Monthly Archives: July 2011

Photo Friday: Where is the Water?


Remember this scene from early May as I described the two feet of rainfall received in the month of April? What happened to all of that water? We will miss out on our second of three cuttings of hay this year, ponds are getting shallow, and grass in the pastures is at a standstill. AND I have already fed a few bales of hay this month.

Thankfully, we did receive an inch of rain this week with a brief afternoon thunderstorm, that brought along blinding rain, heavy winds, and even a few downed trees that fell on county roads and fences (always more fence to fix). I was out brush hogging a pasture as I watched the dark clouds roll in from the NorthWest. At first it looked like all the others storms, and thought it would blow right by. But the winds soon picked up and I could see the lightning getting close. I pulled the tractor into a clearing so I could have a viewpoint and shut er down to enjoy the show. I just sat there and took it all in — sight, sound, smell, feel, but no taste (I do respect the cloud to ground lightning). It was awesome.

Even though the rain gauge show’s we’re within an inch of normal annual precipitation, it’s very dry. Most of that moisture came in April and most of that ran straight into the creeks, ponds, and rivers. Hopefully we’ll be receiving rain on a more normal basis soon, because pastures are running short and hay supplies are low across the region without much of a turnaround in sight.

When was the last time you were able to sit out and enjoy a thunderstorm like this?

Cowboy Romance (of horsesweat and hornflies)


Just warms your heart, don’t it? As I’ve told ya’ll before, I love to read others’ first-hand accounts of ranch life. Van Horn Texas Cowboy and “agritainer”, Bob Kinford (web, blog, facebook, twitter) shares his accounts of cowboy lifestyle through his books like Cowboy Romance (Amazon) – the lastest addition to my Readings and Ruminations booklist. Kinford, a life long cowboy, and now story teller shares his “cun-cussin” encounters from many years of ranch life across the country, with a good dose of humor and an artistic touch only he can add. Bob shares his stories, even taking time to describe the sections, hoolihands, and even CED (Calculated Emergency Dismounts) for those who are a lil less “cowboy literate.”

I’ve had several conversations with Bob recently via social media accounts and emails. He’s the genuine thing and hope to meet him in person one day if our paths ever happen to cross. Enjoy this excerpt from Cowboy Romance, titled No Bueno Por Nada. If your Spanish is a lil rusty, you’ll figure it out by the end of the story. Really looking forward to starting his next book A Million To One Odds (times five).

I WAS WORKING alone on a ranch high up on the Divide and needed a hand for a couple of days to gather the trap and get the cattle shipped out. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have asked for the help, as the trap was only two sections, but it had more brush in it than the states of Nebraska and Kansas combined. I also needed to capture a cow and a yearling bull in an eight-section pasture. The manager, old WW, said he’d send Delbert and Pedro.

They came in the back way and were at the house about ten thirty. We grabbed a quick lunch, loaded the horses, and headed out, planning to meet my friend Elroy, who was coming in from the other direction. Things worked out just right as Elroy pulled up to the appointed meeting spot right when we arrived. We unloaded the horses, and Delbert pulled the truck next to the fence so we could gang up and drive our quarry into the trailer when we found them.

Before mounting, Delbert decided to relieve himself of a coffee overload and in doing so happened to look up. “By golly, is that a cow on top of that hill?” he asked.

It was. The best way to find cattle with Delbert is to fill him up with coffee and wait for his bladder to reach overload, because he always spots a cow when he stops to make room for more java.

Delbert and Pedro rode to the top and started the old girl down. Just as we feared, they couldn’’t keep up with her. That was all right, though, as Elroy and I were waiting for her at the bottom and turned her towards the truck. Delbert and Pedro caught up with us about the time we reached the truck and the old sow made a U-turn for the brush.

Delbert shook out a loop in which he promptly entangled himself as well as his horse. Nothing to worry about, though, as Pedro was gaining on the fugitive. He threw a real pretty loop but missed his slack. The cow ran right through his pretty loop as he yelled, “Mi no bueno por nada!”

At this point I began to worry, as Elroy was riding a kind of green horse and, being smarter than me, wasn’t packing any twine. Circumstances were rapidly leaving it up to me to rope the old girl before she made it into the brush. I wasn’’t looking forward to this task, as the filly I was riding only had about thirty saddlings on her, so I wasn’t positive I’d get her shut down if I opened her up. To make things a little more interesting, she barely stood fourteen hands and was as wide as she was tall. Even if I did catch the cow and get my ride stopped, I was going to have a hard time keeping my saddle top side up.

