All Things Livestock...

[EasyEd]

Hey All,

We have had a thread on things you need to start farming in the Attachments forum.

http://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/attachments/105382-things-you-just-have-have.html

However that thread has evolved into a livestock (cattle in this case) handling thread. It was suggested that a new thread about cattle be started and I have taken the liberty of doing so - however it made sense to me to expand the concept to potentially include other kinds of livestock. It should be relevant to many of us who include some livestock on small or large acreages.

Please feel free to participate in this all things livestock thread!

I'll repeat my last post in the old thread here...

Spiveyman now it is my turn to apologise for not getting back sooner.

The Dube chute is interesting. I've been studying the pictures you provided trying to decide for sure how it works. I see the palp access on both ends. I see how it ratchets but what controls an animals back and forth motion? Nose pinch and/or squeeze?

As interesting as the chute is I couldn't help but notice the pastures in the background. What is the weed left behind? I see they are all clipped real short. Do you use portable electric fence for intensive grazing? How much legume component do you have in the pastures?

As for the cost issue I asked about - I am not as familiar with operations in your neck of the woods or Texas where TexasJohn is from but in the northern part of the US and Canada it is generally winter feed costs as being the biggest cost factor followed by supporting open cows. Does anyone else within a reasonable distance also raise longhorns in the way you do? If you could maybe share some costs doing something cooperatively.

Your choice of longhorns is interesting. I assume it works well from a marketing perspective. I take it you do direct farm sales of halves, quarters and such. You must be near a population center for that to work.

-Ed-

 

[texasjohn]

Wow, Ed, what a neat topic.. it's gonna be a fun one

Major costs...include

Land... There may be somewhere in the lower 48 where you can purchase land at a price where you can raise stock and make it pay for the land.. but I simply don't know where that is. Of course, accounting schemes and resale values, etc. hide all this cost.

Equipment... unless you have 50+ animal units, it's really a huge impact on the cost of each animal. Barns, tractors, attachments, ropes, pens, brands, dehorners, squeeze chutes, pickup, trailer, sprayers, gates, etc. etc...

Winter feed... I only use round bales of hay... I lucked out last winter... had cut numbers down, had a mild winter, I encouraged the Hardiness characteristic of Beefmasters by not presenting any hay because bale cost was simply too high at $60 and more. Fortunately, we've had an all time record rainfall so far this year, starting in early spring.

Open cows... yep, just gotta move them to the auction if they don't breed every 12 months... slow breeders and late breeding heifers really cost money.

Bull... first, it must be fertile and get the job done... ALWAYS do a stain of a fertility test... we bought a bull with a vet certification of fertility... when we noticed cows coming back into heat, we again took bull to vet. Yep, loads of wigglers, just that 50% had double tails and crooked tails and other problems such that nothing was swimming in a straight line. First vet had NOT done a stain and then microscope view. Really messes up your tight calving season. Also, if you keep heifers, soon the bulls you choose represent almost the entire cow herd. I've found disposition to be highly heritable... will use NOTHING but dog gentle bulls. Life is too short to spend it running after stock... or running from stock Conclusion: a bad bull is extremely expensive, even if he was free while a good bull is cheap even if you paid quite a bit for him. Now, I wonder if we'll need a separate thread to define "bad" and "good"

Fences... I use high tensile, permanent electric wire, high impedance, high amp, high voltage, short pulse chargers... "charges 200 miles of fence"

 

[Spiveyman]

Howdy Ed, so now we can talk freely about all things cattle!

For those who just found this thread, you might want to check out the last half of the thread linked to above. There will likely be some comments and such that span from that thread.

OK - to your questions Ed,

The Dube chute is interesting. I've been studying the pictures you provided trying to decide for sure how it works. I see the palp access on both ends. I see how it ratchets but what controls an animals back and forth motion? Nose pinch and/or squeeze?

