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| Hello oldtiger,
Well I don't know if your post is totally geared toward me, I don't think it is but I only responded to Carlson because I felt he painted a broad brush calling all of us that don't check cattle every few hours "your flipping lazy and lackadaisical". I only posted to maybe provide insight on how a lot of operations are run here. Like you said location make a big difference, We have worked over four generations to acquire land suitable to run winter grazing for 6 months straight though, then also to be able to trail most all those cattle to summer pastures for 6 months and then repeat the cycle again. The majority of our cattle never come to the home base ranch.
I don't fault anyone for checking their cattle every few hours, it all depends on your operation and facilities. Also tiger that is a true story about beating up $50,000 trucks calving. My son knows this family well, he told me the story of a couple of trucks this operation had their kids take loans out on those trucks. They beat them up taking calves to a hot box and tagging, etc. everyone of them! To each their own I guess, I'm in your camp a beater will do the job just fine. I remember getting lamb basted on AgTalk because I told of how to keep a old cake sack and if needed how to place calf into the sack a butt first and fold front legs down in sack and and take a bale twine and sew opening up leaving calf's head out so if you had to haul that calf in front floor boards you don't get your nice truck all dirty.
My thoughts are that most people's problems in running livestock are self-induced, I'm not saying I've made all the right choices. However I think I've found what fits our labor constraints and finances and also our location. I agree with jfqc my biggest losses are from stillborns or early term abortions from eating some type of poisonous weeds. Littejo made a very good comment "You worry about not catching abnormal presentations but discover you have way, way less of them when they ain't jammed together." I agree 100%!
Just for a fact I've got a next door neighbor that actually has more spring calving ground to run cattle on than me, yet he locks those cattle up tight in yards so he can drive by them every few hours. However he locks them up early, muds them up and they are such a steep slope to them that he gets a lot of cows on their backs. I just happened to drive by today and see a old cow he locked up just calved, sack was broke on calf's head but cow was feet up hill. So I called him and told him about cow. I guess my point is why lock cows up if you have the bared off grass to calve on, especially a second calver?
You know oldtiger the great thing about the internet has been these chat group pages, it has allowed producers, tradesmen, every type of profession to be able to interact and share ideas, projects in real time. To be able to text a person a pic and show a problem or a success you just made. How flipping great is this site, you can get on here and ask a question and look for an obsolete part your dealer can't find. Why just last fall a guy got on AgTalk looking for tow hooks for a IH semi truck, I just happened to have a brand new set under my work bench and was able to ship them to him.
I've met a lot of great people from this site, I've done stuff for people from here that I've never met in person, some I've met later in life. I value each and everyone's input on here. I've had the opportunity to be able to travel a bit and met some of these fine posters on here and get a glimpse of their operations. I tell you everyone is under different constraints, I envy a lot of places I've been able to see, but at the end of the day I'm grateful of what we have acquired over time here, I never want to lose it.
I love to see pics people take, so we tested bulls today. I took a couple while waiting to switch bull groups. I guess it might piss some people off, some might find it interesting to see what we did today and see our weather conditions we had. I 'm just hoping and praying we all have a good year, really hoping people will come to their senses and stop some of these nonsense going on with our country. But I see we made Mr. & Mrs. Potato head gender neutral and gave the Coke bear his pink slip this week. I'm beginning to think I've not stocked up on enough ammo and canned peaches from China.
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Calving on large herds Part 2
