When we aren’t weighing, we bring the display unit and cables inside to keep them looking new.

Here you can see the concrete ramp leading up to the head gate. On the far side we will be reinstalling the black corral panels but on the front side we’ll be putting a swing gate. This area will be our new loading ramp once we have it built. By opening the gate, and closing the head gate, the cows will make the turn and go onto whatever trailer we are loading to. This new loading ramp should be much easier to get to than our current one, allowing us to use bigger trailers and less foul language when we are moving cows. Both are pluses.

This is our new loading ramp, or at least my design. I think I’ve spent twice the time designing it that it would have taken to build it.

It will not be permanently mounted but will remain portable. That way we can move it out of the way for daily operations and keep our work area clean. We’ll get to work on this new ramp as soon as I can go pick up the steel.

It has been a few years in the making, but we are finally making some progress on doing this thing for real. Step one of being a real cattle farmer is you have to weigh your cows routinely. This tells you their average daily weight gain which is basically how you measure your effectiveness. It also helps you know when cows are performing, not performing, finishing, etc.

Now I’ve tried getting them to stand on my bathroom scale but they just won’t do it. Plus SWMBO likes to keep the scale clean and the cows, well, you know.

About a year ago I ordered a set of load bars and a display from a company I lucked across with a good price on weighing equipment. The whole getup has been sitting in the shop gathering dust since then, waiting for its day on the to do list. A few weeks ago we finally got around to it.

The way the load bar works is we take our head gate we already have, seen here.

And we remove it from where it sits at the end of our corral. We have to pour a concrete pad so the new getup sits level and so we have a good place to work when cows are in the load gate.

Miguel built a form for a new pad that he was happy with, but he didn’t like me getting his picture. Something about his time working for Pablo Escobar. I didn’t really follow it all, oh well. I’m sure it’ll be fine

 

For those of you familiar with the Ninja Cow story, you might be surprised to learn that we still have one Ninja on the farm. The mom above, #22, is the last of the line for us. She’s the one and only Ninja who has behaved somewhat normally during her life so every time we’ve culled cows she’s been able to stay off the trailer. She’s actually 1/2 Belted Galloway (Ninja Cow) and 1/2 black Angus so she’s only half crazy. Being bred to an Angus bull should mean that we only get 1/4 crazy calves with little to none of the Belted Galloway markings however on October 3rd, we found this cute little surprise in the pasture. You can see he has almost identical markings to mom and with long curly hair like a full-blooded Belted Galloway. You can’t really see the hair in the picture but trust me, it compares very favorably to this picture. Yeah, he’s that cute. Do you see why the girls wanted these cows now?

Other than a little thinning of the belt, he has full characteristics of a 100% Belted Galloway. Let’s hope he acts like a Angus!

He is a little boy so we’ll get him banded and tagged when the cows come back to the farm next week, along with his two playmates who were also born in the last 30 days at the Adams farm. It will be busy here when the cows arrive because we have to work every cow in the herd getting weights, body condition scoring, overall health checks, ear tags, and castrations where needed. It will probably take all day so hopefully we’ll have some nice fall weather to work in. Between now and then we have to build a new loading ramp, finish the corral, get the title to the new stock trailer, buy cattle panels to make a corral at the Adams farm, and rig up a mounting system so they can ride on the new trailer. Should be a fun week.

Once these new kids get their ear tags, I’ll repost with pics and tag numbers for your daily dose of cuteness. Until then, this is as cute as I can get in an open field.

Yesterday I had to drive to South Carolina and back for a meeting. On the way back, I stopped by the new farm we leased to check on the cows. I found them just off the road thankfully so I could just hop the fence and walk in and check on them. It was a relatively cool day, about 82 degrees. The cows were happily grazing the grass that barely showed any signs of their efforts. They really seemed to enjoy the trees interspersed in the grassy fields allowing them to graze in the shade. Also, the trees are pretty low so the cows could walk under them and scratch their backs, something they really enjoy being able to do.

Overall they seemed really happy and content. The calves were off hiding in the woods having their own adventure. The cows will stay at this farm for about a month then come back here for a month’s rotation around our pastures. By then we’ll likely be feeding hay so they’ll be here for the winter, unless our new farm has some rye planted in the fields. If that’s the case, we’ll head back over to graze the rye down at least once this winter.

This article came across my news feed recently.

Consumer Reports, which generally has a pretty decent reputation for checking things fairly, has found that cows raised in conventional (read: Industrial) settings have a higher count of bad bacteria and a higher count of anti-biotic resistant super bugs. Interestingly, and not really discussed in this article, non-industrial meat still had both troublesome bacteria such as e. coli and super bugs. Hmm, what does that tell us.

