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.

livestock handling facility

The old cattle processing facility was falling apart, needing extensive repairs.  We therefore dismantled it for repairs and moved it north to the Dawes County pastures.  Then we purchased a new Powder River System for the home corrals.  It remains to be seen if we can stabilize it enough on dirt as we are hesitant to lay a concrete bed to bolt it down until we are satisfied with the location.  If all works well everything should go smoother during the pregnancy checking and vaccinating of the herd this year.

corn crop

Sharyn is also a shareholder in Rogowski Family Farms LLC.  This farm has traditionally been a total wheat farm.  A few years ago millet was added for a crop rotation.  This year for the first time in many years corn was planted in the rotation.  There was adequate moisture this year to produce what appears to be a successful yield for a dry land crop in our arid environment.  Fortunately there is a share cropper doing the farming so Sharyn will not have to pick the corn.

Eclipse brings visitors

Agate Fossil Beds National Park is 20 miles west of Wohlers Ranch along the Niobrara River.  It is a museum with many dinosaur fossils recovered from the hills near by and many native American Artifacts that were given to the original European owner of this land.  The park ordinarily has only 14,000 visitors per year because of it's remote location.  Being near the center of the path of the eclipse on 8/21/2017 the park had 11,000 visitors.  River Road had never accommodated that many cars before.  

Solar Eclipse

August 21, 2017 brought us the rare event of a solar eclipse tracking within a 70 mile wide pass of totality across the United States, the closer you were located to the center of the path the longer the sun was completely behind the moon as viewed from the earth.  Wohlers Ranch was about 12 miles from the center and therefore the sun was hidden for over 2 minutes.  Needing to check on the ranch, because of the many visitors to our area, but not wanting to view this spectacle alone Sharyn, Blake and Arden went up the River Road to Agate Fossil Beds to be with other people for the viewing.