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gizmom

gizmom

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The past few months have been eye opening to the boss and I. The boss had a very large kidney stone one that he couldn't pass on his own. Anyone that has had a kidney stone understands. The kidney specialist scheduled him for a procedure, to bust up the stone with a laser. We were told he would be over it in just a couple of days.......not quite, we had complications which put him in the hospital for a week then on IV antibiotics for another week. The day he had his last IV infusion ( he got septic) we pulled out for a road trip with his sister and her husband to Cody WY to visit their son our nephew. We were gone 11 days got home ran to doctor appointments washed some clothes and pulled out for Gatlinburg to attend our eldest sons wedding, pretty exciting stuff. We somehow managed to get calves weaned I have been scrambling trying to get caught up with paperwork. During all of this we have come to the realization it's time to step back a bit. We aren't getting out of the cattle business but we are planning to reduce the herd size. Instead of breeding 150 head we will breed 100. We love the cattle business but dang we're tired. I am finding that cutting back is going to be tough. I have worked building this herd for 30 years it's like having a part of me cut out.

Ecclesiastes 3 King James Version (KJV)

3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

I think our season is coming to an end, we are blessed that our son wants to continue with the cattle. However we have to be realistic he works long hours off the farm, at this point in his life he doesn't have the time to run as many cattle as we currently run. The only logical answer is to cut back. I confess it hurts.

Gizmom
 
A little bit of a moral depressor to come to those realizations. Just looking around, I am seeing some dispersal sales being announced. That must be very difficult.
 
gizmom said:
The past few months have been eye opening to the boss and I. The boss had a very large kidney stone one that he couldn't pass on his own. Anyone that has had a kidney stone understands. The kidney specialist scheduled him for a procedure, to bust up the stone with a laser. We were told he would be over it in just a couple of days.......not quite, we had complications which put him in the hospital for a week then on IV antibiotics for another week. The day he had his last IV infusion ( he got septic) we pulled out for a road trip with his sister and her husband to Cody WY to visit their son our nephew. We were gone 11 days got home ran to doctor appointments washed some clothes and pulled out for Gatlinburg to attend our eldest sons wedding, pretty exciting stuff. We somehow managed to get calves weaned I have been scrambling trying to get caught up with paperwork. During all of this we have come to the realization it's time to step back a bit. We aren't getting out of the cattle business but we are planning to reduce the herd size. Instead of breeding 150 head we will breed 100. We love the cattle business but dang we're tired. I am finding that cutting back is going to be tough. I have worked building this herd for 30 years it's like having a part of me cut out.

Ecclesiastes 3 King James Version (KJV)

3 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

I think our season is coming to an end, we are blessed that our son wants to continue with the cattle. However we have to be realistic he works long hours off the farm, at this point in his life he doesn't have the time to run as many cattle as we currently run. The only logical answer is to cut back. I confess it hurts.

Gizmom
Click to expand...

It does for everyone.
I was never as large as y'all most momma cows I ran was 37.
Walked in one day told the Mrs I was going to sale the hay equipment and all the cows. Her response was they are half mine and your not going to sale out. She said you will die without a cow. I got permission to reduce to 12 momma cows.
 
Time has a way of creeping up on us. Having a herd reduction this fall ourselves.

With any luck cattle won't get cheaper and we buy more back...…...
 
Honestly, I think you'll find it to be the best decision even though it's a hard one to make. I was forced to sell out about nine months ago. At the time I thought it might kill me but other than a few particular animals I really don't miss it much. I know where one of the ones I miss lives and I found my favorite in a neighbors pasture a few days ago and he agreed to sell her to me next time he has them handy. I wish you the best with it.
 
Though I am relatively far away (in years) from having to face this reality, I recently saw my mother have to sell her cows. She spent 20 years (not as long as some, I know) building her herd from scratch following a divorce. Those cattle were her income, but they also gave her purpose, strength and a place of total peace. She found she could no longer enjoy them because of physical limitations and she was missing out on other things because of them. The cows have found new homes (some never left!) and the goats took the place of them in her life. She can care for them mostly on her own, make it as demanding or hands off as she wants and they fill the void the cows left. Now she can have animals to care for, something so intrinsic for her, but they don't take time away from spoiling her grand kids absolutely rotten!

I guess the point of my above ramblings is, make the cattle something you can enjoy again. If you have to cut down numbers drastically, it will hurt at first. After 6 months, it may still sting, but other things will take their place and bring you joy! Best of luck to you and yours in whatever path you decided to venture on!
 
It sure makes you wonder how you managed everything when you had a real job. I tell tell folks we stay so busy doing nothing we don't have time to do anything. I sure hate to hear that about the Boss, hopefully he can still eat oysters.
 
I feel your emotions but please use it to not only improve the herd by selling those that you like yet deep down knew for years that they needed to go but look at it as a way to have more time to enjoy the ones you keep. Oddly, the bottom line might improve with less feed and hay needed. And based on your long term efforts, other breeders can buy and improve what they have, too. My father struggled with the issue of having more or less than the number he thought ought to be here. It was a real concern to him. The best moves I have made due to the good or bad circumstances have been to sell down when it was good or necessary or buy when an opportunity arose. Conventional thought or tradition is the biggest obstacle to progress many times. And I hope that your husband has full recovery. Spousal sickness is a shared burden as both work and support towards recovery.
 
First I want to say my thoughts and prayers are with your husband as he heals. A persons health is a major concern.

