A Year in the Life of a Farmer: Focus on cattle chores, data analysis

AgriNews has followed the Rahn family throughout the year. This is the last in a series of monthly updates about the family members and the decisions they make on their farm.

MOUNT CARROLL, Ill. — Caring for their feedlot cattle and the cow-calf herd as well as working on the list of repairs and maintenance jobs keep the Rahn family busy during the winter months.

“We loaded out cattle yesterday, we have a load of cattle coming today, and we’re going to look at some cattle tomorrow,” said Elmer Rahn, who farms with his wife, Annette, and their sons, Correy and Mitchel, and their families.

The market-ready cattle were sold to the JBS plant in Souderton, Pennsylvania.

“We’re going to a farm in southern Iowa to look at the cattle,” Elmer said. “There’s a lot of pasture ground, cow-calf operations and background guys that have yearling cattle in southern Iowa and Missouri.”

The Rahns prefer to place about 800-pound cattle into their feedlots.

“We put them on a high-energy diet to finish them off, and they weigh about 1,450 pounds when we sell them,” Elmer said.

The ration for the feeder cattle consists of cracked corn, wet distillers grain and ground cornstalks and grass.

“This year, the corn was dry enough that we could just put it in the bins and store it without drying, and we’ll crack the corn so the cattle can digest the energy better,” Elmer said. “We’ll crack enough corn for six weeks or so to keep it fresh. It’s not too bad in the winter, but that’s a little harder in the spring when we get a lot of rain.”

The farmers have finished their application of anhydrous on their crop fields until spring.

“We generally do about three-quarters of our needs in the fall and finish up in the spring,” Elmer said. “Our fall tillage is done, too, and we leave some cornstalks to haul manure on in the spring.”

With the fantastic fall, Elmer said, harvest was completed in less than six weeks.

“There were times we thought it would be nice to have a rain day,” he said. “We put over 300 hours on the combine, but we didn’t combine on Sundays, and we didn’t combine several other days because we were moving grain.”

In the spring, the northwestern Illinois farmers were concerned about excess moisture.

“But after June, we had ideal weather,” Elmer said. “Maybe it got a little too dry in August and early September for our soybeans, but from corn to beans to hay and wheat, we had really good crops.”

The weather also has been favorable for gains of the feedlot cattle.

“It’s been a little colder, but we keep them bedded pretty good,” Elmer said. “If we get them out of the wind and they stay dry, they’ll be all right.”

“We are finding what cattle waters need new elements,” Annette said. “We’ve preg-checked the cows, and we’re going to sell 10 bred heifers in a sale at Carthage, Illinois.”

“Cattle take more time this time of the year and we have new cattle, so that takes even more time,” Correy said. “In the winter, something that’s supposed to take a half an hour you could spend a half of day doing it, and it might be as simple as a tractor not starting.”

For example, he said, that morning he dealt with a frozen auger that was caused by only a handful of material.

“This is where an ounce of prevention is more than a pound of cure as we try to prepare for cold stretches,” he said. “Mitchel and I try to do the majority of the miserable work outside so our hired help doesn’t have to deal with it.”

In addition to cleaning equipment and putting implements away for the winter months, the farmers also are working on a list of necessary repairs.

“On days that we can be outside, we also have some trees to trim, fences that need attention and maintenance to do along the field edges,” Correy said.

Although they haven’t examined all the data from the 2024 growing season yet, he said, rates of nitrogen are something they are going to continue to evaluate.

“I think on some of the fields we ran out of nitrogen from the drone imagery we have,” he said. “Usually, we don’t run out of nitrogen, but we had a long grain fill on our fuller season corn.

“If you’re limiting on nitrogen on this fuller season corn at the end, that’s a yield robber. I believe there are small areas where we can do better on managing nitrogen.”

Adding biologicals with the seed treatment on corn has been a mixed bag, Correy said.

“I could point to a spot in the field where it did better and another spot where it was completely opposite so at the end of the day it was a wash,” he said. “The jury is still out, so we’re going to continue testing.”

Fungicides are another product the family will continue to test.

“With fungicides, I can show you four out of five years we see a return on investment,” Correy said. “The question is if we’re getting the payback for the second pass, and this year the answer was no.”

As a result, he said, he does not plan to spray his early corn next year with a second pass of fungicide.

“We will revisit that plan if there’s an outbreak of Goss’s wilt or a perfect storm for tar spot,” he said.

Pioneer seed deliveries are a little ahead of schedule this year, reported Kellie, Correy’s wife and a Pioneer sales representative.

“We filled our first bin on Oct. 30, and it’s great to get seed at that time because we’re not fighting weather,” she said. “We’ve received nine loads of soybeans and four loads of corn.”

Kellie is working with her customers to finalize their corn and soybean orders.

“I will be sending out seed treatment invoices so guys can decide what options they want to do in the spring,” she said. “Our later-maturing corn performed the best because we had a lot of heat units this growing season. As I’ve met with customers, most guys are pretty much staying with where they’ve been because in this area 117-day corn is pretty late, so most cap their hybrids at 112- to 114-day corn.”

During the 2024 growing season, Pioneer trials compared the new Vorceed Enlist hybrids with Qrome products.

“We put cage studies out with a sticky trap in them and monitored it for five weeks,” Kellie said. “The number of adult corn rootworm beetles was much lower for the Vorceed Enlist corn.”

Vorceed Enlist hybrids feature three modes of action to protect the plants from corn rootworms.

“For guys that are heavy corn on corn, this is game-changer,” Kellie said.