The steer calves, with one adventurous sow.

You can see the two-strand electric fence.  In the industry we refer to this as a psychological fence.  Hogs and cattle are easily trained to electric fence.  The fence around the other lot is a physical fence, with five-foot high cattle panels and two boards, attached to wooden posts.

While I hate to anthropomorphize and say they’re  friends, I will say they’ve gotten acquainted.

Wednesday was a big day for my new farm.  We moved 17 sows and 2 boars to my farm.  The sows have always been housed on my parents’ farm, but since we are splitting up our farms, I needed to figure out sow housing on my farm.

I could have used the hoop barns, as I have used them for sows with litters and gestating sows, from time to time when I had room.  But I figured I would need all three hoop barns for growing pigs, so I brainstormed and decided to use the former dairy barn which is the bottom of  my big old red barn.

A carpenter friend helped me shore up the old barn door and build the sliding door you see pictured below.  I came up with that so I could lock the sows in or out securely, and I didn’t want a door which swung, because the bedding could pile up next to the door and make it difficult to operate.

The sows exit the barn into the cattle lot.  This is where the steer calves eat their hay and drink their water.  This lot is fenced securely, but I also built another lot to give the calves more room, which is fenced with a two-strand electric fence.

So the time had come to make the move, but I had no idea how it would work.  The variables I was unsure of included:

1.Would the sows find and go in the barn?

2. Would the cattle and sows get along, or would they scare each other through the fence?

3. Would the sows see the electric fence, get shocked, then back away instead of going through and destroying it?

This is how I managed the situation.  I kept the calves and sows separated during the morning.  I fed some grain in the entrance of the barn to lure sows in.

How did it work?  The sows found the barn and all but one were sleeping in it by night.  I couldn’t get the one to go in, so I left the door open all night.  The calves were scared of the sows, but in a curious way with no stampeding.  A few sows were shocked by the electric fence and retreated without destroying it.

What didn’t work?  The sows enjoyed lounging by the calves’ hay, so the calves wouldn’t eat their hay.  I moved the hay further away so the calves could eat.

An unanticipated problem was the automatic waterer was frozen.  I put in a new Ritchie so the sows could drink, which I’ll post about later. I panicked for a moment, but all I had to do was turn the thermostat up.

The photo above shows a boar I call “Able” breeding.  Standing at the front of the sow is “Bewilder”, my other herd boar I wrote about earlier in the year.

We had a vet pregnancy check our cows.  We do this every year so we can sell the cows that aren’t bred, (open).  Winter hay costs are the most expensive part of keeping cattle, so it makes sense to sell before winter.

We sorted out five old cows to sell at the local sale barn.  In addition to selling open cows, we also sell old cows when it looks like they’ll have a difficult winter.  We want them to live a quality life, free from undue hardship.

These cows were going to be eleven next spring.  It was bittersweet selling them, because they were some of the first offspring after we started using Red Angus bulls in the year 2000.  They have been fine cows, raising a calf every year for the past nine years.  Before I become too pensive, here is their market information:

These are historically high prices for cull cows.  I can remember years when we received $400 for a cull cow.

Grass-finished steer, ready for butcher.  The four steers we butchered this week averaged 1160 pounds live weight, and 615 pounds carcass weight.  This means they gained an average of roughly a pound and three quarters per day since weaning, October 2010.

I’m very happy with this performance.  Our customers are as well.  We’ve been butchering these yearling steers every few weeks since July, and we haven’t had a complaint, with much repeat business.

In July, the steers have been gaining rapidly as they transitioned from winter/late spring hay to the lush May/June pasture.  The biggest weigh around a thousand pounds.  As the pasture slumps in the heat of summer, the steers are rotated into orchardgrass/alfalfa hay fields to keep their consumption and daily gain up.

Below you can see the level of finish, or fat, in the brisket of this steer.  By industry standards this steer is not fat, nor ready to butcher.  Most would recommend a few months of corn feeding.  But the marbling in the meat is near the select grade.  And the meat is tender.  And like I said before, we have tons of repeat business.

Below is a steer we sold to a farmer who corn-fattens.  This photo was taken in September.  The steer weighs about 300 pounds more than the steer pictured above.  Look at the amount of fat in this steer’s brisket.  This is the amount of finish the industry demands.  The farmer sold this steer shortly after the photo was taken, and topped his local market.  Each of us produced the animal, and meat, our market demanded.

Below is a picture of the Round Baler, unloading a finished bale.  Hay is picked up underneath the baler.  The belts keep tension on the hay as an ever-increasing amount is rolled up, resulting in a tightly-packed round- bale of hay.

Photo  by Melissa.

Each bale weighs about 1500 lbs. and feeds at least 50 cows a day in winter.  We feed the cows by unrolling the hay on the frozen ground so all the cows can eat at once.  They eat their daily allotment in a few hours.

We built a small corral at the intersection of four pastures.  It’s way out back, and we never had a good way to catch a cow that needed help out there.

I checked the cows late one afternoon.  A cow was trying to calve, and looked like she had been straining for awhile, but nothing was showing.  We gave her an hour and checked her again.  Sure enough, one foot was sticking out, but not the other one.

We decided to get her in.  We were excited to use our new corral.  Two ATVs, a jeep, low-stress stockmanship, and we had her in the corral, barely.  She was starting to get hot.  She circled the corral a few times, charged at the gate I was standing by, put her nose over the top board, and jumped and pushed.  Once the board broke, her body weight broke down the wire panel, and she was over and out.