Nevertheless, looking a little like Don Quixote’s assistant, I took off after my windmill, hollering at my dog to get around the cow. Everyone was yelling at me to get that (*&$&)*$@ dog out of there, but she did just right and stopped the cow for me. This allowed me to stop my horse before tossing a hoolihand around the cow’s neck. I went to the horn, at which point my horse went to running and bucking, and my saddle went to sliding. “I caught her. Now somebody else keep her!”
“Catchers keepers!” Delbert hollered back, laughing so hard that he had difficulty staying on his horse. By dumb luck I got the old girl headed towards the trailer. Just as we passed it, my dog snapped in her face, and the cow jumped into the trailer as if it were all part of a well-rehearsed rodeo act.

We loaded the horses into the back half of the trailer and headed to the far end of the pasture, where I figured the bull was hanging out. Sure enough, we weren’t five minutes out of the trailer when we spotted him heading out at a high rate of speed, and the chase was on. This part of the pasture was a little flatter than the rest but was still pretty brushy. Pedro, being a little embarrassed at having missed the old cow, managed to dab a loop on the bull between bushes within a quarter-mile.

Delbert went back to bring the truck up as we snaked the bull through the brush to the road, which, of course, left me to heel him. Pedro’s horse was pretty well winded by the time we got to the road, so he held the bull while I chased it around him trying to heel it. After the third loop, the bull decided it was time to change directions and turned around, forcing the flustered filly to jump over the top of him.

“Tu no bueno por nada,” Pedro laughed out.

I had the bull caught with the next loop, and we were all taking a nap when Delbert showed up with the truck. After loading everything, we headed home, done for the day with several hours of light left for a change. Halfway home, Delbert had to stop to get rid of a little more coffee. “Bob, is that a cow over there?”  he asked.

Sure enough, it was a trotty old witch the neighbor kept trying to sell, but either he couldn’t catch her, or, when he did catch her, she wouldn’t stay caught. At the sight of our truck she was off once again.
We unloaded double-quick. With my feet dragging through the sage, Pedro and I were in hot pursuit and managed to get her turned towards the road. As soon as we were in the clearing , Pedro caught her by both horns. That is, he would have if she had been wearing any. I slipped in behind him and laced one on her as pretty as could be.

Before I could get my dallies, she ducked around a rapidly approaching juniper just as I found myself in a runaway around the other side of the same bush. Dropping my rope, I began doing everything in my power to stop the filly, including dragging my feet, but nothing worked. By the time I finally succeeded and made it back to the truck, Pedro had caught my rope and loaded the cow in the trailer.

As I rode up, Pedro looked at me and grinned.” Mi no bueno por nada, tu no bueno por nada. Tu y yo es un vaquero.” (I’m no good for nothing, you’re no good for nothing. Between you and me, we make one cowboy.) Maybe so, but we got the job done, and then some.

Why Am I Mowing Pastures: Part 2


Why do livestock producers mow pastures? As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, today I’ll let Jesse Bussard, a graduate student at Kentucky, do a little explaining of cleaning pastures from a forage perspective. Thanks Jesse for helping out!

I was posed the question, “Why do we brush hog (mow) pastures?” by Ryan this past week.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term “brush hog” I’ll fill you in.  A brushhog is just another name for a rotary mower that is mounted on the back of a tractor, most times powered by a power take off (PTO).

Most people have experience mowing their yards to maintain them for aesthetic reasons.  Sometimes it is the same with mowing pastures, but most times it is for a far more important reason, to provide high quality forage for livestock.

mowing pastures mechanical weed control livestock fields

Brush hogging is a form of mechanical weed control for overgrown, unpalatable forages in pastures.

Livestock producers’ main goal in pasture management is to maintain forage quality to support a desired level of gain in their animals.  Forages are the foundation on which animal performance and farm profitability are built upon.  Without a well-maintained, healthy forage stand the genetic potential of the livestock cannot be realized.

When deciding to mow several factors must be taken into consideration with respect to the area to be mowed including timing, pattern, frequency, and height.  These factors will change with the types of forages present and the particular motive for mowing.