My theories:

1. Bacteria is everywhere and is normal. The idea that we have anything perfectly clean just isn’t correct, as shown in this episode of  Mythbusters. So that means we need a strong immune system to handle the contamination that is inherent living in our world.

2. Organic isn’t a magic talisman. When people see organic meat, they picture this. 

When what Organic really looks like is a lot more like this. 

You cannot produce the amount of Organic beef in the time that we as consumers have demanded it, in the volume that we have demanded it, on the schedule that we have demanded it, for any kind of reasonable price without the picture above.

I’m not saying this type of system is bad, I’m saying that most people paying that extra premium at Whole Foods thing they are buying the first picture and in reality they are buying the second picture where the only real difference in the cows life is that the grain is Organic instead of conventional. This isn’t hyperbole, I’ve sat next to big Organic producers in grazers schools and talked about their management systems. By and large they came from the conventional world and they still operate a conventional system, just now with Organic inputs.

However when you come to our farm, you see this. 

And that is how the cows are every day. There are no feed bunks on our farm. No grain silos. It’s forage and produce, that is it. I think you’d find that we don’t produce super bugs or contaminated meat. We produce proteins the way God intended.

Yesterday we accomplished something we’ve been working on for some time. Our cows moved to a completely new farm that we’ve just leased. This additional acreage almost doubles our grazing land allowing us to add about 20 more cows to our herd. More cows in the herd means less times we are out of beef and a steadier supply over the course of a year, all good news.

We had the cows temporarily on our farm while we (Miguel) finished some repairs on the fencing at the new farm. When we started the voltage on the hot wire didn’t even register. A couple of days of work, being stung by wasps multiple times, being bitten by fire ants multiple times (all Miguel) and it was ready to go. We went from no reading to “Hi” on the volt meter meaning it was above 16,000 volts. Since 6,000 will keep most any cow in, I think we are good to go. Miguel kept trying to get me to touch the hot wire. No dice. I know what 10,000 volts feels like. I’m fine not knowing what 16,000 feels like.

The new farm is only about 5 miles away and is beautiful with lush tall grass, watering holes surrounded by trees, rolling hills, etc. This is something we tried to tell the cows. Did the listen? Oh no.

Here the cows are walking into the central paddock where we will put them into the loading corral and load them onto our trailer. They got about 2/3 of the way in and decided to all run back into the pasture. Once in the pasture, they wouldn’t hear of going into the paddock again. After a few laps around the pasture and both Gators being brought into play, we finally got them in and began loading.

We put the cows in a temporarily closed off area with grass, trees, and water. It is only a few acres so it’s easier to see how they adapt to a new environment and let them establish a new routine. The new farm is much bigger than the 30 acres of grazing we have access to so it was important that moms reunite with babies and the herd becomes a herd again before we turn them loose to roam.

By the time this above picture was taken the cows had been on the new farm for a few hours. The look they gave me seemed to indicate that I wasn’t welcome because I’d probably make them leave. Kind of like when you visit your kid’s dorm room in college. Glad to see you, did you bring money, you need to leave because my girlfriend is coming over.

I took it to mean that they were happy.

Once we had the cow back in the pasture, I put the jigsaw puzzle of boards back together, which is harder than it sounds, and got back to something normal. The cow went into the woods of this pasture and started bellowing non-stop. Something was definitely wrong. It was like she was searching for something but maybe she thought the other cows would have been there and now they were not. I talked to Miguel (he just happened to call in the middle of all this) and he thought maybe she’s had a calf and the calf had wandered into this paddock by accident? Spork and I went into the pasture to check on her and that’s when I found out the truth.

Her ear tag read #25, not #33.

Now it makes sense. #25 had lost her calf on Friday and we’d had to move the cows on the same day. Even though we’d left #25 in the paddock with her calf and the calf had passed away while she was in there, she wasn’t over it yet. She obviously had escaped the other pasture and come back to this pasture looking for her calf, which was pretty sad. Now she was finally in the pasture and couldn’t find him because we’d already buried him back at the home farm.

Spork and I went around the pasture she was in tightening up boards, removing brush, etc. Basically making sure she’d stay in the pasture she was in and not escape back to the other pasture where the cows were. Then we went to the other pasture to fix wherever she’d gotten out. We fixed 4-5 places that weren’t too bad but nowhere that it appeared she had escaped. I guess when a mom is after her baby, no fence is going to keep her.

 

With everything settled, we walked the mile back to the truck to get it off Percy’s land. That’s when we found that although I’d driven it in, I couldn’t drive it out. We couldn’t make the turn around some of his trees with the truck and trailer and we were basically trapped. It took us a few extra minutes and the blazing of a new trail, but we eventually got out.

It was now 10:30 and we were about to start our day. Only 100+ pigs to feed. Just another day on the farm.