“Well, she’s on her own now.  No sense getting killed over her.”

The next morning, Dad drove back from checking the cows.

“Is she dead?”

“No, and she’s got a live calf, runnin’ around healthy.”

“Do you think we were just too early?”

“No, I think the calf got straightened out when she jumped the fence.”

Dad smiled.

32 degrees Farenheit, rain, turning to sleet, turning to snow.  We only had to bring two calves into the barn to warm up.  One was born weak.  One was born in a ditch, and unable to get out of it.  The other newborns who got a belly full of milk were ok out in the pasture.

The calves who are too cold and weak to nurse, we stick an esophageal tube down their throat and give them a product called Colostrx Plus.  It helps them get going.

Next we have to get their mothers into the corral.  This is where the ATVs are indispensable.  A few years ago we had a freak April snowstorm and had to bring four calves into the barn.  We only had one four-wheel drive ATV and a two-wheel drive ATV.  The two-wheel drive ATV was worthless in the heavy, wet snow.  I had to walk.  I put in quite a few miles, slipping and sliding up and down the hills of our calving pasture.  We were able to get three cows in, but couldn’t get the fourth.

Now we have two, four-wheel drive ATVs, pictured.  It took about a half hour to get the two cows into the corral.  We put a cow into the catch-chute, and then help her calf  nurse.

April is usually not this cold, but it’s important to remember it can be, which is difficult to do in mid-June when the weather is beautiful and the bulls are itching to breed.  I wrote up a contract one April and signed it.  “No bulls will be turned out for breeding before the 1st of July.”

I haven’t broken the contract, and the Matthew of late March, early April, is always grateful.

Cows harvesting the standing hay and cornstalks on my contour strips.  Here is a picture taken right before corn harvest.

The cows above are the ones the vet. confirmed pregnant when we pregnancy checked at the end of October.  I wrote about my expectations, and the problems we faced this breeding season.  90% of the cows and heifers ended up being bred with a 60 day breeding season for the cows, and a 45 day breeding season for the heifers.  10% open is normal for us and acceptable.  We have an excellent market for hamburger, so the cows that didn’t breed end up as beef.  We have appointments with our butcher over the next month.

Below is a cow which didn’t breed, and Wilma, of course.  The open cows are grazing one of our best remaining pastures.  I was thinking about the life they lead.  I think it’s pretty good.  They get to be in a herd of peers, eating quality forage, moving weekly, breeding, raising young.  Up until the bolt-gun shatters their brain, it’s not a bad life.

We took the boys to a city-wide Halloween party.  A friend gave me the low-down on the best place to go trick-or-treating: the manor, or old-folks-home.  The residents are seated in a semi-circle, each holding a bucket of candy.  It’s funny, because whatever aversion a child has to old people is overcome by the lure of easy candy.

I don’t know what kind of life each person has had, but the ending can be difficult.  We all want to live a good life and die in our sleep.

Calves in the corral, separated from their mothers.  We weaned all of the calves, October 14th.

After sorting the cows away from the calves, we run the calves into the catch-chute one at a time to administer a couple of vaccine cocktails.  We use what our vet. recommends, and what is common in the industry.  Ultrabac 7/Somnubac is $1/dose.  Vira Shield 6 + Somnus is $2/dose.

The vaccines cover about a dozen diseases, or strains of a disease.  I have a difficult time believing one can get a good immune response to all.  But in the vaccine’s defense, we have lost a calf from Blackleg, but never after vaccinating.

Below is a view down the alleyway leading to the catch-chute.

Citygirlfriend is Jewish.  We drove to Iowa City to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with family.

The boys played Pokemon on their DS the entire car ride, (about 2.5 hours).  After we ate lunch downtown, we searched bookstores for more Pokemon books.  The boys already spend their free time reading a huge, Pokemon reference book.

“I’m so glad you like reading,” Citygirlfriend said.

“It’s not really reading, because I’m trying to learn something,” Shepherd said.

I listened to the boys talk Pokemon to each other, and I thought, ‘I hope they find something to be this passionate about later in life, something productive.’

And then I thought, ‘Am I passionate?  Am I productive?’

Family and farming are my main pursuits.

On the homefront, I’m working with Citygirlfriend to establish a stable environment.   Here are pictures of the boys eating breakfast on a Saturday.

Shepherd with his kitties.  He’s wearing my boots on the wrong feet.

Gameboy, mugging it up for the camera.

Every morning is the same:

1. Get up.
2. Get dressed.
3. Chores.
4. Eat breakfast.
5. Cello and Violin duet.
6. DS, if time permits,before school.

On the farm, we are:

1. Preparing for corn harvest.
2. Planning to vaccinate and wean calves.
3. Evaluating bull calves to keep or castrate.
4. Planning and ordering boar semen to AI sows.

The top picture is my favorite bull calf.  He is out of Leland Julius and my favorite heifer, 816.  We are planning on keeping him to breed next year.

The picture below is of a productive Yorkshire gilt.  Look at her udder.  I’m studying boars to find the best AI mating for her, as well as the 16 other sows in the group.

Oh, and I continue to enjoy updating this blog.  Thanks for reading, and thanks for your comments.

I have passion, and it feels good.  Am I productive?  Time will tell.