A Balanced Diet

We hear a lot about eating a healthy, balanced diet as humans. Well, livestock are no different. They need a certain amount of energy, protein, vitamins and minerals in their diet to stay healthy, grow, have a safe pregnancy, and to produce milk after they've had their baby. Making sure they get a proper diet is the responsibility of their owner.

Another thing that comes into play for livestock, just as in humans, is the cost of their diet. As a rancher, I would love to be able to feed my cattle the best of everything. But, if I did that, I would be broke pretty quick, and then they would have nothing to eat. So, much as many families budget their food spending, ranchers also look at how they can provide the best possible feed to their livestock at the most affordable price.

Then there are "unique" years, like 2012, which resulted in a lot of feeds not producing as they were expected to. For example, without enough rain, a lot of grass that ranchers would normally make into hay for winter had to be grazed in the summer A lot of grains didn't produce enough of the actual grain to make it worthwhile to combine them, so they became hay.

When it was all said and done, ranchers had to do what they do every year - look at what they needed to winter their livestock, what they had on hand, what was available to buy, and how they could most effectively and economically produce a winter diet for their livestock that was affordable while also meeting their nutritional needs.

 

What did we do? Well, my fiancee (more on that later!), along with a lot of other producers, decided to grind hay. But, he went another step, and ground a lot of different kinds of hay into one big pile, creating a combination of forages that his cattle would like to eat, and which would meet a lot of their nutritional requirements. Here is a picture of the grinding setup, and all the hay he was combining to make a perfect meal for his cattle.

It's kind of like making a stir-fry, with some really good steak, some vegetables, rice and sauce, and mixing it all together so your kids will eat their vegetables and rice along with the meat and sauce.

He pays the guy you see above for the use of his machine. This year the guy was so busy that you had to be put on his list several weeks to months before he would actually get to your place. Planning in advance is also important to get the right feed, in the right form, at the right time, for feeding livestock.

 

 

 The way it works is you dump the bales into that big drum in the order you want them mixed. My fiancee was mixing about five different piles of hay together, ranging from some really good grain hay (some of that stuff that didn't do well enough to combine the grain this year) all the way down to some old, poor quality grass (this is valuable because it helps fill the animal up). He would drive around in his tractor from pile to pile and bring the hay in the order he wanted, and drop it in the drum, thus making his very own custom feed for his cows.

The engine on the front of the trailer runs the drum, and can be adjusted depending on the type of hay and speed that the rancher is bringing it. The conveyor on the back transports the ground hay to the pile, where it will be stored until it is fed.

 

 

Here he comes with the first type of bale, which is an older hay.

 

 

You just drive up, and drop the bale into the spinning drum,

 

 

Like so.

 

 

The drum spins the bale around while teeth on the bottom chew the bale, taking the blades of forage that could be well over a foot in length down to a couple inches.

 

 

How does this process improve the forage? By making the pieces of grass smaller, it makes them more palatable to a cow, and she is more likely to eat them. Mixing the high quality and poorer quality hays all together and grinding them means the cows will like eating it more than if you just rolled the hay out, and also means they will eat all the different kinds of hay at once. In comparison, if you rolled out a grain hay bale and an old grass bale, they would not eat the grass bale, and would waste it. Kind of like some kids and eating their vegetables.

 

 

Around it goes again.

 

 

The conveyor continually churns out the finished product into a pile. This is also a very dirty, dusty job, as you can see in the above photo. But it's worth it to have something good to feed your cows all winter, without having to buy a lot of additional forage.

 

 

Here he comes with another, different type of bale.

 

 

And another. You can see how more than one bale was in the drum most of the time, maximizing the mixing of the different hays. You can also see the controls for the engine on this side of the machine.

When he was all done, several hours later, he had turned multiple piles of almost useless forage and a couple piles of good stuff into something that would not only keep is cattle fed for the winter, but that they would like eating.

 

 

Here are his heifer calves, eating the ground hay mixture the next day. Since he is expecting these to grow at a specific level, he adds additional energy and protein supplements to their hay when he feeds it. This is another nice thing about having a big pile of ground hay - it works as a base for a lot of different meals for the different types of cattle he has on his place (calves, young cows, old cows, bulls). He can feed it straight out of the pile, or add different ingredients as he needs to for each group of cattle.

As I mentioned before, this is what a lot of producers in the western U.S. are doing with their various hay supplies this year to make feeding their cattle work, without going broke. Next year it will probably be something different for a lot of people, depending on the year, the cattle and numerous other factors.



