Your DS needs to meet a GOOD woman....
Yeah, but until he lets go of this one, it is useless because he will not let himself try to find someone and I am so tired of it. Get a life.....
It has begun, dumping at auction because of the drought. Sell everything you donāt want because prices will come down in your area because of so many being sold. Take care of your core stock, the rains will come, maybe not soon, but they will come again.
Yes, and no. Part of it is the dry conditions... people are getting rid of some of the less productive animals... BUT alot of it is the price above the dry conditions. There is no way for us to make a 515 lb steer profitable, putting it on feed to get it to 700 lbs. When we got just about $1700/ head (515 x 3.30) for weaned calves...like 2-3 weeks ago.... and the buyers are still paying high prices because the demand is there.... God only knows why ...... there is NO earthly reason to hold them to 700 lbs and get $2.50 = 1750..... with at least $100-150 worth of feed in them... that is losing money. So regardless of the dry conditions... if there was a ton of grass, it will would barely be a break even proposition to get them to 700-750 lbs... Even if we still had 400 tons of the silage in the pit.... it does NOT PAY for us in this area to keep them to get them up to 700 lb size. Been preaching that to DS for years... 450 to 580 is the "sweet spot " here for best value of the calves. Weaning and on feed for 30 days makes them more attractive... they are not what are called "bawlers"... meaning bawling for their momma's... those are much more likely to get sick, not eat, all that...
Most of the trailers that were in there DS said were not full.... they were like us 5-15 head... mixed of feeder calves and some cull cows.. several dairies with 5-6-8 cull cows on them. ALOT of the trailers had sheep and goats.. they will decimate a pasture quicker than anything since they eat so close when it gets dry....
AND on top of that... all 3 "local" stockyards were closed last week for 4th of JULY....Thurs stockyard, Friday stockyard closer to us, and this "Saturday stockyard"... so like us, when we were going to take these few of Fred's last Sat, but they were closed... So, with all things figured in, this week was just a lot busier.
Because they had those tractor trailer loads come in early, and those cattle were being graded for the "graded sale" that coincided with today, they were not unloading the "little guy" until that was done, and got way behind also...
Yes the drought conditions are adding to the "push" to sell off a "few extras" right now... but it is the prices that are pushing me, to push DS to sell. We will take another load of steers from these bigger calves we have brought home the last couple weeks... might only be 6-8-10... and a few idiot acting heifers... either next Friday or the following week.
They have had some rain out in WV so DS is taking another 10 or so heifers out there in the next few days...heifers we are planning to keep for replacements.....at least for now... there are 14 out there already... last year we ran 32/34? steers out there... Big difference.... half the number of last year so far... so maybe 2/3 of what we had out there last year.
He said we will take 5-6 or so heifers to the pasture where we just pulled those 3 cows/calves out of... there is still grass there...then if it gets dry we can pull them out or sell or whatever. But since they have no "prior history" of being out... and there is grass, hopefully the heifers will stay in...
The holstein bull calf twins looked better this evening... I put their water tub inside the barn and carried a 5 gal bucket in there, tonight. They drank about half of it... but looked perkier... just going to have to baby them. I think they were getting somewhat dehydrated because they would not come in the creep gate with the other calves there, and they were drinking most of the water first... I still want to get them to the house and on some grass/clean pasture.... here along with extra feed... they just will not compete with the bigger calves there... they are too timid... compared to the holstein heifer twins, that were so feisty from the get go...
So they are staying locked in the one side of the barn and the outside attached lot and they will just get fed more until I get them here.
Time to quit... I am tired but have gotten better after the extreme heat in the truck while we were waiting to get around and unloaded.
One of the soaker hoses had a small split, so got that replaced. Looks like my older soaker hoses are starting to deteriorate... but I have the male and female ends to fix so will just cut out the weak/leaking spots and fix them to continue to use for awhile. I guess they get weak spots when they are out in the sun and all that.... degrades them.
Time to quit for the night...
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