Mowing is important to a pasture management plan for the following reasons:

  • Weed management
  • Maintaining forage quality
  • Reduce grazing patterns

Weed management

According to the Penn State Agronomy Guide, repeated mowings reduce weeds’ competitive ability, deplete carbohydrate reserves in the roots, and prevent seed production.  Since mowing prevents seed production, weeds are maintained in a more vegetative state, making some more palatable to livestock.  Depletion of carbohydrate reserves by mowing can be an effective method of controlling or suppressing annual and biennial weeds and also restrict the spread of some perennial weeds.

An important thing to remember though is that a single mowing isn’t going to get the job done.  A series of mowing, sometimes three to four, over several years will greatly reduce and can occasionally eliminate certain weeds, such as Canada thistle.

Maintaining forage quality

Mowing pastures promotes forages to remain in a vegetative state by not allowing the plant to reach a reproductive state.  This allows nutrients to be focused on vegetative growth, increasing forage quality, instead of toward seed production.  Care should be taken to maintain a proper cutting height when which will ensure there is adequate leaf area and left so that the plant is able to produce energy for vigorous regrowth.  Cutting too close can stress plants, depleting energy reserves, and eventually may lead to plant death.  Optimal cutting heights for cool season forages is approximately 2-4 inches and for warm season forages is 6-8 inches.

Reducing grazing patterns

Livestock have a tendency to graze in patterns.  These patterns lead to formation of uneven patches of forage in pastures.  My old college adviser at Penn State University used to call this phenomenon in horse pastures the “lawns and the ruffs.”  These “lawns” are areas of desirable forage while the “ruffs” are areas of forage that have not been grazed.  “Ruffs” form for many reasons, sometimes it may be because it is located near a manure or urine spot, or other times it may just be because the forage is unpalatable.  By clipping taller plants that animals leave behind the grazing pattern is reduce and a more uniform stand of forage is maintained.

These are just a few of many reasons why livestock producers mow pastures.  What are some other reasons you think livestock producers would use mowing in forage management?  How do you manage you pastures to maintain quality forage?

Be sure to visit Jesse Bussard’s blog Pearl Snap Ponderings where she frequently posts about forage management including a weekly Weedy Wednesday post. She is a graduate student at the University of Kentucky studying forage crops and livestock grazing systems. Jesse is a native of Pennsylvania.

Why Am I Mowing Pastures: Part 1

CIMG3985

As I’m bumping, bouncing, and thumping across the rough pastures lately one question comes to mind. Why am I doing this?!? Why are we brush hogging pastures, clipping the grass and weeds, when we have cows that can do the very same thing? There are many, many answers to these questions.

Brush hogging, or as some call it clipping, isn’t quite sitting on a lawn mower cutting grass and weeds. Cleaning pastures with a brush hog is like taking your mower deck, increasing it to as much as 20 feet or more, and turning the drive shaft at 1000 rounds per minute.

Had you asked me a few years ago why we brush hog pastures, I would have told you to clean them up and to knock down all of the fescue stems to prevent our stocker calves from getting pinkeye. Now with a lil more education and experience, I can tell ya there’s a lilmore to it than that.

These weeds are getting as tall as the gate in the river bottoms, but are not palatable to the cows.

Weed control is a big part of cleaning up pastures. We want to prevent weeds from over growing pastures, developing stronger root systems, and producing mature seeds. So brush hogging can be a mechanical weed control. A brush hog is also used to clean the edges of the pastures, along creeks and ditches where trees and shrubs try to encroach on pasture land. This can turn into a pretty big task when situations have been neglected for a few years. Brush hogging also cleans away older forage growth that becomes less palatable to livestock as plant fibers turn to lignin which is less digestible. Then fresh, more palatable grasses and forages can grow for livestock to eat.

I can already hear someone saying “Well if you practiced better forage and grazing management, there wouldn’t be a need to clean the pastures.” And that is true. I’m very interested in learning how I can better manage my grazing patterns to reduce the need for brush hogging. It’s a long, hard, sometimes dirty process to clean the pastures when I could let the cows be eating it all. But in the process of making that change, I’ll still need to brush hog to encourage growth of more desirable plants.

So maybe I’ll put that question out there to ya. How can better pasture management reduce the need for cleaning with a brush hog? It’s something I want to learn more about and look forward to your responses.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow as Jesse Bussard, a forage graduate student at Kentucky shares her thoughts.

Enhanced by Zemanta