A heifer in the basement

Weaning is a stressful time. It is also an excellent time to locate, tear out, and immediately rebuild the weakest part of your corral some years. Freshly weaned calves are experts at the locating and tearing out part, and a stressed, mad rancher can really replace torn down corral fast.
The above photo is the result of one such experience a couple years ago. Weaned calves can be spooky, and just about anything can set off the right bunch. One morning we woke up to the sound of peaceful quiet, which is never a good thing on the second day of weaning, and also probably why we were all actually sleeping well.
The corral was empty. This is a rancher's worst weaning nightmare. If calves don't know where their mothers are, they will just poof in every direction like a dropped bag of flour. Locating, gathering, and temporarily securing them until you rebuild the corral can be a lengthy and frustrating process. It can take months to find them all in some instances.
But, not this time. Our calves had gone half a mile, settled down, and were eating. We easily gathered them up, locked them up, fixed the corral, and considered ourselves lucky to only be short one head. I spent the next two days searching high and low, near and far, for the missing one. I eventually assumed she had met up with a neighbor's cows, and we would eventually get a call to retrieve her.
Then I saw what you see above while putting garbage in our burn barrel, and immediately took a picture so everyone would believe me when I informed them of where the missing one had been hiding for almost three days.
This old basement is just a junk collector, as you can see (with the exception of the heifer of course). How she fell in there is beyond me, and how to get her out was also beyond me at the time. She was not happy, to say the least, about her predicament. I pondered, thought, weighed options, and eventually gathered up what I thought I needed to assist her in jumping out of the lowest part of the wall, which is in the top left hand corner of the photo.
I loaded a 4-wheeler trailer of railroad tie chunks and cinder blocks and dumped a few into the basement to begin constructing a temporary set of steps. The heifer began lapping the basement, and I stepped over to the opposite side, just in case she managed to jump out. To my surprise, she lined herself out and leaped out of the basement with ease. After three days of searching, some heavy lifting and mental planning, that's all it took to get her out and back with her buddies. She was shrunk out, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise none the worse for wear as a result of her stay in the basement.
When I came across this picture again today, I thought it was fitting to share with you on day two of weaning our first bunch this year.

Photo update

Here are a few shots of what's been going on around here the last week.

 

We weaned yesterday, and it's 101 degrees today. Earliest and hottest round of weaning that I can remember.

 

 

 

We pulled bulls. Not this one, he isn't ours. But I thought he made a nice picture sitting under his own private tree, swatting flies and watching traffic.

 Here are our bulls, getting their pecking order re-established for the winter.

 And here they are about to continue their argument from the previous photo after we showed them where the water is.

 My wonderful grandmother turned 90. Here she is with all her grandchildren. The weekend before her party, we threw a surprise party for my mom. It's been an August of celebrating around here : )

I finally saw a part of the fire that burned to within a half mile of my aunt and uncle's home, and was much closer to some of their neighbors homes and buildings, as you can see here. This fire burned over 63,300 acres in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming.

