Da Bulls

Last Wednesday I went to a bull auction in Burlington Colorado.  It was the first time I've ever been to a livestock auction.  I think everyone that gets a chance should go at least once in there life because it's an experience. The auctioneer was your standard "blebidyblebidyblebidy THREE thousand blahbidyblahbidyblahbidy THREE FIVE" type, and they had their speakers turned up.

When you go to a bull auction they hand out a pamphlet with a list of all of the bulls available for sale.  Each bull has a bunch of statistics that are listed next to his name and a brief description of the bull.  Imagine a baseball card but instead of a baseball player its a bull, and instead of batting average and ERA its calving ease and scrotum circumference...  Yes.  Bigger is better.

It turns out there is a name for all the statistics listed by the bull.  The technical term is Expected Progeny Difference or EPD.  EPDs are a way for a rancher use the genetic information of the Dam (mother cow) and Sire (father bull) to better estimate the outcome of their breeding program.  Depending on the goals of the rancher certain numbers are more important than others.  If the rancher is breeding heifers like we are, than they would look specifically at calving ease (CED), birth weight of the bull (Birth Wt), and Birth EPD. 

This is an example of the EPDs and statistics for two bulls being sold:

Because heifers are cows that have not yet had a calf, ranchers want to see a low birth weight, high calving ease score, and negative Birth EPDs.  Out of the two bulls above 102 would be the better option for breeding heifers.

The above bull, Tag number 1016, would be an excellent choice for a heifer bull.  It has a high calving ease score, a lower birth weight, and a negative birth EPD.

Ranchers that have a calf cow operation would be more likely to select bulls with higher weening weight EPDs, and yearling weight because they will sell the cattle after they are weened and are about one year old.  There are many different types of ranch operations and most of them look for bulls for certain aspects of their operation.  Very rarely will only one type of bull be needed.

During the auction we attended we purchased 2 bulls.  We needed a total of 5 bulls for the ranch so we also went to a bull ranch North of Burlington.  We purchased 3 more heifer bulls and we called it a day. After we purchased the bulls at the sale we went back to the livestock exchange to pick them up the next day.  When we gave them the paperwork they were gone for a long time and came back to tell us that they didn't have our bulls.  After going on a wild goose bull chase we were able to locate the bulls, but I learned the importance of branding you cattle.  So the first thing we did when we got home with all our bulls was brand them.  You can see my brandy work (sorry) below:

One of our new bulls:

-Rancher Ryan

New Office

Yes. Farmers wake up before dawn:

Below are some of our heifers.  A heifer is a female cow that has not had a calf.

Below is a section of a center pivot irrigation system. There were 8 sections like this that we had to move about 30 miles.  We accomplished this by pulling each section with a four wheel drive tractor and a cart on the back.  The cart has a steering wheel, and I would jump on the cart every time we needed to turn. It was kind of like driving a 200 foot erector set around.  

-Farmer Ryan

Old Office

National Agricultural Day

Happy National Agricultural Day Everyone!

http://www.agday.org

Farm Stapler

I received an awesome going away present on my last day at work:

At my old IT job we would have a weekly contest to see who could guess the score of the Chiefs game.  The first time someone won the contest a stapler, that was randomly in the conference room, was turned into a trophy.  Between the obvious Office Space reference and bragging rights everyone wanted the stapler.  So on my last day I became the reigning Farm Stapler Champion.

-Farm Staple Champ Ryan

Farm IT

I've made a big change in my life recently; I just quit my IT job.  I've been working in IT in one form or another for the last 10 years.  If you count school and being the resident family IT guy it's much longer.  I was recently asked to help manage my wife's family farm.  It hasn't been an easy decision, but it's such a rare opportunity that I have to give it a shot. So I'm moving out to Western Kansas in a little under two weeks. 

So far my favorite part of the experience (nothing has really changed yet) has been telling people what I'm doing after I leave my current job as a System Engineer.  Most reactions are as follows: "Can I come too?", "Are you serious?",  and one of my favorites "Why would you want to do that?".  I'm finding that the closer a person has been to a real farm operation the more likely they are to say something like "Can I come too?".  Conversely if they grew up in say Chicago (you know who you are) the reaction has been more like "Why would you want to do that?".

To answer the Chicagoan's question, I'm going to try this because it is an opportunity to do something new and hopefully learn all kinds of new things.  Farm operations are becoming technologically advanced and I hope that my experience in the IT world will be a benefit to the Farm.

I have been asked to call a TV studio to see if they would make a reality TV show about an IT city slicker trying to be a rancher/farmer; I polity declined that request.  However, I have had a lot of people ask me to create a blog.  So here we are friends, ask and you shall receive.

I've named this blog My Grain Headaches not because I expect this to be a bad experience, more just to elude to that fact that I know that I'm going to make a lot of rookie mistakes and I will probably make an idiot out of myself most days.  Whatever the outcome of the next year, I wanted to document what I learn and hopefully you will all be able to learn with me about what it takes to run a farm.

For those of you that I'm leaving in Kansas City, thank you for the love and friendship you've given me over the last 5 years.  I'm going to miss you all.  If you are driving out to Colorado sometime and get stuck in a blizzard or need a place to stop, give me a call.  I'll be happy to see my city friends again.

Farmer Ryan