The Summer in photos

In no particular order, here are a few photos of what we've been up to this summer. I hinted at several of these items a week ago, but now you can see what has been happening around here the last couple months.

The weather has been crazy. We are way above normal on average temperature, and number of days over 100 degrees here this summer. Plus, several nasty storms full of lightning, wind and black clouds have rolled over pretty regularly. But, one things these clouds don't have is much rain. For the month of June, average rainfall for Wyoming was .45 inches.

 Our house water pump quit working. Then the line airlocked. So, my dad rigged this system up to pump water back up the more than 2 miles of line to our storage tanks from our house.

 This photo was taken while getting the right shot to accompany one of several writing projects I had going on this summer. From new magazines to my regular work to multiple online projects, it's been fun and busy on the writing front lately!

This is Larry, who is one half of our new Hereford bull duo (the other is Moe) that are going to make us some black baldy calves : ) He has been hard at work.

A wind storm blew the tin off one side of our "new" trailer house. So, instead of finishing prjoects inside so my brother and I can move in, we had to concentrate on this. While move-in won't be for a while now, I am getting my office stuff moved in, which will be a huge help on my work end.

 Lots of time has been spent determining how to best manage our cattle on this very dry year. We've also been diligent in checking their water, grass and how they're holding their condition. We're very thankful that the grazing association where most of our mother cows are located is having a much better year than we are at home.

 We've fought fire, but not nearly as much as the folks east of us.

I watched my first litter of pigs be born, and are they CUTE or what?!

My First Cow

 My first cow's granddaughter just calved a few minutes ago. This big boy represents the fourth generation of my cowherd, and that makes me happy! Aside from being too big, mother and baby are doing great.

People get started in the cattle business in a variety of ways. For me it was through my family and the 4-H program. When I was eight years old I purchased my first heifer from the family ranch to show in 4-H, and as they say, the rest is history.
I've told this story before, but in case you missed it, there was quite the discussion over which heifer to choose. My dad, uncle and I narrowed it down to two choices. One was an exceptional individual that would have excelled in the show ring. She was big, fancy and an all around great heifer. The second was a small heifer with a big head, kind eyes and not a whole lot going for her from the show heifer angle. She was never going to be exceptional, physically.
My dad and uncle obviously wanted me to have a good start, both in the show ring and with my cowherd. But, my heart was dead set on the little gal, and despite some serious persuasion from my dad and uncle (I can still remember my uncle explaining the lower quarter of the great heifer, and how desirable that trait was, and how they both consented that it was my choice), I made the decision to purchase Sassy.

 Meet Sassy, who made up for any physical traits she was lacking in with her disposition. We bonded, and I loved her and fell in love with showing cattle and having my own cows before the 4-H year was out. Following my first year with her, I went on to show more than 15 heifers and steers in 4-H.

After her stint as my first 4-H project, Sassy went on to be an exceptional cow. Weighing in at maybe 1,000 lbs, she raised over 10 calves for me. Her steers weighed 1,300 lbs. as fats, and I kept almost every heifer calf she produced. She was one of those cows who produced calves that were better than she was.
She survived a nasty March blizzard one spring, where a quarter of her bag was soured. But, God bless her, she wasn't one of the cows that kicked her calf off. As she aged, the thought of selling her was difficult. For a few of her later years we housed her with our calves, who she taught how to eat cake, and which allowed her to eat a higher quality ration.

(Sassy in her later years with my sister riding her. We caught her in the pasture that day for a group of third graders who visited our ranch to learn about ranching. Everyone was thrilled to get to pet a cow.)

Eventually, at about 13 or 14 years old (that is ancient for a cow here), I made the tough decision to sell my first cow. All her teeth were gone, so she couldn't consume enough to stay in optimal condition. Her calves got smaller too, and she was just old. So, after more than a decade, my first cow was sold for slaughter. It wouldn't have been right to keep her out of love for her and let her waste away on our place. I cared too much for her to let her die a slow death like that.
Today her influence is still evident in my herd, as you saw in that first photo. She also helped pay for my college education, first vehicle, and numerous other expenses. I would still argue that I made the right choice that brisk winter day in front my grandparents barn, when the great debate was waged over which way to go for my first cow purchase.

Heterosis

Hello everyone! Hope you're enjoying the weekend before Christmas. I have had a couple more questions (thank you!), and am going to dive into one from Ryan over at the RA Ranch.
 Have you written anything on heterosis? ...or more so where I'm now-what to cross on these angus/hereford cross heifers I'm keeping? That's the short version of what I'm wondering.


Thanks for the question Ryan.


I have an example of angus/hereford (black baldie) heifers shown above. There is no "right" answer to this question. But, we're going to run through some stuff on heterosis, and some of the more common choices people in Ryan's situation make.