Tricks of the Lick Tub Trade

If you've ever fed lick tubs, you probably know what I'm talking about when I say they are a royal pain in the neck to handle. Weighing in at 250 lbs, these short, stout tubs are beyond my ability to manipulate. Perhaps some of you other ladies, or anyone for that matter, have similar gripes about lick tubs.
Here is the solution I have devised, using tools from the ranching version of "duct tape and twine can fix anything" box.
First, I have my dad or brother place a block under one side of a few tubs wherever they are being stored. This gets them in a position so I can tip them over and roll them around. One key point here is not to have the lick tubs tipped over on their side wherever you are storing them if it's hot. This will result in no lick being left in your tub when you go to feed it....
I roll the chosen tub outside. Then, I go get a chain and the hydrabed. Or, this particular pickup is sporting Mr. Hydrabed's great grandfather, but it still gets the job done. While the tub is still on its side, I wrap the chain over the top and around the sides to the bottom. Then I half twist both ends around each other and wrap it back around the tub on the other two sides. This is just like wrapping ribbon on a present as far as technique goes. Once both ends of the chain are back on top, I tip the tub back over so it's upright again, and adjust the chains if they need it.
I then twist/tie the chain again at the top in a highly technical fashion that would have the men (who are not involved in the feeding of this tub and therefore have no input) cringing. Next I back the pickup up, lower the hydrabed, loop one end of the chain over the arm and secure it, then lift.
To help you visualize this procedure, I took photos the other day:

Once set on the pickup, I unhook the chain attached to the arm, and lower it around the top of the tub like so for transit. I haven't had one rattle off yet from this location. I think if you were going on a fairly smooth road you could just let it hang from the arm just off the pickup bed. I am in no way responsible if you decide to try this and it goes very wrong.

Upon arrival, the hydrabed arm is lifted and the tub rolled off the side. A mild struggle to get it tipped upright ensues. Eventually I win, and everyone is happy - me that it will be empty when I pick it up, and the heifers that they have something to eat.

2012 Summer Grass Report

This year's grass report is short....literally. In case your new, or have missed these in the past, I try to do a post on our grass from time to time to compare the current year to the past few. The idea is to show you what I'm talking about when I say a good year, or bad year, or the grass is great, or doing poorly.
Perhaps you've heard that we are having an odd year out west. It's hot, dry and about as unconducive to growing grass at it gets. We're typically semi-arid where I'm from, and this year calling us arid would be complimentary.
Here's what I mean -

Taken in one of our pastures on 7-18-12. This is as tall as it got this year (about an inch on average), and it was only greener than this for a couple weeks.

 Another photo, taken on 7-2-12. This is also in the middle of a pasture, in the bottom of a draw, which are typically greener than the tops like what was shown in the previous picture.

 Our creek bottom, as of 7-18-12. Anything you see that is green is either Kosha weed or thistle.

 A close up of the forage on our creek, taken 7-18-12.

Now, let's see how this compares to the last couple years

2011:

 Taken in a pasture on 6-26-11, very similar location to the top two photos from 2012.

 Our creek bottom on 6-18-11. I realize this is a month sooner than this year's photos. But, it never even thought about getting this tall this year.

 Creek bottom on 6-16-11. Same tree in the background as the 7-18-12 photo, I'm just turned slightly more toward the east in this photo.

Now for 2010:

 Pasture photo on 6-28-10. This was a great year.

And the creek bottom on 6-27-10. No, they aren't standing in a hole or anything, and that yellow spot on the side of that heifer is the head of a shoot of grass. Yes, we can grow grass like that here....on an exceptional year.

So, just in case you don't want to scroll back and forth. That was 2010, and here the same location in 2012 again, which is anything but an exceptional year.

If you want to see how the years prior to 2010 were around here, you can head over to my 2010 June Grass Report post.

The Hay Buster

We purchased a hay buster this winter. This is a machine that grinds up hay and feeds it onto the ground, or into a bunk, for livestock. The benefit of grinding hay is livestock can better consume and digest hay if it's already been ground into smaller pieces. We are utilizing this machine to make some of the poorer quality hay we have on hand more palatable to our calves. If we didn't grind it,they would pick through it and consume less of the total volume of hay we fed them due to its coarseness. It still has nutritional value, but in its whole form it's not as appealing to the calves.

This is what it looks like. You back up to each bale, and pick it up with the arms on the back that are holding the second bale in place. We don't have the right mirrors on our tractor yet, so there have been some pretty humorous attempts at getting backed up to a hay bale the driver couldn't see.

Here are the controls, which run the hay buster.  The lever with the blue tape and handwriting on it is used to run the arms, and pick up hay bales and drop them into the grinder. The red-handled lever next to the blue one, and the lever on the right side of the photo that slides back and forth are used to feed the bale once it's in the grinder. Just ignore the rest of those controls for this job : )

Here is what the inside of the hay buster looks like. When you adjust the levers in the cab appropriately, the chains in the bottom move, and the whole unit works to tear the hay bale into smaller pieces, and shoot it out the side on the left in the photo.

As the feeder, this is how it looks to drive the tractor. The calves love their hay, and often start heading toward the house when they hear the tractor start in the morning.

