From the Barns: Breeding time

Southern Illinois has had some nice weather over the last few weeks. We are getting a little rain along, but not so much yet that is making for too much mud. We have been anywhere from low 20s to low 70s, but nonetheless have made for some really nice working days. Ground this time of year doesn’t always dry up that quickly, but with the warm days and lots of sunshine, it has allowed us to do a lot of pen maintenance and manure spreading. Rain forecast tomorrow, but after that looks like a pleasant week.

We finally got to ship those three loads of 8-weight heifers this past week. Cattle trucks these days can be hard to come by and we had to be patient until we could get some lined up. They headed to Amarillo, Texas, for their destination. Those were the only cattle sold this past month, outside of a few freezer beef, but our inventory numbers have continued to rise with the influx of quite a few new feeder calves. We were getting close to being maxed out, thankfully Thanksgiving week came and we could skip taking any new cattle. Going through a lot of feed and with the good weather, feed intakes are really good.

We have a good number of cattle grazing the cereal rye we sowed a couple of months ago, and that is working out really well as it continues to grow and sustain those cattle, with just a little extra supplemental feed. Breeding time for the fall cows is already here upon us. This past week saw us putting CIDRs in some heifers and we are hauling in cows today and will be placing the CIDRs in them, as well. So, AI work will be taking place over the next couple of weeks and for those not being synchronized, bulls have had their breeding soundness evaluations and are ready to go out and go to work.

We have stayed very busy and looks like there will be no let up. Feeding alone takes a significant amount of time and with all other cattle checking duties and so forth, there seems never to be a slow moment. I hope everyone has a pleasant December and gets to enjoy the upcoming Christmas season celebrating the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.