More than a few years ago I was working as an engineer for a large company. As many engineers after a few years, I started working on an MBA degree. I remember taking an evening management course with mostly younger students who had just received an undergraduate degree but had little experience other than school at that point.

At that same time I was taking this evening Management class as part of the MBA sequence, my wife and I had 6 or 7 of our 8 kids all at home and in high school down to diapers.

I remember thinking to myself at the time how a REAL final exam for Management 505 would be seeing if you can get 6 or 7 kids to Church on a Sunday morning: On Time and with Matching Socks.  Now THAT is a management problem! I find myself wondering how many of these budding management experts could pass that one?!

Well today I think I found another test of management for the MBA in Cattle Studies.... 1) Sort cows and calves into two separate groups by eartag number WITH the cows and their spring calves together  2) Separate two bulls who have been in another pasture by themselves all winter.  3) Get the right bull to come over the ridge into his cow group 4) Get the other group of cows and calves out of the corral and over the ridge into the pasture with the other bull. 5) do it working by yourself and don't get hurt....

Monday 6/18 was to be bull-in day but it has been just too hot (90's with 25 mph winds) and I didn't want to stress them any more. I also wanted to give the bull calves cut last week a few more days to heal, which they have.  I have also got a 3x5 card which says which calf number goes with which cow number. There was a very welcome cool front coming through this evening so this afternoon was the time for the "final exam".

Actually things went amazingly well. It helps to have calm, good disposition cattle that like a sweet feed treat and are used to coming into the corral. It also helps to have a bit of luck. All of the calves followed their dams into the corral which doesn't always happen. 

Then I just ran them through the tub, alley and chute sorting them with my cutting gates just beyond the headgate I blocked open. Actually they mostly run themselves through as they know that when the gate is closed, the tub/alley/chute is the way out. I check their eartag number to my plan sheet as to which way to move the red gate.

There was a thread a few days ago where we were talking about catching calves in a headgate. I have a For-Most setup with their automatic headgate. This whole system works very well - except calves under about 250 lb are too small for headgate to hold them.  I promised Garvo a picture of the setup for his suggestions.

I just weighed the whole herd last week when the vet and I worked them. Did not need to weigh them again today but did turn the alley scale on to show how it works. The Trutest platform and scale indicator works very well for calves up through bulls. I took a picture as young cow #8 stopped on the scale.

I closed the corral gates as they were cleaning up a couple bucket sweet feed treat from the fenceline bunks and just ran them all through the tub letting individual cow/calf pairs either out to pasture and the other group back into the corral depending on the breeding plan for that cow. One group will go back over the ridge to my registered bull, the other group goes out to the near pasture for my retained bull.

If there was ever a time a beer tasted good it is after finishing this "management exam". At least I don't need to worry about matching socks...

Here are a couple pictures of the corral setup. The headgate is blocked open. If both of the red gates are closed they go straight ahead into either the loading ramp or out to pasture. No horses, roping, or branding irons but there was a time today when I could have used Coochief's helicopter... ;)  fwiw.

Jim at Dawn

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IMG_0705_tub_alley_scale_chute_headgate_sorting for bull-in 062012.jpg (69KB - 253 downloads)

IMG_0706_Cow 8 on platform scale during bull-in sort 062012.jpg (77KB - 217 downloads)