BALE OUT!

The lack of moisture this year has created a very high demand for cattle feed because all the grass on the pastures is gone.  Feedlots and ranchers like to feed corn stalks with a high protein source to fatten up their cattle.  Since the demand has been so high we decided to take advantage of the cornstalks that were remaining after our corn harvest this year. 

In order to bale corn stalks we used a power rake to create a windrow.   A windrow is a long pile of straw, hay, or corn stalks. When a baler runs over the windrow it picks up the corn stalks and begins to roll the bale inside the baler.  When the material that is being baled reaches the specified size the baler monitor beeps and the tractor has to be stopped to allow the bale to be wrapped.  Once the bale has been wrapped it gets ejected like in the picture below.

The bales can be held together by twine or net wrap.  Net wrap is kind of like the green grass you get in you Easter basket as a kid only a lot stronger and it is formed into a net to hold the bales together. We use net wrap in our baler because it does a better job for the materials that we bale.  You can see the net wrap roll in the back of the baler below:

In the sixty acres of corn stalks that we baled we made about 350 bales.  When I was operating the baler I would make a bale about every 50 feet. 

The closest thing that I can relate to operating the baler is driving in stop and go traffic on the highway.   You stop and start and stop and start.  The cool thing about baling though is that every time you stop its like making a deposit in you bank account.

-Bale Roller Ryan

Hungry Hungry Heifers

When people ask me what my favorite thing to do on the farm the first thing that usually pops into my head is herding cattle.  I'm not sure what makes it so much fun but flying around on a 4 wheeler and chasing cattle is awesome. 

A couple months ago we had several pastures that we kept our heifers on all varying in distance from about 2 to 15 miles from our house.  Since the cattle had been out on those pastures since spring we were starting to run out of grass and it was time to move the cattle.  We decided would be easier to transport the heifers from the farthest pasture with trailers, but the rest of them were all moved with a good old fashion cattle drive. 

 

The first thing that has to be done when you are starting a cattle drive is round up the cattle into one big group and get them heading toward the gate.  The problem is that they know that there is an electric fence where the gate was so they don't want to get anywhere close to the fence.  Getting them going usually involves tricking one or two of them to go through the gate and once that happens they all just follow the heifer in front of them.

When you have them on the road you mainly spend your time keeping the cattle from doing their favorite things which include: eating, drinking, and peeing.  If you've ever tried to heard football fans toward the game and away from a tailgate party you've probably experienced something similar.

After the first 10 or 15 minutes all the heifers started to get tired and instead of running they just started walking until we got to our destination.  We ended the drive in a irrigation circle of corn stalks, and some wheat stubble.  After we got them there, I could tell they were all happy to be left alone to do their favorite things again. 

-Cowboy Ryan
 
My Grain Headaches Suggested Reading:

•  The Last Cattle Drive: Robert Day - This novel is about a Eastern Kansas guy who moved to a rural area in Western Kansas.  Sound familiar?   It's a lot of fun to read and I've found some parallels between the main characters story and my own.