yard invaders

4 new trees were planted in the house yard this past summer by Travis ( 2 apple and 2 spruce), The apple trees were fenced to protect them from deer.  However the spruce were left unprotected and this past week deer came into the yard and used them to rub their antlers.  1 tree is destroyed and the other has some damage (it is fenced now).  Maybe the damaged tree will become a spruce bush.

In with the new

This is our new 2019 F350 Ford getting to work soon after bringing it to the ranch after having the hydrabed installed.  We have been without a truck for 3 weeks since the 2010 F250 had to be retired (wore out).  During it's first week it has brought 4 pallets of livestock salt and 4 creep feeders to the ranch from Chadron.  Then pulled the feeders to pastures after they were loaded with feed.  Then it pulled 3 trailer loads of cattle to the Crawford livestock auction ( 20 head).  Unfortunately in 8 years it will be wore out as well.

road repair

A heavy rain (4" in a couple of hours) washed out some of our ranch roads last month.  The '67 farm truck that has serviced us for many years is in need of more costly repairs then the truck was worth, so an investment was made in a dump trailer.  Blake is laying gravel on the road down to the diversion dam on the Niobrara.  The trailer will be useful for hauling gravel around livestock tanks and for occasionally trucking feed from town to the ranch. 

windmill service

Cattle on the ranch have access to drinking water from wells that have pumps powered by solar energy and/or wind energy.  Windmills need serviced periodically to be certain the gears are lubricated and bolts on the tower haven't loosened.  Blake's job on this day was checking the oil level in the gear chamber of this mill.  Arden's job was to pick Blake up if he fell off the tower, fortunately his help was not required.  We only do this job when the wind is not blowing.

engineered equipment

When picking up the 1400 lb bales in the hay yard occasionally the bale netting tears and the hay falls out.  This leaves hay loose on the ground that is considerable work to pitch onto the truck by hand.  Since we didn't have a sweep attachment for the tractor Blake found old bend sweep teeth in the salvage iron pile on the ranch and engineered a sweep head attachment that fits onto the tractor's bucket.  This took 4 hours of work, but saved considerable money. 

more help

The Hruby family have moved into the lower place buildings and they will help part time on the ranch.  Dan and Kimmie will do the work for now, however they have 4 boys that will make an excellent cattle crew in the future.  For the near future they are stuck watching and learning as 3 of them are doing here.  The oldest is already along the alley moving calves forward to Blake.  This winter they do the Sunday chores so Arden doesn't have to spend 2+ hours driving to do an hour or 2 of work, that has been much appreciated.

feeding corn

We have marketed the non Akaushi calves so have 304 DNA verified 1/2 and 3/4 Akaushi coming yearlings now weaned.  We are doing a limited feeding trial to see if feeding a higher energy ration of corn to 20 head of the lighter calves would move them up to a more average weight.  Then determine if they have an improved weight gain by grass time if they can maintain the extra growth through the grazing period.  We weigh them now, at pasture turn out and again in July at marketing.  Of course we have a control subgroup that are only on pasture with alfalfa supplement to compare gains to.  If the trial shows an economic advantage, in the future we may feed the whole group corn.