A Spot of Winter

Yesterday (the 16th) is cold with a sharp wind, but sunny – not cold like in states closer to the 49th N parallel, but i don’t live there – my north Missouri Tannachton Farm at 39.95 is even too far north, but this is where my husband lives, so guess i’ll hang around.

Anyway, today the ice is coating all surfaces and the forecast is snow, single digits, sleet, ice, pellets, wind so to prepare for a nasty week ahead, I decided to take advantage of yesterday’s weather to set up a polywire electric fence with step in posts to strip off 1/4 of me cows’ next paddock.  If ground is somewhat dry and there is no ice, i have to weigh in my mind whether or not it is better to give them a 20 acre paddock vs a portion.  They won’t waste a lot in those conditions, so does my labor in setting up the fence offset less waste?  This is how i think.

However, knowing there is going to be ice coming, i know that once quality and quantity winter stockpile is coated in ice, each hoof step can break the stems and leaves and do considerable damage to the grazing experience.  Then my labor becomes much more valuable.

Considerations:

1. evaluate quantity and quality of stockpiled forage.
2. evaluate ground/weather conditions as to amount which may be destroyed just by livestock walking on the forage.  (mud, ice, rain)
3. Dry cows in good condition need the least quality of forage – if you have finishing cattle, young cattle, thin, or nursing cows, higher quality forage is necessary.

These factors give value to your labor.  How much you determine your time to be worth will decide whether or not you can justify driving to your cattle and stripping off small allotments of grazing.

How do i shift cows?  open the gate and get out of the way!

 

In just a couple minutes all 170 animal units are shifted to new paddock.  Happy cows and calves.

Get out of their way.

 

Candy to a cow in mid-January with an ice storm on the way.  Filling their bellies!

This tire tank is protected from wind and catches the sun.  With 170 animal units watering out of it, it takes many days of bitter weather before i need to start the overflow or chop ice.  You can see a bit of floating ice that the cows easily broke through by themselves in this tank.

Polywire (i actually use this Powerflex polybraid– it lasts much longer than twisted wire) and pig tail step in posts.

My cows are on the part of Tannachton Farm i call the Buckman 80 because i bought it from Jesse and Janice Buckman years ago.  The red line is the barbed wire perimeter, the yellow is the ‘permanent’ hi-tensile electrified single strand wire powered by a Parmak solar 12 volt energiser.  The purple line shows where i put up the polybraid for temporary grazing (strip grazing).  The area measures about 6.5 acres, i estimate 5000 lbs per acre of standing dry matter for grazing.  My mob eats about 6000 lbs per day, so 6 acres times 5000 lbs equals 30,000 lbs.  Divide that by 6000 allows about 5 days of grazing.  Always estimate conservatively to allow for waste and error in estimates.

Buckman 80 in the fall.

This is the same paddock though being strip grazed in the spring.  

Winter Is On Its Way!

Got a late start this morning, but headed up to roll up a polybraid, then take it to the paddock where the cows were and set it up.  I had put off rolling this polybraid up all summer and because of that, there was some damage to the wire (it wasn’t energised all this time) from deer, calves, sheep chewing on it and breaking the tiny wires braided inside the poly.

Thinking the cows would be starving (they act like that a lot), I provided them far too large a stockpiled paddock.  They just ran around trampling their food and kicking up their heels!  Despite standing knee deep in fresh grass, after about an hour, some of them had wandered back into the old paddock to nibble on short clovers.

This is the first strip of winter stockpile I’ve turned them onto this season.   The paddock size is 17.9 acres, but they’ve been alloted about 7, which as i said was far too much.  It’s grown pretty good although this is growth since May, not August- September, so the quality will not be as good and I’ll need to watch the condition of the cows as winter becomes more severe and they need more energy.   I estimated there are about 7 inches of forage at about 350 lbs per inch giving 2450# per acre.  Given the number of cows and calves in this mob, they eat about 6000# per day, so this 7 acre allotment should yield about 17,150 lbs or 3 days of grazing.  It will be interesting to see how close i get to the estimation.

Forecasting snow flurries by morning.

Shabbat Shalom!

tauna

Photo Bomb!!

Fences, Water tanks, and Corrals

What do farmers and ranchers do when they aren’t directly handling their stock?  To be sure maintenance of the infrastructure is at the top of the list!  Today was another day of such for me.  Dallas went with me, so with his help, we were able to accomplish more than twice what I can accomplish alone in the same amount of time.  Today was drizzly and muddy, but the temperature was mid-50s so that’s a good day to work outside.

It takes at least an hour to gather the materials and tools, plus loading a small bit of hay from the hayloft I’m cleaning out on the Buckman farm to haul up to my cows, fuel up, and head north.  The drive is about 35 minutes when the weather is good.  

We had a stretch of hi-tensile electric wire to repair which had been hit by deer and the wire had pulled through a gripple rendering this part of interior paddock fence completely useless.  So, the end post brace was reset and the wires reattached as well as patching the broken part.  All wires restretched with a gripple tensioning tool, then with the gate shut, electricity flowed freely to make the fence ‘hot.’

One water tank had lost its plug, so a couple days ago, I had to get creative and twisted a plug of hay and forced it through the hole.  Incredibly, this worked perfectly!  Absolutely no water came through.  However, I did replace the hay with the proper plug today.

It was still not quite dark, so we unloaded the polywire reel and some step in posts at the Bowyer barn (i’ll set them up next trip up), then went round the block (Cotton Road is FAR too muddy right now) to tie 2 inch by 3 inch welded wire 3 foot fence to four gates in the corral in preparation for mustering the sheep (hopefully tomorrow – weather permitting) and sorting off the ewe lambs I don’t want to get bred.

Even though it was all but dark, I wanted to get more steel posts pulled up and old barbed wire rolled up from around the old horse pond (small pond dug by horses way back in the old days).  So we managed about 7 posts and one strip of wire before the wind shifted and the rain started in serious and it was just flat out dark, dark, dark.   It’s a 35-40 minute drive home in the Gator, so we headed out.