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| Winter II 2006 | The drought has been a real learning experience. We had our Fall sale in the teeth of it. The bulls sold ok, still at a loss; however, you never lose when you put those bulls out. These are the people who keep coming back. It was a great day to buy Simmental females. They sold ok, but we left a lot of room for the buyer to make money on these animals. The commercial cattle sold fairly well, also with the same room for financial regard for the buyer.
We are using gin trash grown cotton plant after seed and hulls have been removed. The protein is 8% to 9% and they will eat it. (Can't and will not pay the asking price for hay - especially with up to 30% feeding loss.) We have mineral blocks out for both wet and dry cattle. We have Purina Accuration out - use Feed Limiter #6 or #7 for dry cows and they really eat very little of this when forage is available. The cattle are in fair to good body condition. For the wet cows, we are feeding gin trash and Accuration #3. We will continue this until the winter pasture can handle heavy grazing.
We are now in the middle of calving season which is going well. Planting of winter pasture is complete. We drilled 1/2 oats and 1/2 cereal rye (Maton) in early October and waited for moisture and we fertilized with urea plus Tam 90 with fertilizer. It rained and we have been grazing it heavily - earliest ever. There obviously no moisture problem removing forage prior to drilling. After the frost we fertilized with the urea and added Tam 90.
Since we have not used weed killer spray for two years and our Ph is above 6.2, we planted Apache clover, using a spreader and pulling a drag to put it out. Clover was planted on all grazing land that we do not use for hay. Hopefully we can have rain this winter and have Spring grazing adding some nitrogen to the soil. Clover and rye grass cannot be managed together because the secret to real growth of rye grass and oats is adequate fertilization. We plan to fertilize in late October, December or so, February and April. With clover we do not fertilize. This protocol has been used for several years at A&M Extension in Overton Texas. We added oats and cut back on cereal rye(Maton) because of cost - the Maton price was very high. Hopefully we will not have freeze loss with oats. This variety is supposed to be more cold tolerant.
We are starting our Fall breeding the first of December. Initially, we bred the pairs for ten days and then gave lutalyse and bred those that came in heat and fourteen days after initial lutalyse, we will repeat the lutalyse. With the older heifers, we used MGA for seventeen days and stopped with these, no breeding. However, seventeen days later we will give lutalyse and get more and closer heats.
The new program is with our Fall heifers and bulls of 2005 -that due to the drought, we placed in a feeding yard in Melissa, TX. It is cheaper to take the cattle to the feed than it is to bring the feed to them. These cattle were fed gin trash and outdated milk from the metroplex. The heifers did well. All heifers over 800 lbs. will be bred - non younger than one year of age. We will not sell any of these as bred heifers with exception of those that we breed that are 15 months old or older. These will be calved out - some being 21 months at calving. I will let you know how smart this was. Calving ease Simmental bulls with high Acc. EPDs for calving ease will be used, with some calving ease Angus bull AI.
The ration the bulls recieved for 60 days was a high protein ration (18.3% protein dry matter basis). The protein to energy ratio was to give maximum bone and muscle growth with excessive fat. The ration they are being fed now is a high roughage ration with the protein to energy ration to continue good bone and muscle growth. The ration has 33% burrs, 8% flour and grease from a chicken frying plant (flour and vegetable oil), 42% returned mild and 16% corn gluten feed with added minerals and vitamins. This is a 21% fiber dry matter basis and 14% dry matter protein with 40 Mcal of NEG dry matter basis.
If I had not been breeding up on these cattle for 30 plus years, I would have sold them all this summer. It is hard to make it with zero bales of hay.
Our Spring Bull and Commercial Heifer Sale will be held on our ranch on February 17th 2007. We will be selling 70 bulls - black, red, polled, polled PB SM and SimAngus bulls, 250 commercial heifers bred and open Brangus and F1 Brah/Herf. A barbeque lunch will be served at 11am and the sale will start at 12:30pm. Come be with us.
It is said that we grow through adversity, so I think we should be ready for our gastric bypass surgery. |
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