beef industry research and education

Arden is on the board of the Nebraska Cattlemen Foundation (NCF).  The NCF's mission is to advance the future of Nebraska's Beef Industry by investing in research and education programs.  In 2011 NCF gave out 19 scholarships of $1000, awarded research grants of 5K and 10K to 3 professors and established a new endowment for a range professor.  NCF also supports livestock judging teams from UNL and 3 community colleges.  Support for FFA and other needs that fall within our mission statement are made each year.  Money for these programs are raised by individuals donating steers to the Retail Value Steer Challenge which places steers in a feedyard until they are ready for harvest.  The donated steer and the profit he makes during the feeding program creates the funds.  This program will raise about 170K this year.  Steer number 49 is my donation for this year, if he places in the top 3 in any one of 3 categories I will win some money back.

burning barns

Another excess building was erased at the ranch this past week.  The barn in pasture D1 (the Johnson Place) hadn't been used in many years and was near falling down,  We removed the tin roof and pushed it over several months ago and needed to wait for a calm day with some snow cover to do the burn.  Now we need to get all the nails and the foundation picked up or buried.
We haven't seen the elk along the river again so we haven't been able to get a good picture for this blog, but will keep looking.

Attracting hawks

The platform to attract Ferruginous Hawks to nest on the ranch did not accomplish that task last year.  Therefore we attached tree branches to the perimeter of the deck to create a better substrate for nest building.  Hopefully our luck will be better this year as we have an adequate food source in the nearby prairie rat town.

herd additions

We now have 407 cows to calve this spring with 90 of them being first calf heifers.  41 more heifers were purchased at the Torrington, Wy auction last week to add to the herd.  This group of heifers match up very well with the home raised heifers by weight and calving date.  They came from the Meike Ranch near Kaycee, Wyo that I did herd work for when I practiced out of Buffalo nearly 40 years ago.

checking cows

Travis and Joe came to the ranch this week to check on the progress of the cows in the winter pastures.  They lucked out since the weather was so mild this week that there was very little ice to remove from tanks and the cattle had so much grass to eat that they would rather graze then come in for extra protein supplement.  Unfortunately there wasn't  enough snow to enable Joe to do some sledding after the work was done.

winter fun

When the work is done for the day (ice chopping and cattle feeding, and fence repairs and more) then Tom and Blake can ice skate on ponds near the river or go sledding.  This sled is the one that Raymond Wohlers received for Christmas as a boy 85 years ago.  The sled was later used extensively by Arden and used in lesser amounts by Travis, Carrie and Blake.

Winter work

Temperatures at night has been dropping into the single digits which means more work removing ice from the tanks so cattle can drink.  This is a great exercise program and gives Blake a couple of hours of cardiovascular workout and muscle development every day.  This workout and his skills in wrestling developed while handling 3-400 pound calves is making Blake one tough hombre.