Pulling bulls

This week we are pulling our bulls. If you aren't certain what I mean by that, we are not going to physically pull them around (assuming their are no attitude issues), and what I mean by that statement is we are going to take them out of our cows.
Ranchers can manage when they start calving by when they turn their bulls out with their cows. They manage when they stop calving by when they take the bulls out of their cows. This is all assuming the neighbors bull doesn't pitch it before or after your bulls are with your cows. Artificial Insemination (AI) is another very effective way of managing calving, but we don't currently use that method and this will focus on natural breeding.
Managing your calving season is important for several reasons, one being that you want to work around the weather in your area, especially if you don't have adequate protection in case of bad weather. Another is that the closer in age all your calves are, the more uniform they will be their entire lives.Your firstborn calves will also have the competitive, size and age advantage over their younger counterparts for their entire lives. When you will market the calves is another thing to keep in mind when choosing a time to calve.
We strive to have all our calves born as close together as possible each year so they are uniform, easier to manage (think one branding instead of three because calves keep being born for several months), and more marketable (extra big or small calves may be sorted off when you sell).
But, we also want as many cows to calve as possible, and it's not economical to turn a bull out for 10 days, and only get a 50 percent or so calf crop. A cow's estrus cycle lasts 21 days, and gestation length is 280-some days, or about 9 months. So, for each cycle you leave the bulls in, you extend your calvig season by one month. With that in mind, we will typically leave our bulls in for one, two or three estrus cycles (called simply cycles), depending on the group of cows, year, and other factors.
Lots of people also put bulls with their first calf heifers sooner than they put them with their mature cows. This is because calving sooner will give the heifer more time to put on condition post-calving, and before she is turned back out with a bull to breed again. Trying to get a cow to breed back after she's had her first calf is one of the most challenging aspects of livestock reproduction, and a lot of management decisions are geared toward getting her pregnant for a second time.
To put it in perspective, since June 15, when we turned the bulls out with the cows, we have been managing what will be happening on our ranch starting next March, and on through the remainder of next year with our next calf crop. Or, you can think of it the opposite way, in that we have been managing for this year's calf crop that we're about to wean since June, 2011, and actually before when we purchased the bulls that sired them. As in many cases, this is one area of ranching that takes significant planning and investment long before you see the fruits of your labor.
This year we left the bulls in with our yearling heifers, who are those being bred for the first time, for 40 days, or two cycles. This gave every heifer two chances to get bred. If she didn't breed she will be sold, which eliminates the least fertile females from ever entering our mother cow herd. Often times we only leave the bull in with the heifers for one cycle. This ensures we are retaining the most fertile and efficient females into our herd, and makes calving heifers last one month instead of two. The less time spent calving heifers the better in most cases, plus it goes back to having a uniform calf crop and giving each heifer more time to gain condition before she's expected to breed again.
In our mature cows, the bulls are going to be pulled at roughly 60 days, or three cycles. These cows are in much larger pastures, have a calf sucking on them which uses more energy and can make it more difficult for the cow to breed back, and have already had enough money invested in them to make it worthwhile to give them three chances to get bred.
Another key consideration in putting in and pulling bulls is that gestation length in cattle varies, just as it does in humans. Different bulls and different cows will throw calves that are born early, right on time, or late. So, since we turned the bulls in on June 15, we will expect to start calving at least one week early. This is particularly important in our heifers because we use low birthweight bulls, and the way you get a lower birthweight is through a shorter gestation period. Combine that with that fact that we are continuously available to help our first-calf heifer during calving, and it becomes something to pay close attention to.
Some years the bulls aren't pulled, typically because we get so busy with other tasks. We also have cows spread out over a 200 mile area, so it's not like we just spend an hour and they're all gathered. For us, pulling bulls is a big "want to" each year, but not a "absolutely have to" management practice.
If you don't pull bulls the vast majority (over 90 percent) of mature cows will still be bred in 60 days in our place. Very few head will be bred later than that. Big deal you may be thinking, and really it's not a catrastrophe, but it is a pain in the neck. You will have to set up a second day to brand those few head, if they aren't branded they will have to sorted off when you're shipping to summer pasture (and they are always in the way during this), and throughout the entire spring you will spend extra time shuffling, sorting gathering those few head. Plus, those calves you have to spend all that extra time on will be worth less than their larger, more mature siblings for the majority of their lives.

This Industry

I've interviewed 12 people over the last few days, and visited with several more on the route that lead to those interviews. I've heard the personal accounts of how people across the western states are planning, working and striving to make it through this tough year, how they're recovering from the devastating fires that swept so much of the country in recent months and what their strategies are to survive what are sure to be more challenging months, and possibly years, ahead.
On a year that is setting record high temperatures combined with record low moisture, when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) publishes its support of meatless Mondays, when other government agencies including the Forest Service are telling producers in some areas that they won't be able to graze their permits next year either as a result of a fire that burned their permits this year, when corn is shooting through the roof and politicians are continuing to support its use in ethanol production (which costs more to produce than it makes in return...wonder why we're in a budget deficit), when the USDA is reducing meat in school lunch programs, when certain species of wildlife are placed at a higher value than livestock by the public, and when over a million acres have been burned in western states alone, killing thousands of head of livestock, wiping out homes and entire operations in some cases, I saw yet again what makes our agriculture industry so unique, wonderful and powerful in my opinion: God and the farmers and ranchers themselves.
There was resilience, hope, humor and grit surrounded by a solid belief in the Lord amongst the people I spoke to. It's humbling to visit with such people, who in a matter of minutes made my family's situation this year look plumb rosy in multiple instances. There were the stories of help provided by friends, family, acquaintances and in several cases those people who use private lands for recreational and hunting vacations. There were the stories of the sheer workload being taken on by landowners to recover from the effects of 2012, and the fact that I never heard any hesitation, complaints (except for how the government fights fire, which I agree with wholeheartedly) or excuses. Instead, I heard about action, plans, ideas, innovations and answered prayers. I also heard about continued prayers for those who did have to sell out and regroup. People spoke of how good we have it today compared to the 1980's or 1930's. Miraculous moments that occurred during some of the fires were explained, as was how the western cowherd is going to be fed this winter, not if. There was a resigned willingness to dig in and survive, come what may, combined with the ever-present hope you'll always find in agriculture that the weather will become perfect starting tomorrow and the government will back off, and that prices will reach a level we all have in the back of our mind. We are, and always will be the most optimistic pessimists, or most pessimistic optimists, you'll ever meet.
I am proud to not only be a part of this industry, but to be a part of its core; which are the people who raise the food and fiber that feed and clothe the world. The fact that I get to do a part in sharing the stories, ideas and news relevant to agriculture is just a bonus, and this has been a great week on the job for me!