The New Breed

At the beginning of February we sold all of our bred heifers and unfortunately the amount we got for our heifers was pretty disappointing.  So when a farmer or rancher stops making money it's time for a change.  So we've switched up the operation and bought some older bred cows.  We are now running a calf-cow operation.  Which is when we calve out our cows and raise the calves to weaning.  Weaning is the time when the calf is pulled away from the mother cow. 

When we were breeding heifers we would only purchase Black Angus.  This year we have Black Angus, Red Angus as well as some Black White Face cows.  The Black White Face are a crossbred of Black Angus, and Hereford cattle.  When raising cattle for beef production there is an advantage to having crossbred cattle.  The cattle that are crossbred have a greater genetic diversity, and they typically outperform cattle that are purebred in things like calving birth weight, weening weight, etc...  The technical name for this is performance improvement is heterosis and it is also known as hybrid vigor.  We have about 30 red cows and about 20 white faced cows the rest of our herd is Black Angus.

So far we have about 25 calves and we have only have 1 black white face and 4 red calves.  The rest of the calves are all black because it is the genetically dominate trait.  In order for the calve to have red coloring both the sir (father) and dam (mother) both either have to be red or have the recessive gene for the color red.  This is true for humans as well; the red hair gene is recessive and it only appears when the parents are both carriers of the gene. 

Everyday we go out and check our herd for new born calves.  When we find them we tag their ear and if they are a bull we castrate them.  We do this in the open pasture and sometimes it can be interesting getting the calf away from the cow.  The more protective cows will come after you and you have to keep an eye on them through the whole process.  The guy that works with the cattle the most on our farm has told me that there have been times when he had to roll under his pickup to get away from an angry mother cow. 

I think I've learned more about cattle in the last month than I have in the last year on the farm.  Taking care of the new born calves requires a lot more time than the heifers, but it's worth it to see all the cute baby calves running around. 

-Ear Tagger Extraordinaire Ryan

• My Grain Headaches Suggested Reading: Storey's Guide to Raising Beef Cattle - If you are considering raising cattle or would just like to know more about cattle breeds, genetics, handling techniques, and calving I would recommend reading this book.  

These Boots Are Made For Farming

One of the questions that I get a lot when I tell people I'm farming is: "What kind of boots do you wear?"  I have to admit I'm not really sure why I get this question so much.  If you are one of the people asking I have taken the below picture for you.  The boots I wear are waterproof and have they have steal toes.  I'm pretty sure that if I would have got the regular toe boots I would only have 8 toes at this point. 

I just retired the boots on the left.  I have worn them the last 10 months and I had to buy some new ones.  When your boots start leaking and it's 10 degrees outside, you get motivated to buy some new ones pretty fast.

I never really considered myself to be the cowboy boot type but after spending the last year working on the farm I'm starting to really like my cowboy boots.  I guess if the shoe cowboy boot fits, wear it.

-Cowboy Ryan

AgConnect

AgConnect is an international farm convention that happens every other year.  Luckily for me this year it was in Kansas City.  Here are some of the highlights from the show:

This is a view from the best vantage point I could find. (The top of a combine)

 

This is probably the coolest thing that I found at the convention.  It is a combine that has a grain cart attached to the back.  You can fill an entire semi truck with one load from this combine's grain bin.  That is about three times as much storage as the combines we currently use. 

 

A trend I noticed while I was at this convention was all the major tractor/combine companies were starting to create "Farm Management IT Systems."  John Deere's version of Farm IT is called Farm Sight.  Follow the link to check out their vision of what a farmer's life is going to be like in the future. 

One technology that is being integrated into Farm Sight is called Field Connect.  It is a base station that monitors information on soil conditions and reports via email or text.  I also saw a system that allows you to configure a tractor's GPS system remotely from another tractor's monitor.  It is essentially remote desktop for tractors.  Awesome.

Below is John Deere's latest combine model:

OK. Not really.  I am starting to notice that farmers' (me included) get pretty attached to their farm equipment.  It probably doesn't help when you start to name them...

 -Conventional Farmer Ryan

Herding Cats

We have two herds on the farm: our cattle heard and our cat herd.  We have about 30 head of cat running around.  Our herd grazes on mice and little birds and we fatten them up with cat food.  When the herd has eaten enough for the day they like to lay around and do nothing.

How many cats do you see?

Sometimes our herd is thinned out. When I first came to the farm we had a couple cats that used to hang out in the shop.  I called them Bob and Bob.

 

One day one of the Bobs disappeared.  About a month later we had another one that looked just like him, so I named the kitten Replacement Bob.  You can see him with his bros here:

The life of a free range farm cat can be a difficult one.  They spend most of their time sleeping and playing and waiting for the magical door to open up with more food. 

-Cat Cowboy Ryan

Corn Cob Jelly

One of my favorite things to do is try new foods.  Obviously.  One day my Mother-in-law told me about a nice lady in town who makes jelly.  She started to list all the the types of jelly she makes and as she was going down the list she said corn cob jelly.  I'd never heard of that before so I said we should try it. 

It turns out that during the dust bowl one of the only things that the farmers could use to make jelly was corn cobs and most weren't lucky enough to have even that.  The recipe that was used to make our jelly was a family recipe from that time period.

When I tasted the jelly the first thing that I thought was that it tasted like honey.  The other more interesting flavor that I tasted is hard to describe.  Corn harvest has a very distinct smell to it; it's kind of like dusty corn and straw.  The smell of harvest is what the jelly tasted like.  If I had to choose between corn cob jelly and another more common type of jelly like strawberry, I think I'd choose the strawberry every time.  If I was a hungry farmer in the thirties, I think that corn cob jelly would have tasted like best thing I'd ever had.

I'm not going to act like I'm a cook, I'm not.  For the people that are out there who are interested I found this recipe on Food.com.   If anyone tries to make it let me know what you think!

-Farm Foodie Ryan

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.