Polled Hereford Sale

On Saturday the 24th we participated, as sellers for the first time, in the Cross Timbers Polled Hereford Association sale at West, Texas.  We sold the 3 heifers I mentioned in my Extreme Bovine Makeover post and they looked great.

Here's our little "pen of 3" after their final shampoo, blow dry and and brush on Thursday.  They spent the night on pine shavings in a pen I built for them in the barn (it was muddy outside).  Amy and I drove them over Friday morning and got them into a pen, then looked at everybody else's cows and talked to people about ours.  That evening there was a dinner and a business meeting.  Saturday morning more looking and talking, then Kathy and Amy attended the sale while I helped work the pens and alleys in the back.  Amy said that when our calves came in the auctioneer said, "Whooee, these look like show heifers."  And they did.  It was a great time and I was proud of our cattle.  Thanks to all of you for helping when you can and being interested.  I think Dad and Rich would be proud of Heyroth Polled Herefords.

Did I Mention Kittens?

Not to be outdone by the cows, Barney the barn cat (friend of Carly the garage cat) presented us with 6 kittens yesterday.  She had them in the tall weeds on a balmy sunny day that turned cold and rainy, so this morning Holly and Lawrence moved them to a snug little nest behind the barn.  There are 4 black, one white and one gray just like Barney.  Let us know how many of each color you want and stand by for breaking news...we think Carly's pregnant too.

The Busted Handle Calf Factory

It's fun to go to the pasture these days and see all the calves running around.  We're nearly finished calving with a current total of 21 and probably 2 more to go.  We have 27 cows and I either know the reason for the other 4 not calving or plan to sell them.  You can see that Amy and I have kept busy tagging and weighing most of them as they were born.  After a while they get suspicious of us calling them to the pen and we have to lay off for a few days.  Our big roundup, vaccinating and finish tagging, and separating into breeding pastures is scheduled for March 19, or sooner if I can get Amy to come home.  You're all invited to come help.  Bring old clothes, you'll get a little western on them.  It's the best time of the year.

House Makeover Too

I should have done like Pete--documented all the heartaches and tears, conversations and research and included samples of the Kumquat, Loquat and other shades we considered before deciding on Benjamin Moore HC-134 Tarrytown Green for the clerestory wall.  Then I could have included step-by-step pictures of the first can being opened, the first brush being dipped, and the first stroke being applied because dang it, people are interested in all that...NOT!

But I do agree I should have taken a "before" picture to help show the changes we've made.  Here you can see the (Tarrytown) green upper story wall and the new roof.  Gutters aren't up yet, but will arrive next week.  If you look close (click on the picture to get more detail) you can see the roofers' trailer and the torn-off roof piled in front of the garage.  Bet those Mexican roofers never considered that dumps in Texas might be closed on Texas Independence Day!  The internet and satellite antennas are off the roof and the dead cottonwood that wanted to fall on the house is cut down.  If you look even closer you can see that Lawrence has spent hours scraping the grass and weeds out of the circular drive so we can have it repaved.  We'll christen it the Lawrence Olal Opundo Parkway (the LOOP).  You might also notice the peach trees blooming on March 2.  With an average last frost date of March 25, I have low hopes for a peach crop again this year.

  There's plenty of paint brushes.  Come on down and get paint on your jeans.

Pasture Strategies

With the recent rain and warm weather we have a good bit of winter grass in the pastures.  Lawrence and I had planted 13 acres of oats for winter grazing but, since we have the winter grass and still have at least a 30-day supply of hay, I decided to try and finish out the winter without grazing the oats.  I had the fertilizer guy come out to fertilize and apply weed killer, and we'll see if we can cut them for hay.  We can always go ahead and graze them if things all turn bad, but I'm optimistic for a hay crop.  If we can avoid buying hay in Kansas or the Dakotas and trucking it down here again, I think we'll have made a good choice.

The drought damage to the pastures isn't repaired by a wet winter though.   The warm weather grasses and Coastal could really use some rest.  In 2005 Dad and some of the neighbors had some guys come out and cut cedars, and they were supposed to come back within a few years to burn the brush piles and conduct a controlled burn of the pasture to kill weeds and more cedars.  We hadn't heard from the guys in quite a while but they've contacted us and assure me they still have funding and are in business.  This winter they've burned part of Bob Self's pasture and hope to burn the rest before it gets too green.  A fall or winter burn requires that you take your cows off in the spring and summer, to let grass and weeds grow up for fuel to sustain the burn.  Bob did that last year, asking Tommy Fuqua to hold off renting for a year.  I've talked to Bob and Tommy to see, if they get his pasture burned and the grass comes back good, if I can put some of our cows on his place and let ours get ready for a burn this fall.  The near term benefit would simply be letting the pasture rest and recover from last summer's damage.  The long term benefit, if we can get it burned, would be the elimination of more weeds and cedars that compete with the grass for water and nutrients, and maybe make it better than it was before.

Larry and I have signed a hay lease with the Operstenys, the owners of Garlon's old place, to cut Klein and Coastal hay there.  We have a lease at Ischy's for Coastal and Sudan, the fields at Wesley Jones' and the Sycamore for Sudan, and the Gamblin place and part of the field above the house in Coastal.  Hopefully there will be plenty of hay work this summer.  I've fixed the air conditioner in the tractor, so come on down and drive it around for a while.

Watch Your Weight

 In a business where much of what we do is weight-based, we've had little data to work with on a daily basis.  We've done well against our weight targets with the Alliance calves, but it's probably more because the targets are reasonable and the traditional rules of thumb for feeding and weight gain are accurate than because of any specific knowledge I've had.  If I wanted to weigh a cow or batch of calves, I had to trailer them to the feed store and get the load weighed on their scale.  This is tedious and error-prone when you want the individual weaning and yearling weights the registered cattle require (less so for the Alliance calves which were all averaged, steers and heifers).  This year I've added a scale so we can have some weight data on the ranch.  It's not permanently installed but we gave it a test run yesterday to get yearling weights for the heifers.  In the first photo I'm stress testing it, and in the second it's in actual use.

Weighing newborn calves is another matter.  It usually involves me roping one, picking him up and holding him while standing on the bathroom scale I take to the pasture with me.  Finding a level spot clear of mud and manure can be tricky, and I always need a helper because I can't see the scale over the calf I'm holding against my chest (yes, I can see it just fine when I'm not holding a calf).  So here is the solution to that, a little sling that hangs on a scale suspended from the chute in this case, or from a little arm that fits in the stake pocket of the pickup.

Extreme Bovine Makeover

 These are the before and after pictures from our heifer makeover day.  The 3 yearling heifers we've consigned to the Cross Timbers Polled Hereford Association sale in West on March 24 needed a little grooming and cleaning, so a young lady from Hamilton came over and showed us how today.  I'm sure they were the first calf haircuts and baths ever to be administered at the old Busted Handle.  Over the next 3 weeks their hair will grow out enough to be smooth and even, but not long and shaggy.  We'll wash and blow dry them again before we take them over for the sale.  We did some trimming on their backs and tails, but mostly on their faces and I think they look great.  I'm looking forward to the sale.  Wish you could all be there.

I think you can look at Amy's Facebook page and see pictures of her trimming this one.  The lady who came over did the first 2, then Amy did the third and did a nice job.