From the Barns: Herd on autopilot

We have all but finished our harvest for the year. Corn chopping went extremely smooth with no rain delays and to my recollection only one truck needing pulled all season long — surely a record. A huge corn crop allowed us to make all the silage we needed and chop a great big pile of earlage, as well. All we have left to chop is the corn we planted after our seed wheat harvest and we are waiting for a killing frost to put an end to the growing season for that.

Ian, our good neighbor, and hunting partner LJ and I just got back form our annual elk hunting adventure. This was Ian’s first trip to the elk camp and was partly to celebrate his graduation from high school and partly to celebrate his return to the ranch from being gone all spring and summer doing internships on ranches in Nebraska and Florida. I certainly missed him as I do all my grandchildren when they are away and am sure glad when they return. Linda and I have been richly blessed to have such a great family and we are totally immersed in all their activities and totally love every minute of it.

Now, we really need to find time to accomplish a little farm and ranch work before the ground freezes. We have several bunches of cows turned out on farm fields to graze crop aftermath and give the pasture a little rest through the fall. We still have lots of grass, so it will be late winter before much cow feeding takes place, if at all.

Seeding wheat and pumping manure will be our top priorities for the next few weeks and with the dry soil conditions that should be no problem. The guys tell me we did get some much-needed rainfall while we were in the mountains and that should help getting the wheat up and growing. We do not expect nor need much growth from the wheat in the fall, but for us the real payoff is two months of grazing outside of our pastures next spring, commencing in mid-March. Holding the cows off our pastures until May really jumpstarts the grazing acres.

Marketings at the feedyard are moving along at a steady pace, but with the cheap feed cost, extra weight on the fats is our friend these days. The only pressure to sell we are feeling is coming from the piles of new placements stacked up around the country looking for a pen to land in. Being full is a good thing and that does not look to change any time soon. The cowherds are on autopilot for a while as long as pastures and crop residue is available. We have some more vaccinations to get to and “revacs” to start when time and help allow.

Fall sports are running wide open and between football and cross country meets not many evenings find us in front of the TV — probably a good thing. This whole election and politics season is wearing pretty thin. I will be glad to have voted and get this behind us all as soon as possible. Have a safe harvest.