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monitor your cattles energy balance

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    #21
    Sellout - LOL - I take pills for that too.

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      #22
      I know everyone lives in a different environment and my Southern Alberta perspective is biased to milder winters than many others. Some cows don't do well under my preferred winter management. They get separated and fed different and culled. The cows need to convert all sorts of low quality feed into maintaining their condition. I use the fiber length in the pat as my guide and add and subtract protein accordingly. This Manitoba style winter was a tough one for me and them but 95% of the cows look great and the rest look OK. That is the result of consistent culling of poor doers. I think it takes a big barrel to have an easy keeping cow.

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        #23
        A little story came to me this morning BTOfarmall. And don't get me wrong, I believe you are very likely a straight and possibly alpha male.

        A few years back, I ran into a couple of gay guys at a bar after a wedding for a good buddy of mine.

        The first one was the aggressor, out on the dance floor with his wife beater T shirt and lots of muscles. He came on to me while I was dancing with my wife "at the time" and I made a few smart assed remarks that basically kept me out of a fist fight with him. He then went over to my buddy who was pretty much three sheets to the wind and I could see a dust up about to take place. My wife and I danced a little closer to the scene and when I saw my buddy's blood start to boil, I used the dance music to get in real close and hip check this big fellow into a bunch of empty chairs. He went flying and we all got kicked out of the bar. Good thing there were a few extra straight fellows around or I would have likely gotten my ass kicked by this alpha gay and youthful homo.

        Then we were heading upstairs to our room and the other little submissive gay guy was chatting it up with the gals about some of the things gay guys do. I asked him to stop and he turned and tried to push me down the stairs calling me a homophobe among other things.

        This time, I chose to ask him to sit and chat for a bit and he agreed.

        I asked him about why he liked being a victim. I don't know for sure if it was the booze or what, but by the time we were done, he was crying and talking about his suicidal tendencies and finally asked me if he could "do" my wife's hair.

        We all have this tendency to be victims BTOfarmall. I am not sure what your victim story is and if you like we could sit down and chat about it over a beer some day. I have been that way a lot in my life as well, but have found that a proactive approach, instead of blaming or poking a bear with a stick, have better results. If you don't like what One Earth Farms is doing, pick up a hockey stick and get in the game instead of blaming them for your problems.

        If you want to poke at me again bud, here's my personal email address. kaiser.randy@gmail.com

        I'm a little old for a scrap, but maybe I can help with a few words of wisdom (or insanity as some people like to call my words.)

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          #24
          But Randy, poking bears with sticks is fun!

          per, the comment about the Manitoba style winter hit the nail on the head. You have to design your management to work with your climate, and can't just jump in headfirst and change things without thinking it over.

          A few years ago, I remember we had a streak of six weeks in a row where the thermometer never rose above minus 30, not even in the daytime. And we had a couple of feet of snow on the ground at the same time. Tough sledding, no matter what kind of cow you have, or what your management style is.

          We pick and choose whatever ideas are out there, and we use the ones that will work for us.

          Yes, we lock them up in winter, and we bed them. But we also graze corn until the end of January, and turn them out in April on to stockpiled forage, which means they're in the yard for three months. During that time, most of the calves are born.

          Our cows travel away to pasture for the summer, so we want the calves on the ground before they go. You can't calve cows that are 50 miles away and do a good job of watching them. And if we're already paying for the calves to be in that pasture, they may as well be big enough to eat it.

          We also don't bale graze, for the simple fact that we have a herd of deer almost as large as our cow herd, and it's all our poor dogs can do to keep them out of the hay yard. If we set those bales out in an open field, there'd be nothing left for the cows. Really! There are at least 80 of them, and they are bold.

          I think there are a few guys in Manitoba who are trying to use management styles designed for the Alberta climate, without making the appropriate adjustments to make them fit in our climate.

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            #25
            -30 for 3months is the great equalizer. In 1991 I spent a year in Australia. I landed at the tail end of an 18 month drought. I thought I had seen thin starving cows. That was until I moved to southeast Saskatchewan and saw transplanted Alberta ranchers trying to deal with the extended cold after not being prepared for it. Now most of the transplants are starting to figure out that they need to get prepared for winter with early weaning or some other management strategy to fix a low BCS early, when it isn't so costly to turn the cows around. Now I deal with locals that are changing their management system and type of cows to the bale grazing more hands off type of management.
            I think there are quite a few factors that have lead to this perfect storm on some operations and for the most part I think everyone that I deal with is learning from it. What they are learning is that just because you may not be out there physically feeding the cows doesn't mean you shouldn't be out there watching or even bringing in a outside set of eyes to get a second opinion.

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              #26
              Actually Rand, been handling the Farming Game so long, my thumbs bruised. Got the kinda Money the Bank kin't hold.......

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                #27
                Hey Henry this post has sure turned out good and it is nice to get to know you. Risking too much information I will offer one more tidbit that I picked up somewhere that on the surface doesn't seem to make any sense. It is that a cow doesn't get fat on the hay that she eats but the hay she sleeps on. Strictly speaking no doubt you can pick it apart but I think it works. Regards HT

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                  #28
                  How's your stockpile grazing looking Kato? We haven't seen ours yet - still buried deep under the winter snow. This is a management challenge for us as we are normally on it by April 10th at the latest. Looks like they won't get back onto grass before May 1st so we are buying silage in as our own is gone. Cows are in good enough shape, heifers a little too good which is causing me some work I don't usually have.

                  I really think more people should consider making silage versus seeing hay as the only feed cows can eat. I realise it won't work for everyone but it results in far more predictable, quality feed and almost eliminates weather risk and feed spoilage.

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                    #29
                    GF - silage is a great equalizer when
                    fighting weather and forage quality,
                    however it is high cost and can require
                    significant amounts of labour depending
                    on the operation.
                    We are just out on swath grazing and
                    leftover corn with the cows,
                    supplementing with some bale grazing.
                    First calvers to be are back out on
                    swath grazing (buried some months ago),
                    and heifer calves are on grass. We have
                    a set of heifers destined to PQ that are
                    on hay until the truck gets here next
                    week.
                    I agree with the environment part,
                    although it is always possible to push
                    the envelope. Everyone is different and
                    that is a good thing.

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                      #30
                      There are different ways to make hay for sure but I see guys in $100k tractors and $40k balers making rounds out of black weathered crap or storing the bales over till next year and losing 30% of the feed. I can't see how that is cheap. I'm lucky I can get custom silage done for @$10/ton - standing to packed.

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