Cattle Auction

Today I met Pat (the real farmer) at Web Livestock Exchange in Benson to see my calves sold.
I own 6 cows that I lease to Pat. He keeps them with his herd, supplies their care and feed and we split the calf sales 30-70.

He rents our family farm from Spring through Fall, so we get to enjoy seeing the calves run around and grow. The cattle go home to his farm for the winter.

Yet, I had no trouble recognizing my calves when I got to the sale barn. Pat brought them in yesterday so they could get settled in. He does not like to sell sweaty, stressed animals as he feels he will get a better price if they look good.

Anyway - I had never been to a cattle auction before, but had no trouble finding the place, and the parking lot full of pickup trucks and cattle trailers was a clear indication that today was the day. There were several door, but I just followed the steady stream of ranchers into the unmarked door in the center of the building. That door led to a small, unlit entrance which led to a concrete floored hallway and the entrance into the arena. - OK, now I know where the auction will be.

The men was following walked around the arena to a small, unmarked door on one side. I followed them through the door and found myself in the barn. There were really little calves inside the barn, while down at the end, people were moving gates around to run cattle down corridors and into different paddocks. One the 3 cows went past, I let myself in through the gate and wandered down the corridor to the outdoor paddocks. I quickly spotted my calves in the first paddock. The steers were closest to me, and the heifers were under the shelter in the paddock behind them. They looked good.

Pat and a lovely young lady approached from the other side, and I was introduced to Janessa - Pat's fiancee. She works there showing cattle on the area floor. That is where they met. Janessa gave me a little tour - including the cattle chute where they were manually testing the heifers & cows to see if they were pregnant.

I had 3 steers and 3 heifers, all to be sold as feeders, meaning that they are to be fed to a heavier weight and eventually butchered for their meat.

Watching the auction with Pat was great, he pointed out various features that buyers were looking for, and what features to avoid.

Pat brought along a Hereford steer so we could sell the steers in pairs. I had 2 black and white steers and one brown and white (Hereford) one. The heifers were all black and white.

My calves got top price! The black steers brought $1.06 per pound, the brown ones brought $1. The heifers brought $.91. Pat was very pleased with how we did. They weighed an average of 466 pounds each.

All in all, it was a very interesting and profitable day.

Instant Freeze

This week I did something I have always wanted to try, but never remember to do when the conditions are right.
I took a cup of boiling water outside and threw it into the air. Since it was -14 outside, it instantly turned to ice. The vapors froze and the droplets turned to snow. It was pretty cool!
I tried it again when the temperature was closer to 0 and it still worked, but was not as spectacular. I also tried it with cold and hot-from-the-tap water, but that did not work. It needed to be boiling hot.
I guess Dad was right - hot water does freeze faster.

RAIN RAIN RAIN

I have been wondering lately if it will ever stop raining. It has rained almost every day this month. The soybeans can't get harvested when it is this wet. If they don't get harvested soon, many of our neighbors will have a rough time.
Well today it stopped raining - technically. It snowed instead. The heavy, wet snow melted at first, but was persistent enough to eventually cool the ground and now we have about an inch on the ground.
*SIGH*
Hopefully we'll have a little nicer weather for Halloween tomorrow night. I have 2 princesses that are looking forward to trick-or-treating.

Leaf Drop

After Friday's killing frost and Saturday morning's snow, I saw something I have never seen before. The walnut tree in our yard dropped 95% if its leaves in about an hour. The leaves were dropping faster than I have ever seen! It was quite a sight. Then, driving around town later, I saw that most of the other walnut and some ash trees had dome the same thing. I would see a tree, nearly bare of leaves surrounded by nearly a foot of fallen leaves in a tight circle under the branches - next to a tree full of green leaves. The walnut leaves had not even changed colors yet. I think the frost and snow just triggered something inside it that said, HURRY UP! IT IS WINTER!