When you reach the feed grounds, there is a specific order to things. First, you get the tractor, which is a manual and has two gear shifting knobs (technical terminology at its finest), and a lot of gear choices. You need to get into a relatively low (slow) gear.
Second, you have to turn on the lever that slides in the photo of the controls, and let it get up to speed. I apologize for those of you that know all the accurate terminology. I am not that mechanical, I just know how to run the stuff.
Third, you let out the clutch and start moving, while pushing the red handled lever forward, which turns on the actual grinder.
The result is that the hay bale starts spinning as the grinder chews it up and spits it out on the ground. You can manually adjust how coarse or fine it will chop the hay, and how wide of a pile it spits out on the machine. The size and width of the pile on the ground is also impacted by how fast or slow you drive.

The second bale just rests on the back until you're done feeding the first. Then you run the arm control to dump it into the grinder.

Here's what it looks like from outside the tractor.

Feeding, like most ranch tasks, can be a dirty, dusty job.

But the calves don't mind.

Then, when you're done with the last bale, you pull the red handled lever back, turn off the one that slides, and head for home.

This is what the hay looks like after being run through the buster. We don't have it set to chop the hay extremely fine, partially because we're feeding on the ground. But, the difference in palatability is noticable, and my dad is just tickled with his purchase.

Feeding in the Snow

 We've been getting some snow this week. Here are a few photos from feeding our yearling heifers and two-year-old cows two days ago. Have a fantastic weekend!

From Start to Finish

Perhaps you've heard that it takes a long time for ranchers to raise the product we sell, which in our case is beef. This post covers the timeline from start to finish for you. I realize some of the photos aren't my best - I wasn't planning this post for the last two years, and my photography has improved since 2009. My hope is to follow this post with one of photos of our calves over this same time period, so you can see how they change and grow.

 Today I am showing you the timeline for the steers we sold in September, 2011. We started planning for them in June of 2009, when we turned the bulls in with our cows. This was the first time we managed specifically for the following year's calf crop.

In late 2009, we poured all our cows for parasites, and preg checked them. All pregnant cows were kept, and given a shot to protect their pregnancy. We fed them every other day all winter to ensure they had enough energy to produce a healthy calf and stay healthy themselves.

Nine months after we turned the bulls in, around late March and April of 2010, the calves were born. We were still feeding at this time because the grass hadn't turned green yet, and the cows were using more energy to produce milk for their calves.
When born the calves weighed between 70 and 80 pounds.

In May, 2010, we branded all our calves, castrated the bull calves, gave everyone an ear tag, and a shot to protect them against common diseases in our area. Then we turned them back out with their mothers on grass for the summer to grow.

Around October 1, 2010, we gathered all our cows and calves back up, and weaned the calves from their mothers. At this time we kept them in the corral for a few days and monitored them closely for sickness. Then we turned them back out on grass, and fed them cake and hay for the winter. Our calves weighed between 500 and 525 pounds when we weaned them.
Lots of ranchers where I'm from market their calves at weaning, or in the months following. Theirs may weigh more than ours at that time because calves are sold by the pound, and ranchers work hard to make as much money as possible, as all good business people do.

Winter, 2010. Here is a photo from feeding over the course of the winter. We fed them every other day, and checked their water every day.

 

We also weighed every calf when we weaned, and again in January, 2011 to determine how well each calf was gaining. During the second weighing, we sorted the heifers from the steers and turned them back out in separate pastures.

In early 2011 we also bangs vaccinated all our heifers, which is required by law for all replacement heifers (those we kept for breeding)
In March of 2011 the calves were one year old, and weighed between 600 and 700 pounds. Around this time (there's no set date) they went from being "calves," to "yearlings."

In May, 2011, we poured our steers for parasites, counted them and hauled them to their summer pasture.

In June, 2011, the heifers were turned out with a bull for the first time.

Meanwhile, the steers were happily grazing and gaining on grass for the summer.

 

Then, on September 17 we sold our steers after managing and working with them for 26 months. They weighed just under 1,000 pounds, and went to a feedlot to be fed a high energy diet for a few months prior to entering the food chain.

We received our one and only paycheck for the steers on that day too, after carrying the expense of growing them for those 26 months. During the time we owned them, we saw them almost every day, and never went more than a week without checking on them for their entire life.

Their sisters will take another two years to start earning income, when we sell their first calves. That's four years of time and money invested prior to seeing any return. Now, I don't want to you think I'm complaining, because I love and enjoy what we do. I'm just explaining.

Ranchers all love what they do for the most part. People who are just in a profession for the money don't typically choose this one. It takes a certain mindset and love for your work to put an animal's well being before a regular paycheck. This is also why you'll often hear ranchers call our profession a lifestyle - because it transcends the definition of a job regularly.

So, to recap quickly. We started in June of 2009, when we turned the bull in with the cows.

Nine months later the calves were born.

And a year and half after that, we sold the steers.