From the Barns: String of bad luck

Writing this on the day that the stormy weather for this area is about to come to a halt. We have faced several consecutive days over a six-state area where there have been multiple tornados causing damage, a lot of rain, lightning, hail and serious flooding and washouts of roads and bridges. There was a short-lived tornado just a few miles south of us. We did have a large section of barn roof blown off and lost one of the big doors to the machine shed. These were just caused by the strong winds of 60+ mph. Could have been a lot worse and others in the region are certainly suffering. This ground and the lots are absolutely saturated, and I don’t know how long it is going to take to dry things out and that is not including any other upcoming rains we might receive.

Calving season for the most part is over with, although there is a group of heifers that were late bred that still haven’t dropped their babies. Lots of calves on the ground and they sure look good, especially on the days when the sun is shining and they feel like running and playing. We did our pregnancy checks on both the fall-calving heifers and cows. We didn’t get the results on the heifers we were expecting. Certainly not a wreck, just thought it would be better. Frustrating when you think you are doing everything you should be doing from a health and nutritional standpoint. I think there must be some other factors and maybe one of these days we will figure them out.

We did not get all the processing of cattle done that I had wanted to accomplish this past month. Between breakdowns to fix and poor weather, it limits our time to do that work. Also, with all the time we spend feeding and watching the calving goings-on, that takes away time, as well. We were able to get the first round of vaccine in the 140 head of open heifers that will be bred late spring. In 30 days, they will get another round and also their deworming.

Mentioned the breakdowns, my loader was down for 10 days with engine problems, so I had to use the backhoe which really slowed me down. Also broke a tension spring on the feed truck chain, naturally on a Sunday morning, so had to wait until Monday to locate one the right size and strength, so there again another problem that slowed me way down. Not to mention a weigh bar went bad on one set of our cattle scales, so that, too, causing some complications. If it weren’t for bad luck…

We did end up getting four loads of fat cattle shipped out in March. I am shipping another load of grid cattle out this week. I might squeeze one more load out later this month. The prices as you all know have been very good. Going forward, not sure what the fat market will do with all this concern about tariffs, futures markets and the stock market. I hope all the emotional reaction settles down soon and we can have stability and confidence moving ahead.

The one other bright spot of this past few weeks, besides good cattle prices, we had good timing in getting fertilizer put down on some of our pastures and the annual ryegrass. Some timely showers came right after that and you could really tell the grass was taking off and growing and those fields have a lot of forage to eat. Trying to manage the rotational grazing on those and at the same time dealing with the wet conditions. Hoping for not too much damage, as we are trying to use some sacrifice areas to minimize any problems. And, of course, hoping that we do get some good sun, wind and drying days over the next few weeks.