Sorry I didn't have better pictures for you there. I'll do a better job when we get the handling system actually built. It is really quite versitile. The gates swing in from opposite sides, so you can squeeze them up any way you want. You can squeeze them towards either end of the chute or keep it balanced in the middle for branding. There are cleats as well that you can use to tie off nose pliers. Here's a graphic of how it works:

As interesting as the chute is I couldn't help but notice the pastures in the background. What is the weed left behind? I see they are all clipped real short. Do you use portable electric fence for intensive grazing? How much legume component do you have in the pastures?

Wow, you are very observant. Actually, that is not my pasture. That is my partners. We co-own a herd of Longhorns and at the moment we have the entire herd on his land for the purpose of over grazing it. He's actually planning to whipe it out and start over so to speak. He wasn't happy with the vegetation on the farm when he bought it and wants to really get a good mix in there, but there are lots of weeds. It looks a bit out of control weed-wise for a couple of reasons. It's has been very dry here and he hasn't wanted to mow the pastures to control the weeds because he didn't want to destroy what grass he had while we needed it for the cattle. I don't know what weed that is, but the longhorns don't seem to care for it for sure. In my fields I have a lot of red clover mixed in with the fescue and other grasses. I'm going to fertilize and re-seed with more legumes. I just had the soil tested so I'd know what to put on there this fall. We'll move the cattle to my land in the next few weeks hopefully and start rotational grazing in the spring most likely.

As for the cost issue I asked about - I am not as familiar with operations in your neck of the woods or Texas where TexasJohn is from but in the northern part of the US and Canada it is generally winter feed costs as being the biggest cost factor followed by supporting open cows. Does anyone else within a reasonable distance also raise longhorns in the way you do? If you could maybe share some costs doing something cooperatively.

Last winter we had about $0.00 in winter feed, give or take. We had tons of rain, lots of grass, and basically no snow. We tossed out a handful of round bales for the heck of it, literally 3 bales or so, but they didn't seem to need it. We do use the cargill minerals to suppliment when the grasses don't have all of the right nutrients the cattle need. The costs for us in our operation are on the processing side, which is our business, so we don't work with other people. We do however have a co-op of producers we work with to purchase animals for slaughter.

Your choice of longhorns is interesting. I assume it works well from a marketing perspective. I take it you do direct farm sales of halves, quarters and such. You must be near a population center for that to work.

Marketing Longhorn beef, it is healthier for you than skinless white chicken meat, but tastes the way beef is supposed to taste. It's very healthy and tastes better than anything you've ever had. Man, you don't have to try very hard to sell this stuff. Once we had a few customers they started sending referals like crazy. We sell in grocery stores and soon will be in restaurants here in KY.

 

[Spiveyman]

Land & Equipment...
Those are the biggies for us! Land is nuts around here, and equipment, well if you only bought what you HAVE to have it wouldn't be too bad. But C'mon, here at TBN we have creed, something about helping each other buy as many things as we can possibly justifiy!

Winter feed...
That's the beauty of a "grass fed" program is just that, it's all grass all the time, which is the cheapest way to do it. The problem with it is the rain. What do you do when there's no grass? This is where it's very important to sandbag with Land Vs. Cattle. We wanted to be able to support out cattle even in the worst of years for hay.

Open cows...
One great thing about Longhorns, they are very fertile. We've had great luck with our bulls covering the cows the month after birthing calves. Lots of prolific animals.

Bull...
Yep! All the above, except we don't breed for specific seasons. We run the cows with the bulls year round. We actually want them spread out as we need animals ready for slaughter all year long, not just at "selling" season. Our winters aren't generally that bad so it's not the end of the world to calve going into the winter. We want a spread of ages.

Fences...
Mostly posts, wire, and barbed on the top. Some electric, some 4 plank.

 

[Spiveyman]

I do have a question for all of you "cow whisperers" out there. How do you get a cow to stop jumping the fence?

We have a cow at my partner's farm who keeps jumping a really old fence at about 5:00 every evening. The lady is really struggling and says she can't afford to pay her half of replacing the fence. She's jumping out of a 30 acre pasture into a 5 acre pasture with worse grass and 4 horses. As soon as she sees us she makes a B-line for the fence and jumps back over. She knows she's not supposed to be there. She's teaching the others to jump as well. She's taken one of the calves and a bull with her before. They only jumped once, but this cow goes every day. It's crazy.