First, for anyone who is wondering what in the heck is heterosis, good ol' Webster defines it as: the marked vigor or capacity for growth often exhibited by crossbred animals or plants - called also hybrid vigor.
Still a little confused?


I've given this a lot of thought, and one way I've come up with to explain heterosis is with paint colors. If you have purebred animals, it's like having one color of paint. Say yellow. Then there are other purebred breeds, and they are also single colors. Say blue and red.
So long as you have one breed, it's like only having one color of paint. It can be a beautiful color that you love, but it's still just one color. If you crossbreed, that's like adding the paint color from another breed. You suddenly have the ability to make more colors, which can make your painting better, or worse, depending on your opinion and abilities.


When you crossbreed with two breeds, you have yellow, and red, and all the shades of orange you can make by mixing the two. Is it better? That's up to you to decide. Maybe you like just yellow, or maybe you like the result of combining paint colors.

This is where Ryan is with his black baldie heifers. He's crossed two purebred breeds (Black Angus and Hereford), which is like the mixing of yellow and red.


You can add yet another color through crossing your yellow and red with blue.You can still make orange, and have added the potential for purple and green, and all the original colors too. Now you're getting a lot of colors in your painting. Again, whether you like all that added color or not is a personal choice. It's also important to remember that as you add more colors, less of any one individual color will be seen.


But, another thing to keep in mind is if you keep adding colors and mixing them, eventually you'll end up with that ugly shade of brown we've all seen in art class that nobody wants to use for anything.
The same is true in crossing animals. Some is great, a lot usually isn't. Each breed of cattle offers different strengths and weaknesses, and by crossbreeding them you have the potential to maximize the good aspects of different breeds and minimize their less desirable traits. But if you go too far, the result can be an inferior animal instead of the superior animal you were aiming for.


Now that we've covered what heterosis is, and how it works, we can cover some options for "paint colors" for Ryan's heifers.


Both the Angus and Hereford breed are strong maternal breeds, and black baldie cattle are great mother cows. He has heifers that are a combination almost any commercial cattlemen would be happy to own.


One option would be to breed to a strong terminal breed, such as Charolais or Gelvbieh, which are known for their ability to increase rate of gain, muscle and yield grade. Calves that are half terminal and half maternal will technically retain some maternal traits, while also having increased growth potential and muslcing ability.


It's not maternal breeds don't do well in these areas, and you can't have heavy muscled, fast growing cattle that are maternally bred, it's that terminal breeds are known for doing better overall. Back to the paint idea, if you're selling pretty paintings, why not use more colors. In the livestock business, commercial producers are selling pounds, so why not use breeds that will give us the most pounds in the least amount of time?


Now you may be thinking, well gee, if you're selling pounds, why bother with any maternal breeds after what you just said? Well, because maternal breeds excel at things like mothering, milking, fertility and marbling. That great big calf won't do you any good if he never happens because his mother wasn't fertile, or she didn't care for him and he died as a baby, or she didn't have enough milk and he didn't get big because he didn't have enough to eat as a calf. Marbling is also a key part of producing a great tasting beef product. So, as with paint, the different breeds bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table, and deciding what you're going to breed is much like selecting paint colors for a painting.


Another thing to consider is whatever one sex of the calves has for traits, so does the other sex. So, yes it's great to have a bunch of great big, heavy muscled, fast gaining steer calves that are just massive and impressive. But, their sister's will probably be much the same, and if you're keeping those females to put back in your cowherd, you have to consider her mature size, what size of calf she will have, if she will produce enough milk, keep in good enough condition to breed back, how much she will eat, etc...


It's a fine tuned balancing act to produce a calf crop that does everything you want on both the steer calf side and the heifer calf side, in your location, and there is no "perfect recipe" that works for everyone.


You can also have maternal bred cattle that will gain as well as terminal bred cattle, and terminal bred cattle that will be moderate and fertile, depending on the specific cattle within a breed you use. There is a lot of variation within any breed, and as I said above, there is no set "right" way to breed cattle. People are very successful, and very unsuccessful, with any number of breeds and crossbreeding combinations.


Another option is to breed those heifers back to either an Angus or Hereford bull, and increase the influence of one of those breeds. We have a lot of cows that are 3/4 Angus, 1/4 Hereford, and I really like them. Since these are both maternal based breeds, that's the strength of the calves. But, these are also two of the most popular breeds in the world (Angus is the most popular), and they didn't get that way by just being maternal. Both breeds offer a lot in the area of gain, carcass quality and growth in addition to producing heifer calves that will breed back, be a good mother, produce milk, etc...


Or, Ryan could inject the influence of another maternal breed, like Red Angus, and increase his heterosis with that third maternal breed.


