I've Been Enlisted

I've been enlisted. No, not into military service. But I have been enlisted to drive the feed truck this winter. In its former life, our feed truck was an Army truck. We purchased the 1991 5-ton, 6-wheel drive Army truck and had the Kelly Ryan feed wagon box added to the back in 2014.

C. Melvin Fritzemeier, 10th Infantry Division, U.S. Army

Since Randy's Dad drove an Army truck in the Korean War, there's a bit of nostalgia there, too.

It still has its Army number emblazoned on the driver's side door. That first step is a doozy. So I use my handy-dandy ladder to get into the truck.

 

 Once inside, it looks a little like mission control. 

 With the gap between the windows and the frame, it's kind of a cold ride on nippy mornings! Randy "says" there is a heater. There may be a blower, but I'm not convinced it's heating anything.

Every morning, Randy uses the loader tractor to scoop out silage from the trench silo. The silage crop was rather small this year, so the silo isn't nearly as full as it sometimes is.

It takes several scoops to get enough silage to feed the cows and the calves.

Once I get a thumbs up, it's time to get the truck turned around and headed back to the corrals.

It's kind of a tight squeeze. My least favorite part of the trip is pulling in and out of the drive and the narrow gate.

To make sure I don't end up in Peace Creek, I have to pull into a driveway past the actual entrance into the pasture, back up and then come in from the north. I make my exit in the same convoluted way.

There are no guard rails on that wooden bridge.

Once I make the trek back to the farmstead, Randy augers some grain in the truck while I follow voice commands. (I turn off the blower first so I can hear him. It doesn't seem to make much difference in the temperature in the cab anyway.)

Then I become fence opener for our neighborhood Meals on Wheels delivery.

I like the warmer days ...

... better than the frigidly cold days. 

It doesn't seem to affect our diners much. They like the meal plan - no matter the weather.

Come to think of it, the cab of the truck is warmer than the outside temperature most days.

However, until the calves get moved to a larger lot, there's a lot of maneuvering involved. So gate duty it is!

Sold! (On a Very Cold Day)

My husband is a glass-half-full kind of guy. It's a good quality in a farmer ... and a husband.

Last Thursday morning, with the temperature around 0-degrees F and a wind chill dipping even lower, we were on our way to the Pratt Livestock sale barn to sell feeder calves. We drove past trees and fences draped with the sleet that had fallen the night before amidst crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning that sounded more like spring than winter. The thin layer of ice on the county roads had us slipping and sliding a few times. I kept worrying about whether cattle buyers would even show up. It was the coldest sale day Randy can remember, and he's been doing this since high school.

And in the midst of my concerned musings, Randy said, "Well, at least they have buyers on the internet these days!" Yep, like I said, he's an eternal optimist. For the record, some buyers showed up in person, too. Maybe they preferred the warmth of the sale barn arena to being out scouting for cattle in a feedlot somewhere.

 

Compared to 2018, the price was down about 10 cents per pound. Our calves were a little lighter in weight than last year, too. With the colder and wetter weather, they didn't gain quite as well.

But the 70 feeder calves we sold averaged $1.45 a pound.

It takes only minutes for our cattle to go through the ring and have the auctioneer declare, "Sold!" But the journey with this crop of feeder calves didn't start and end on one day in February. The calves were born on the County Line more than a year ago, and we have been caring for them ever since.

First calf of the Class of 2018

Last March, we ran the babies through the working chute, making the bull calves into steers and getting them ready to go to pasture.

 

Calves born to heifers already had ear tags, but the ones born to older cows got their ear tags and their first round of vaccinations as they went through the chute.

 

In May, we moved the Class of 2018 and their mamas to summer pastures ...

Some went to the Rattlesnake pasture, where our family has had cattle for more than 100 years.

Others went to the Ninnescah pasture.

 

 They stayed at their appointed pastures all summer with their moms.

Then, in November, we brought them back closer to the farm. We were two weeks behind schedule because of muddy conditions.

After they arrived home from the pastures, they were weaned from their moms.