It snowed again on Monday morning. My 2 year old LOVED walking in the snow. It looked so pretty on the green leaves. Snow is predicted again tomorrow. I hope we get a few dry fall days to rake up the leaves. Our maple leaves are barely turning!

Welcome to winter!

We have snow on the ground this morning. This just after yesterday's first killing frost.
The summer had pretty cool temperatures. Most of this year's hot weather came in September. We had several days over 90 degrees. Now winter has come early.
I hope that we will actually have some fall days this year... time will tell.

Weaning cows

I feel sorry for our cows today. They calves have been taken away. Being a mom myself, I understand how uncomfortable the cows are with this new situation.
But, having perused some old farm equipment catalogs, the separation method definitely beats having the calves wear sharp muzzles. They would allow the calves to eat grass, but the sharp points would hurt the cow every time the calf wanted to drink. So the poor cow would have to kick away the calf. But both mother and calf would WANT the calf to drink, and they would try again with the same painful results.

We finally got some rain this week. about 2.5 inches on Tuesday and a little more later in the week. It was just enough to bring out mosquitoes. Amazingly we have not been bothered by bugs all summer. One of the benefits of the dry cool weather.

Kavin Bailey from Heartland Conservation is still working away at our woody invaders out at the prairie. It is really starting to open up out there. YEAH!

Woody Brush Removal

This spring, Dad and I signed up for and received a grant from the Minnesota DNR for woody brush removal. It is part of the Landowner Incentive Program (or LIP). For us to keep a true native prairie, we need to keep brush and trees out. It provides financial help and expert advice on how to keep our prairie - a prairie - and not let it turn into woods.

No matter how much I like trees shading my house, they do not belong on the prairie. Over the years and through the centuries, the boundaries between forrest and prairie would shift... brush and trees would grown and spread slowly into prairie territory. Then fires would beat back the trees and allow the prairie to take over again. Once white settlement came and divided the prairie into smaller and smaller pieces by building roads and tilling the soil, the major fires ended. No more would fire restore vast acres of prairie.

So those of us blessed with the responsibility of caring for a tiny piece of prairie do our best to maintain the native species. The fires we have had the last 2 years are a major part of that management. The burns were very successful in that the prairie species are thriving.

UNFORTUNATELY, the quaking aspen trees increase after fire. Quaking aspen, and to some degree cottonwood trees are spread by cloning. That is they send out baby plants from thier roots. The quaking aspen rarely grows from seed. Each tree is either male or female, and most large stands are all the same gender - in fact they are the same plant. There is a stand of quaking aspen in Utah that is considered to be the largest and oldest organism in North America. Each tree is part of the same plant and is genetically identical.

That brings us back to our problem. The fires killed some of the quaking aspen and damaged others, but before they died, the roots got the message to grow more trees ASAP while there was still nutrients available in the roots. And grow they did. We have 3 foot aspen trees all over the place! The cottonwoods spread too.

What to do? Repeated burns may help, but we can't burn every year... cutting the tree causes the same "grow now!" message to get sent to the roots...

So, we enlisted the help of the Minnesota DNR and Heartland Conservation Services and are following the recommended treatment. Heartland is chemically spot treating the little shoots. They are using 2 different approaches. Where the shoots are farther apart, each little tree is getting an individual dab of poison at its base. The ones that are packed in close together are getting 'wiped' with a poison filled custom weed wipe. It is a PVC pipe wrapped in canvas. The pipe has small holes to let the poison soak into the canvas. A valve controls the air flowing into the pipe, which controls how much poison gets to the canvas. It does not drip onto the ground, but keeps enough liquid on the canvas, to apply to the leaves of the tiny trees.

This fall, we will "girdle" the larger trees. Girdling involves stripping the bark all the way around the tree. The strip only needs to be a few inches wide, but it has to go all the way around. This will kill the trees without telling them. That is this fall, the nutrients will still flow through the inside of the tree to the roots, but in the spring, the water and nutrients won't be able to flow up the bark to the leaves.

We appreciate the DNR for their assistance with this project.