Another thing to consider is how cattle are bred (with bulls, or AI), and in how many pastures? It takes a lot more managment to keep everything strait when you start crossbreeding if you use bulls. If you just have one breed of bulls, then everyone can be together. For each additional breed you add, you often need to add another pasture during breeding season. Management can be a big factor in how much, or little, crossbreeding to implement on your operation.


Our family has done a three-way cross, where we bred for black baldie cows, and bred them to Gelvbieh bulls. We had to maintain three cowherds during breeding - all Hereford cows would be bred to Angus bulls (to get the black baldie cows), all Angus cows were bred to Hereford bulls (also to get baldie cows), and all baldie cows were bred to Gelvbieh bulls to get that three-way cross. We didn't want to keep any Gelvbieh influenced heifers, because they were often too big and coarse for us, so we had to have both Hereford and Angus cows to get our own replacement heifers, and the black baldie cows to produce the steers and market heifers we wanted.


The three-way cross were great cattle, and performed well whenever we marketed them. But, our situation changed, and it became much harder to maintain three cowherds. And, our straight Angus calves gained as fast as our crossbred calves in the feedlot, and we could run a single breed of bulls, so we're now all Angus.


There's a lot that goes into breeding cattle, whether you're crossbreeding or using one breed, and no two ranches are the same, so there is no one perfect way to breed cattle for the best result.


That was the long answer. The short answer is that in today's world, you can't go wrong if you turn out a high quality Black Angus bull with them, however they're bred.


Good luck Ryan, and hopefully I covered a few options for you to consider.

Horns

Wordless Wednesday: Horns

Wyoming Jr. Hereford Field Day

I was asked to assist a photographer friend of mine at this year's Wyoming Jr. Hereford Field Day, held yesterday in Torrington, WY.
It was a lot of fun. I am a past competitor at this show, and showed Herefords throughout my 4-H career, and I definitely have a soft spot in my heart for Hereford cattle. Seeing all the young people and their red and white cattle was great! I also learned a lot from my friend and ran into some people I've known for years.
Here are a few photos from the day, which was kind enough to hold off the nasty thunderstorms until the show was over.

Cows of Note: The Last of Her Kind

Here is another cow of note for you. Any guesses as to which one I'm talking about?

This Hereford cow is the last of her kind on our operation, and she will be sold this fall because of her age. There was a time, about 25 years ago, when this picture would have looked opposite the way it does now. By that I mean there would have been one or two black cows, and the rest would have been Herefords.
She is a cow of note because she represents the basis from which all these black cows were derived. Most operations in the west were strictly Hereford a couple decades ago, but things change fast in agriculture, and the shift from a Hereford to Angus commercial cowherd in the U.S. is one prime example of this.
Why this shift? Well, there are a few reasons. One is the Angus breed did a far superior job marketing their breed, and created a demand for (black) Angus cattle that far exceeded the demand for any other single breed. The Angus breed also started collecting lots of data, and provided this to producers to help in their breeding decisions.
Another reason is the Hereford breed isn't perfect, and a few of the problems are especially irritating, and practically non-existent in Angus cows. These include cancer eyes, prolapsing, sunburnt bags, horns and calves that didn't get right up and suck like Angus calves.
I have personally been involved in a couple blizzards that resulted in us milking our Hereford range (read-not tame) cows twice a day for two weeks. This had to be done because after the cow's bags (udders) were sunburned, it hurt to have their calves suck, so they kicked them off. If we hadn't milked them, the milk in their bags would have gone sour, and ruined them, as in they wouldn't produce milk anymore. So we ran them all through our chute, twice a day, and milked them, then applied bag balm to ease their pain. Meanwhile we were also bottle feeding several of their calves.
Just another example of what we're willing to do for the health of our livestock.
But, dealing with issues like this make Angus cows look alright in comparison, as their black pigmented bags don't get sunburned, you don't have to dehorn their calves, and they don't prolapse or get cancer eyes nearly as frequently.
(I'm getting to the plus side for you Hereford lovers out there)
Now, don't get me wrong, I really like the Hereford breed, and they have really good things going for them too. A Hereford cow is typically in better shape than her similarly managed black counterparts. This means she will raise a calf, breed back, and not be skin and bones in the fall. They're also a mellower breed disposition wise, and it's hard to beat a big black baldy calf.
As for a positive Hereford story, I have several. My first show heifer was a Hereford, and my grandpa took a load of Hereford steers to Denver in the earlier 1900's that made the paper and were said to be the best load of steers to go through the Stockyards to date.
But, while the Angus cow isn't perfect either, she quickly gained popularity for her color, quality, vigor and the amount of data backing her, in addition to other reasons depending on who you talk to.
Demand for Hereford cattle plummeted, and as a result the Hereford breed has worked hard to cull out the animals responsible for those negative traits. It's a whole new Hereford breed today, and several people are starting to go back to Hereford bulls to take advantage of the heterosis, or hybrid vigor, and the all-around good cross a Hereford and Angus pairing results in.