Like wellness checks for humans, the calves had a doctor's appointment, too. Dr. Figger gave them another round of vaccinations.

 

We fed them silage, grain and hay until we shipped them to the sale barn.

Back in November, Dr. Figger calfhood vaccinated the females that would potentially be kept for breeding. (More on calfhood vaccinations at the County Line can be found in this previous blog post.)

Then, last week, we sorted the steers from the heifers. Once we had the females in one place, Randy chose the 25 heifers he wanted to keep. Another 26 went to the sale barn, along with 44 steers.

He treated the heifers we retained with a lice control pour-on before sending them back out to the pasture to keep eating silage, hay and grain. They'll be there until it's time to go to summer pasture once again in May. They'll be first-time mothers in 2020.

The remaining females and the steers went through the sale barn on February 7. They were among some 2,500 head of cattle sold at Pratt Livestock that day.

The sale ends one chapter. (And we've since paid off an operating loan with the proceeds, so the bank is happy, too.)

First calf of 2019

The next chapter has already begun with a new crop of 2019 calves. 

And the journey continues. It may only take a few minutes for cattle to go through the sale ring. But it represents a lifetime of work.

 

Brrrr! It Was a Cold Day for a Cattle Round-Up

I needed a "defrost" mode for my glasses yesterday morning.
A defrost for my legs wouldn't have hurt either.

The cattle defrosted on their own during their semi ride to Pratt Livestock. Today, we'll sell 70 feeder calves, along with a baby calf whose mother has a cancer eye. 

All of us - humans and animals alike - were seeing our breath during the cold morning roundup before the semi arrived to transport the calves.

After several attempts, the cattle finally decided to go down the lane toward the corrals. Of course, on a cold morning with freezing drizzle sticking to my glasses, they couldn't do it the first time. It was a brisk 4-wheeler ride ... with no time to shoot photos.

In the photo above, you can see a straggling calf struggling through the mud. I looked up last year's post as we prepared to ship cattle. There's quite a contrast.

Last year, we'd had no moisture at all beginning in the fall and continuing until early spring. We were choking on the dust down the lane and in the cattle lots. This year, we are still waterlogged from the 14+ inches of rain that fell in October. There's no way a 4-wheeler could go down the lane.

And it was a whole lot chillier this year, as evidenced by the freezing drizzle that stuck to the cattle's hides.

I guarantee I was colder than they were.

Ours was the second load of the day for Darrel Harner Trucking out of Sylvia.

Once Darrel got the trailer backed up to the loading chute, it was time to send the feeders on their way. These were calves that were born in January and February of last year - 2018. After we weaned them in November, we've been feeding them silage and hay.

On Monday, we sorted off 25 heifers that will become first-time mothers in the County Line herd in 2020. The steers and the remaining heifers went to Pratt Livestock. Cattle buyers will purchase them for feedlots, where they will go until they are big enough to be harvested for meat. Let's hope the sub-zero wind chills and slick roads don't keep the cattle buyers away today!

Loading the truck is kind of like a jigsaw puzzle. The trucker tells us how many head of cattle he wants in each group, somewhere between 7 and 12, depending on where they'll go in the cattle trailer. And we send them up the chute and into the truck.

It was a foggy trip to the sale barn.

When it was time our turn to unload, Darrel backed up the semi to the sale barn's chute.

 

An employee there counted the calves as they came off the truck.

Since Darrel started his day in Fredonia and the roads were a little slick, we had a little time between the cattle round-up and the semi's arrival.

I may have needed a defroster on my glasses, but the scenery was undeniably pretty.

 Stark ... but beautiful.

 The CRP grasses caught the icy frost as aptly as the cattle's hide.

 So did a dried flower at Peace Creek Cemetery.

A chain on the working chute provided another canvas for the clinging ice.

Today is even colder, with wind chills below zero. I'm glad the round-up was yesterday and we can spend the day in the relative warmth of the sale barn arena. It's never toasty warm, but it's better than a 4-wheeler ride!