Frosty Morn.

It was a cool 4 below zero here this AM. At this moment it is actually a "steaming" 12 degrees, on the plus side. It doesn't feel too bad, with light winds.

The livestock don't seem to mind it at all, and they weren't even terribly excited to come in to feed. We are only feeding the bred heifers, heifer calves, the selling bunch of calves, and some short termers etc., that are for sale. We are actually supplementing them, as most still have to graze some too.

As we calve closer to green grass than some ranchers do, the requirements of our bred cows are not real high right now. If they have lots of grass, and good water they will do quite well when the weather is moderate.

Here are two pictures of the coming two year old heifers eating some haybet barley hay (that we purchased for them), and a couple panoramic pics.

Recent Photos

I finally got a picture taken of our ranch sign, which is also our brand. The other two photos are of a butte, and some range around here.

More fall photos.

Here are a few pictures I took today. The top photo is taken of our ranch HQ with the hills in the background.

The two cattle pics. are of our repl. heifer calves enjoying the the nice day we had here today, and coming into feed.

Then lastly, the corral pictures are part of the finished product of our late summers work. We took down an older large barn, and some older corrals to make room for this corral system.

A few thoughts on low cost ranching.

First off, I thought I would throw in a picture I took of working on a set of corrals this fall. We had torn down the old set, and "modernized" them, trying to streamline things for a smooth shipping day, and for other cattle working projects.

On this ranch, we have never calved early because of shelter, feed, weather, etc., but over the last few years we have backed our calving up later, for several reasons.

Since the horrible spring blizzard we had on April 5th thru 7th in 1997, we have gradually moved the calving date back to around April 7-8th from March 20th or so. That was a brutal, cold blizzard that killed a lot of stock in this area.

A year and a half ago, we added some property to our ranch, and it spread us out enough during calving, so we started a second herd of even later calving cows, with a due date of April 20-25th. That is still not completely out of the woods as far as spring storms are concerned, but should eliminate some of the cruddy, cold days that are tough on baby calves. The cows in that herd calve unassisted with us looking at them every now and then as time permits, but they are on their own for the most part. They calved that way with very good success this last spring. I think later calving is what we are going to see in a lot of operations in the future.

I will have to add more about the costs/expenses, and other thoughts on this topic in other posts later on.

Ranch Signs and Travels

I have always been somewhat interested in Ranch signs around the country. Last Saturday I was at a bull sale in Wyoming, and I took a bit of a side trip on the way home. Here are a few that are between Casper to just east of Midwest Wyo. I will have to get a picture of our ranch sign sometime. It is just a large version of our brand, and it has reflective tape on it that makes it very visible during the nighttime.


This is an big hill that caught my eye. It is just south of Midwest.
This last photo was taken up above Casper. You are looking NW.

The wild Turkeys are still hanging around the yard this morning. As I came home from feeding the replacement heifers, they were cruising around the corrals. They moved away, but none acted too threathened with my presence.
Here is a part of the National Forest that lies off our property, just west of here. It is called Lone Mountain by the locals.
Just west of HQ, looking back to the SE. The N. Moreau River is just to the right of the Cottonwoods.
The calves coming in to their mornings feed of alfalfa. Pine hills in background.

Just a few more from the same day. It was a fun day.

The real date on this photo should say around Oct. 1st of this year. We were headed out to gather cattle on weaning day, at a friends ranch. I had to stop, look back, and take a photo.

Holiday and a first posting.

Hi, I am a cattle rancher in Western SD. I had a few minutes today, so I thought this might be a good day to start my blog. It is a nice day here today. A bit cool, but clear and calm.

Had a nice holiday. I don't eat Turkey, so had grilled beef filet's instead. Mmmm! We don't see a lot of wild turkeys on our ranch, but just a few minutes ago nine of them wandered through while I was out prowling around. They must have been giving their thanks to me for not partaking in their "fowl" meat. They sure didn't seem to be too nervous around me anyhow!



Hope you all had a good Turkey Day.

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