From the Barns: Cattle priced to sell

Sitting here watching the Super Bowl while typing this column. I do like sports, but let’s be truthful, sports and entertainment are way overvalued in our culture. However, they can be a respite from the day-to-day challenges and problems we face on our farms. And with the weather and field and pen conditions we are facing currently, we definitely need that break to keep us from going mad.

Needless to say, there has been no improvement this past month. In fact, things are even worse than they were a month ago. This has turned into as muddy a winter as we have seen in years. You can look at the cattle and tell they are not finding any comfort, and besides that, you know that production is suffering.

We shipped two loads of fat cattle this past week and will ship another this week. Two of these loads were sold cash, and for the first time ever, we sold cattle for more than $200 per hundredweight. Besides the enormous incentive of selling cattle at that high of a price, it is also a good time to move them when you know that performance is declining and, of course, that leads into higher cost of gain, which will cut into the bottom line.

I took stock of what we have left on feed and I don’t see any other cattle selling for about five weeks. It does look like from mid-March into May we will have several loads of cattle to move. I hope the decrease we are getting in gain and live weight because of the tough conditions does not push us behind projections.

We are forecast to have colder temperatures this coming week, hopefully enough to freeze this ground up some. We are wanting to frost seed some legumes into about 125 pasture acres and hopefully the next week or two will prove to be a good time to do it.

We also have about that many acres of Wintergrazer forage that we sowed last fall and I would think that the cereal rye component of that mix will be ready to graze later this month, or at least in early March. Ground conditions will dictate how we use and manage that and we are hoping that the softness of the ground will have firmed up some by then.

Bulls have been pulled from the pastures last week, so with our ultrasound machine, we should be able to start pregnancy checking in less than a month. I would also anticipate that we will start weaning the fall-born calves in the first half of March, so that will be upon us soon. Then as we think about the spring calving herd, it won’t be long until some of them start to calve. I know the guys are making some calving barn upkeep in order to be prepared for that.

Some other projects we are trying to complete, but the weather only allows us to do so much on those. Also trying to get some office work done when it is not fit to work outside and doing that, but still way behind on that type of work. Let’s hope that by March we can begin speaking of better days and better attitude. Until then, let’s pray for the patience and perseverance to get through these difficult times.