I'm one of those people that would like to use some Hereford genetics on our black cows, due largely to my love of black baldy cows. But, for now, my dad is hanging tough with Angus bulls, and I'm fine with that too. But this cow is a great cow of note, because she represents where our herd came from, and it's a great history.

NWSS Pictures

As previously mentioned, I've been in Denver at the National Western Stock Show (NWSS), covering meetings and working on a feature story for the paper.
I learned a lot, and have a lot of topics to share with you on here. The ILC is a great conference, and does an excellent job of informing attendees on national and international issues facing agriculture today. My head is still swimming with quotes, comments, names and ideas I picked up at the one-day event.


I also had my camera along (as always) and grabbed a few photos of the stock show to share. First is this photo, which shows the catwalk over the "yards" at the NWSS. The event is held at the old railroad stockyards, which is how this area of the NWSS got its name. Catwalks were, and still are in some places, a common sight at livestock auctions, railroads, and other places large numbers of livestock were, or are, held. They allow spectators, potential buyers, and owners the opportunity to look at cattle with ease.
Today, this catwalk offers a great view of the NWSS yards, and is a photographer's dream come true for getting a different angle.
As you can see this is a big event. There are thousands of cattle of every breed in attendance from all over the country, and some from other countries as well.


People show cattle at stock shows. This is a different aspect of the industry than my family is involved in. We are commercial cattlemen, or ranchers, and we sell beef. These people are showmen and registered breeders, and their cattle are registered and/or prospect cattle. They're bred to excel at shows, or to sold to registered or commercial cattlemen.
They bring their cattle to these shows to compete against each other. Cattle are separated into "classes" to be judged based on sex, age, breed and a number of other, more detailed reasons.




At shows, judges rank them based on a number of things, including how they look, how well they can walk and their pedigree. That may sound pretty broad and straightforward, but it's actually a very in depth thing that takes into account a lot of different things in each animal. It's a matter of the judge weighing the pros and cons of each animal, then ranking them. The judge's opinion on what pros outweigh others is what makes or breaks it for any animal on any given day.





It's a big deal, and highly competitive. There are also shows for sheep, hogs, goats and other livestock species at stock shows. A trade show, art show, number of sales, and other events and forms of entertainment make them a lot of fun for both the public and the people competing.



Lots of cattle are also put "on display" for the public at stock shows. This allows people to see popular sires they may not have the chance to otherwise. It's a great opportunity to see a bull you may want to use in your herd through Artificial Insemination (A.I.), or to look at cattle from a producer you buy bulls from.
At the top left of this photo, you can see another building. That's where the trade show is located, and more cattle are housed, and shown, in a lower level. That area is called, "The Hill." People will refer to locations based on whether it's on The Hill, or in The Yards.



You can also buy bulls, heifers, cows, calves, shows steers, and about anything else cattle wise at the stock show. There are a number of breed and prospect (young show animal) sales.





This backdrop is actually bright blue and yellow in real life. Pictures taken in front of it are seen throughout the year in major breed catalogs, sale catalogs and other livestock related publications.




A prospect heifer. One thing about show cattle is they are bred, fed, groomed and cared for specifically to win at these shows. Their hair is also cut, which the industry refers to as clipped, in specific ways to enhance the animals appearance. You can see this heifer's head and neck have been clipped.
People also groom these cattle regularly, and have big blowers that work like a hair dryer. They train the animal's hair to lay in certain ways that will also enhance the animals appearance. Before a show they use a lot of hair spray type products to keep hair in a specific place. Then it's all washed out afterward.
Like I mentioned previously, this a is a big deal to these people, and while it's very different than what my family does, they also spend a tremendous amount of time, energy and money on their cattle, usually in an effort to make them the best they can be.





I've always had a soft spot for Herefords. When I showed cattle I had both black and Hereford cattle. I never showed at the level of the NWSS, and have found other areas of cattle production to be more my taste, but I did love it, and the Hereford breed is still a favorite of mine.


People bring what are called "strings" of cattle to these shows. This terms refers to the entire bunch they brought, which can be several dozen in some cases. They will bring bulls, heifers, cows, or a combination of all three.
Some also bring steers, and the most prestigious show to win at a stock show is usually the steer show.





It's a unique world, and fun one to visit, especially when a major show is so close. Other major stock shows are held throughout the year across the U.S., including the NAILE (pronounced Nile) in Louisville, KY, the American Royal in Kansas City, and the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, to name a few.