From the Barns: Plenty to do

It is early summer and most days it sure feels like it. Plenty of heat and humidity. I wouldn’t say it has been unbearable; seems like the cattle are holding up under the heat stress relatively well. The bigger, heavier cattle are maintaining feed intake better than normal. I have seen times that feed intakes go to a standstill and that has not been the case this year. We are using a feed additive product that is supposed to acclimate cattle to the heat and keep intakes from diving. Perhaps that is being a difference maker.

We did ship a load of fats the other day. I have got two more loads scheduled to ship in two to three weeks and they will be sold on a grid basis. Markets keep rising, almost scary-like. If nothing drastic happens, these cattle should do very well. I anticipate another two to three loads going in August.

Right after I wrote last month’s column, we received over a two-day span 239 head of new feeder cattle, all weighing a shade over 500 pounds, about 75% heifers and the rest cutting bulls. They looked kind of rough, needless to say poorly managed and lacking care from wherever they came from. I’ve been highly concerned about how their health condition would develop. Just now getting to four weeks in, so too early to be confident that they are over the hump, but I have been pleasantly surprised with the low morbidity and mortality we have seen so far. Planning to revaccinate them this week. I can see them making some progress in putting on flesh. I have always said that for this type of cattle, it takes a full 30 days before you can realistically start seeing any improvement.

On the negative side, we are seeing some health problems on a few groups of short yearling cattle. The frustrating thing is that they were here more than 50 days before they broke with this problem. There is a reason why I say you can’t ever get overconfident during the backgrounding or even the finishing phase of feeding cattle. I don’t know if we let our guard down, or if the heat stress hit these cattle at the wrong time, or if there was a failure in the vaccination program from the farms where these cattle came from. It is a head-scratcher and, as I said, frustrating and disappointing. It’s now about a 10-day problem and still seeing some that aren’t responding to anything we try.

The weather and good moisture conditions we have are a boon for growing sudangrass. We have a very good stand and recently we turned cow-calf pairs out on it for grazing. I imaging we will have to turn additional cattle on it, for it looks as though there is a lot of forage out there to be eaten and we don’t want it to get too mature. Because of our busyness, we did not get nitrogen on it post-emergence. You can tell by the yellow tinge to it that is lacking nitrogen. As we graze off and rotate, we will come in right behind the grazers and apply the needed fertilizer.

Getting some of our EQIP projects done. We have installed five new automatic watering stations, with heavy-use areas. Next, we will attempt to put in some interior fences to help with our rotational grazing plan in conjunction with these watering systems. As noted before, plenty to do and not much time for rest or slacking.