Last week when my knee was acting up I realized someday I'll have to make some decisions. Judy plans to cut back some. I will likely keep my numbers small. We both enjoy the cattle and nature. Together we have around a 100 head of cows and that number will likely decline some. Except for when we work them doesn't take much more time to check 50 or 100 head. Wish I was closer so I could purchase some of your females.
 
More power to ya!

30% workload (herd) reduction should be quite noticeable. Metrics for cost feasibility on some things will change for the good and some will not be as attractive. Be ready to "coast" a little as you won't need to push forage growth to the max. Funny how that one activity frees up time across the operation.
 
Let us see how close you get to that number. Whenever I say I'm cutting back a bit and set myself a number, always ends up being a couple extra. I wish you all the best.

Ken
 
Thanks, folks y'all understand how hard this can be. The good news is the boss is improving just still weak. When you get septic it definitely takes time to recover. What it also gave us was time to. Talk about the future. We still love the cattle business but we have gone from running the business to the business running us. A week in a hospital will certainly give you time to consider priorities. Thanks for the kind words and encouragement they are truly appreciated.

Gizmom
 
My dad had bladder stones that were broken up and removed. He came home and was out working and went back inside, that's how i know when he's sick. That night we had a surprise 70th for him. We were all there waiting and then we get a msg he's in an ambulance being rushed to hospital. He had gone septic and his organs were shutting down. That knocked him out of action for a couple of weeks. But 18 months on and you wouldn't even know. The other day he was potting plants all day and looked as fit as ever, potted up 1800 plants.
 
I understand, too. You aren't reducing your herd by much. I hope it's enough for you to get some more time for yourself and family.

We didn't notice less work until we went down to ten cows. Now, we are going down to three pet cows. We reduced because we moved into town and a smaller place (went from 36 acres to 9), but same result. We have on old cow, who is our son's pet. Her calf (might try her as a draft animal) and a 2 year old heifer. The heifer might be our milk cow as I think she is pregnant. So, less animals, but we are doing more with them. They are halter trained and very tame.
 
really like the reference to Ecclesiastes, true words.
From what ive seen and can tell, your leaving him a great legacy to continue with, super young man that seems to really be into cattle The thing is the cattle will be right there and im sure you will be involved, but if you get ready to travel you can just go, there in good hands,
btw B08 acclimated well, great transition to this rough tn grass.
 
I'd feel very lucky to be able to purchase some of your cattle gizmom. I wish you were closer. I'm no fan of cattle making that kind of trip, even under the best conditions.

Sepsis is real. And it can be life threatening. I had been going thru a difficult time in my life (divorce and a 3 year long trial), went for a stay-at-home mom to working 70 hours a week running one of the largest honky tonks in Texas. There was no quit in me, I had 3 kids to raise. And because of what it took to run that establishment, I never slept either because my kiddos also came first.

I had been struggling for a week. I knew I was ill but I needed to work. Caved one day and went to doctor. As I say in the waiting room, my body went into shock and I went from the waiting room to an ambulance ride to the ER. They ran all sorts of tests. You name it, they did it. Doctor said to me "I've never seen anything like it, your body is behaving like it's been thru severe trauma." and made me take two weeks of rest. Rest does wonderful things to a weary body. Except the fact that my body was in so much pain from being still. Strangest thing. I started to realize how hard I was on myself and that I needed to step back. You can't stop working but you can reduce the amount you are.

You ain't going to miss a beat. You'll realize how much more you're able to give the remaining girls. I wish you luck and pray for fast healing.
 
I totally get where you are coming from gizmom. While you have a heck of a lot more head of cattle than we do we just went through a herd reduction of our own this spring as my parents are getting older and cut a lease on a key summer pasture we used so we had to reduce the herd to manage on the owned acres. There will be a day we'll have to disperse the entire herd because my occupation and location is not ideal for owning cattle so a part of me will really hurt when that day comes when I realize the herd we built over the decades will some day come to an end. We spent many hours this spring debating how and which pairs we'd sell off because we had culled down to a really good group of females over the years and we all had our reasons why we wanted to keep certain cows which led to multiple emails and in person sit down conversations to go over our thoughts. Fortunately we found a breeder in our state that liked our genetics and fit in with their herd and bought the entire group which was our ideal scenario to sell the group to 1 buyer and not have people come pick and choose among the group we decided to sell.

Our time on this earth is insignificant compared to the life awaiting for us in heaven so stuff like this is really nothing when you look at what awaits for us after our time on Earth. One of our pastors gave a sermon last year and had this ridiculously long rope as a prop. He had this tiny portion taped off and showed us how this tiny piece of rope is our life on earth then pulled this huge length of rope through this hands and said this is what we have waiting for us in heaven so while we sometimes waste so much of our time focusing on this tiny little portion of our existence we should always be looking forward to the eternity we have waiting for us.
 
I can relate to your feelings. As most know, my husband got sick and I lost him little over 6 years ago. At that point, I was lucky I had the cattle. I had to do "stuff" every day. They relied on me. It had been just he & I.
But, I also relate to the fact that you have built this herd over many years. You are VERY proud of what you have accomplished (rightfully so!). I have reduced from 70 to 50. Not nearly as many as you, but was faced with cutting back on my genetics. Just remember, you know your cattle, you will still have your BEST genetics, and others will be able to enjoy more of your offerings!
I enjoy life and play a lot more than I ever did before. Enjoy each other. Time is precious.
 

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