We've spent lots of money and time on repairing the old fence. Any clever ideas? We're probably going to just slaughter her, even though she's dropping nice calves. We don't want her teaching the others bad habits.

 

[texasjohn]

Spiveyman... you have a cow that has just volunteered to jump into your trailer and go away... far away... anywhere but near you..you can't afford this cow... let alone her educational "value" as she instructs the younger and more impressionable members of your herd...

There is NO other solution, regardless of how "good" a cow she is... she flunks "disposition" .

Now, that being said, I'd dearly love for you to experiment and let me know how putting a dog training collar (remote control) on her would work... you stand around, unseen, and give her a good jolt as she eyes the fence to jump it. And, jolt her whenever you find her in forbidden pastures. The beauty of this approach is that you get to 1) spend more money on gadgets, 2) use all your time for several weeks just watching her so you are THERE at the critical moment and 3) the rest of us get the benefit of your expertise, observations, conclusions, and expense... and, believe me, we'll send you a sincere "thank you note."

 

[marimus]

What sort of fence is it that the cow is jumping?

I have a couple of solar powered fence chargers I use around the place, and I have found that running a single wire across a section and putting a good charge on it will retrain most cattle to respect fences.

Cran

 

[Spiveyman]

Spiveyman... you have a cow that has just volunteered to jump into your trailer and go away... far away... anywhere but near you..you can't afford this cow... let alone her educational "value" as she instructs the younger and more impressionable members of your herd...

There is NO other solution, regardless of how "good" a cow she is... she flunks "disposition" .

Now, that being said, I'd dearly love for you to experiment and let me know how putting a dog training collar (remote control) on her would work... you stand around, unseen, and give her a good jolt as she eyes the fence to jump it. And, jolt her whenever you find her in forbidden pastures. The beauty of this approach is that you get to 1) spend more money on gadgets, 2) use all your time for several weeks just watching her so you are THERE at the critical moment and 3) the rest of us get the benefit of your expertise, observations, conclusions, and expense... and, believe me, we'll send you a sincere "thank you note."

You got it texasjohn, she's already on the schedule, we're going to introduce her to our butcher Sept 10! I wish I had the time to try electric shock therapy as I would enjoy it every time I got to push that button.

The fence is a 4 strand (5 strands high in her favorite spot) barbed wire. There is no electric in it right now, although I'd like to get some there. I do think a good jolt would slow her down a bit, but we've spent so much time fixing the dang fence we haven't had the time to rig up something like that.

 

[texasjohn]

OK, Spiveyman, I'll let you in on a little secret... given your terrain and amount of terroritory, it is actually easier to install electric fence to reinforce an existing fence line than you might think. The quick answer is:

200 mile fence charger about 8000 volts, but pay attention to the jules (more is better).

smooth wire, 12.5 ga hi tensile... one strand until you have more time till work wonders. You can pull by hand several hundred yards of wire if you use a rotating spool to assist in unrolling the coil.

use lots of rachets, one per fence segment... white donut insulators at corners

black nail-on insulators on wood posts, or clip on for T posts.

bury with your tractor and subsoiler a black plastic pipe into which you have inserted underground insulated electrical fence charger wire (special stuff) under your gate ways so you can get the charge from one fence segment to another.

Insert bunches of knife switches...I put one on each fence leg.

Use insulated fence charger wire to connect fence segments between knife switches. Use screws to mount the knife switches onto wood posts.

There are special knots (believe me) for joining 2 high tensile wires, also for tying it off at corner posts, learn them.

You will be astounded by the amount of fence that you can reinforce and connect and drive from one fence charger this way. Only one charger should do your entire place. Fear not about fires IF you use the high intensity short duration chargers.. they maintain shock thru an amazing amount of grass/weed load... never a fire.

A five light fence tester works just dandy.

Tractor supply has what you need. When you get started, let me know and I'll post photos of some special and cheap tools I use.

 

[weldingisfun]

Texasjohn, you aroused my curiosity, why do you use knife switches in your line? I want to understand what it is that they do.