Today we took advantage of the nice weather and dry roads to wean the calves out of the Big Trails herd. It was a family affair.
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We winterized what we needed to and brought the last of the cows down to the Mesa pasture. They all wanted to keep coming home, but they will have to stay up there for a while, but this snow should melt soon. In the mean time, I wanted to talk a bit about minerals.
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In normal ranch news, it’s getting colder and stormier. This means it’s time for the cows to come down off the mountain. Yes, we even got a little bit of snow up there. We try to bring them down before a storm comes that brings lots of snow.
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While we don’t have all of our major fall work done. There are still cows to preg test and calves to wean, but we are doing less haying and irrigating so there have been some chances to work on other projects.
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For this week’s blog I thought I would share with you a recipe we found that makes for a delicious meal!
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It’s one of those weeks where you feel like you are always moving. Early mornings and you usually use up all of your day. True, the days are getting shorter so you don’t have the hours that you did a month ago. Even so, there wasn’t much time for sitting around. That’s how it was on the Greet Ranch, anyway.
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This next week is a big one for fall. Events include weaning, splitting calves between corrals, gathering and "pregging" heifers, and gathering and "pregging" cows. Preg-check week and branding week are two of the biggest bigs on the place, for the guys and for us ladies…
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A short and sweet post this week. Our family is just getting back from a beautiful wedding for our good friends. Megan was the Maid of Honor, Quinlan was the ring bearer, and Lorelei the was flower girl. So we are TIRED, but very happy.
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The fence surrounding our mountain pasture was put in years and years ago. It requires extensive maintenance, which is becoming more difficult to administer due to the rusty old wire and rotting off posts. Over the past couple weeks we decided to completely replace a quarter mile of some of the worst of the fence.
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When I was in college, I remember my professor in Principles of Ruminant Nutrition asking, "what is the most important nutrient?" The answers from the class were predictable: "calcium," "phosphorus," "potassium," "sodium!". He just smiled and then eventually turned on the projector showing a picture…
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We have been lucky this summer to have mild temperatures, 80's and 90's mostly, and we had quite the cool snap for a week or so, then came the heat…
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Sometimes things go smoothly. Sometimes we hit some speed bumps like I talked about in last week's blog. We hit another one of those with one of our steers. We checked on him a few days before this and he was a good-looking, healthy steer and the next time we went up there he wasn't.
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Thursday was an early morning for us. Wake up at 3:30, eat breakfast, grab some water and snacks, then in the truck and headed toward the barn. Megan loaded the kids in the car to take them to their aunt's as they groggily looked at the darkness and tried to go back to sleep. We were trailing the cows to the mountain and we all knew that a big day lay ahead.
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Another late post! Sometimes these big days run away with us…
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The haying has been put on pause even though some of the second cutting and oats are ready to go. They will have to wait just a little bit longer. We are herding most of the cattle from their spring breeding pastures to one pasture part way up the mountain. Once all the cows that we are taking are there, this larger herd will be taken up the mountain.
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The summer is our busiest time of year. we have so many things that need doing and it always seems like we run out of time to get everything done. This means prioritizing…
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This week I wanted to get into the sale of cattle using a video auction. Big Trails Beef has the benefit of meeting the final consumer face-to-face and having a relatively set price for our beef. The price does not jump up or down depending on what the futures boards are doing and what the trade climate is a the moment. However, most people are dependent on buyers who watch these things day to day.
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Today I was afforded a little time to go up and check on the Big Trails Beef herd. They were taken up the mountain a couple of weeks ago and have been grazing and enjoying mountain life, mostly on their own, since.
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I had a request for a day following Jekyll. It's difficult to describe what a typical day looks like in Jekyll's life. I have a hard time describing that for myself, but Jekyll has even less of an idea of what is going to happen each day.
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Ranching is a family business. At least it is around here….
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