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| Fall 2010 | We have had a very interesting summer and fall. This year the weather has been hot and dry. East Texas is the driest spot in the state, resulting in only two cuttings of hay. With the lack of moisture, we have not fertilized but once. We tried to cut our fertilizer cost with clover; but with the cold winter, early spring moisture and with the increased temperature and then hot and dry, it was costly. We had little clover and a lot of weeds that is a problem inherent to clover. We will probably plant less clover and use chemical weed control on more of our country next year.
We palpated our herd in late August and sold all of the open cows. Lucky for us the cull cow market was good.
Winter pasture did not work- wet cold winter, no real winter grazing and then rare early hot spring so the cereal rye and rye grass headed out early with bitterness and low yield. We had nothing of value to put up as silage, so we put it up as hay (fairly poor quality with low protein).
We then top-dressed with urea when we had a good forecast for rain. Guess what? It did not rain so our first hay cutting was sparse and late.
Too dry to top-dress with nitrogen, so we just depended on the residual fertilizer effect from our last year’s chicken litter to get our second cutting.
We held off fertilizing again because of drought and are grazing out our hay meadows.
It was so dry that the army worms turned their noses up and ignored our coastal hay meadows. Due to lack of moisture we will not put our winter pasture in until we get rain.
The overall picture for the cattle industry is positive. So the one fact that cannot be questioned is hybrid vigor places the cattlemen with continental bulls in a great position to cash in with the extra 50-100 pound weaning weights not to mention the increased hardiness and longevity of these animals.
Fall sale is October 30 at noon for lunch and sale to follow at 1 p.m. Our sale offering of these pureblood Simmental/Sim Angus bulls are our best yet. We are offering 96 bulls with approximately 50 of them long yearling to full two-year olds. All the yearling bulls are A.I. sired.
The long yearling and two-year old bulls were on grass all summer and will be ready for heavy duty. These bulls are solid and developed not overly conditioned.
The females, PB, Sim Angus and Braford F1 developed on grass all summer and are in condition for calving and rebreeding.
We feel we are offering 75 bred females, an elite and very functional set of cattle, 96 bulls, bred Simmental and Sim Angus, and 65 F1 Braford pairs, bred and open.
Our last years AI program was successful. All our fall calves will be A.I. sired. We are looking forward to this year’s calf crop.
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7P Ranch |
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