Just Ranching

I had to go back to the ranch over the weekend to help with weaning and start bringing my cows home that I run up there all summer.  Weaning is when we separate the calves from the mother cows.  At weaning each calf gets weighed, vaccine boosters and then separated into pens based on their weight and sex. 

We contract our calves at a certain pound and if they come in above or below that point then we get penalized.  So heavy calves go into a pen that receives a bit less feed per day.  And light calves get the opposite treatment. Typically we just feed alfalfa/grass hay with some ground barley mixed in.  Also, heifer calves are sorted and we pick our replacements that will go back into the breeding herd.  The mother cows go out to the fall pastures.  It takes about 4 days to get through all of our herds and we have nicer facilities at certain places and old run down chutes at other places.  

This is a crummy photo, but (no pun intended) this is the business end view of a heifer calf heading down the chute to the scale.  This is at the original family homestead.  We don’t run a lot of cows through this setup so the chutes aren’t the fanciest like at the home place.