Yesterday & Today

Had I written last night the day could have been summed up in a few sentences. I was gone.  Bruce removed horns and banded some of the bigger bulls.  In order to do these things he had to make a trip to our veterinary clinic to pick up both tetanus shots and V9 vaccine.  Bruce reads a lot.  In doing this he has learned that waiting until male animals are older and then banding them has some advantages when it comes to feeding out steers. When you band them as calves they never have the natural opportunity to produce testosterone and therefore can't utilize it for growth.  We find that waiting gives us a steer that has grown more and is thicker since testosterone produces more lean muscle mass.  All animals are given V9 shots yearly.  These vaccines protect against many cattle diseases such as pneumonia, BVD (bovine viral diarrhea) and Lepto, which in adult cows, causes abortions.  Lepto becomes even more of a concern now that we graze cattle because it is carried by white tail deer. Today Bruce and I both had appointments in town so we did the routine morning things and both headed in the necessary directions.  For me, the financial records have been delivered and the taxes are already started.  Bruce had an advanced managed grazing class.  He has taken both the beginning and advanced classes before and has been a speaker at the beginning grazing class.  Since there are always new things to learn, he is once again choosing to attend class. Grazing people are unique in the fact that if something works well they are willing to share their information so others might reap the benefits also.  If something goes badly they are more than willing to share that experience also. In class today they worked on some budgets and found, even with the high price of corn, there is still money to be made grazing cattle.  The speaker today was a NRCS national grazing specialist and is always an interesting guy to talk to.  He was the guy who also helped us set up our first heifer pastures.  It is good therapy for farmers to get out of their routine once in awhile and catch up with what other people are doing.