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Ridgway, IL | Good morning, happy mothers day
This week we got 1 field working day, and was able to plant around 200 ac of corn. This puts us just above 40% complete planting overall. There are still many in the area that havent planted much at all. The earliest planted crop is looking better all the time as the ground is trying to firm up. Even though we continue to get frequent showers it seems like they're 2-5 tenths instead of the 2-5 inch events we have got over the past several months. Next week looks like we should get at least 2-3 working days and hope to get a lot of crop in the ground and caught up on spraying.
Feedlot conditions have made big improvements this week with the few sunny days. I mentioned last week we have had a pen of cattle started about a month ago that we just couldnt get straightened out, well finally with some sunshine this week it seems like the bleeding has stopped and we are heading in the right direction with all the cattle eating and starting to show improved attitudes. The 2 loads of 6 wt steers we started last week have come on feed really easy and are off to the races. A few snotty noses on them this morning with the 2 tenths of rain we got overnight. We shipped a load of steers friday, and surprising to me they weighed up about 75lb heavier than i expected at 840lb pay weight. This was just a gate cut load out of a pen of 240. I had planned to ship most of them on contract in early jun, but i am going to have to alter my marketing plans and get these cattle out of here soon or they will be 9wts and harder for me to market. To me, this also means that i need to get more aggressive about buying incoming calves. Ideally we could find 2 loads this week. In my opinion its a good time to buy with sale barn prices mostly down 3-6 this past week.
We have sorted off all our colored steers and have them in one of the dirt lot pens. Current plan is feed to slaughter. Most of these were bought 150-200$ less than their black mates. Rough cost on this pen is 125cwt on a 715lb. This pen will be the go to place for cattle that need sorted off for whatever reason, of the 8wt loads we are shipping. Also in another dirt lot is a group of about 30 heifers weighing 775-800lb. I try not to keep many heifers, so i dont have a way to blend these into a load currently and i dont want to take them to a sale barn. Current plan is feed them to slaughter as well.
This week we hope to get caught up on vaccinations and bunching groups of cattle up to free up pen space for incoming cattle.
Progress is being made on the new feed storage barn, but frequent rain delays. our target is to be finished by wheat harvest.
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a slightly better week
