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How much are you selling you pigs for? The current live price is under 40 cents a pound so a 250 pound hog will gross less than $100. You must get a heck of a premium to clear $150.

Today at the local elevator corn was $4.58 or about $164 a ton. Mix that in with corn gluten especially if you can get it for $185 a ton and i would think it would be cheaper.

The organic matter in fields is never going to build up if you work the ground up. We have fields around here that have been no tilled for over 30 years and increased the orginic matter by several percent, but those fields can go back to scratch by taking a plow to them.

Yes, heifer number 2 is more likely to be a dark cutter than heifer number 1, but by no means does it mean she will be. Bulls are more likely to be dark cutters than heifers. Also gentics and handling practices play a large role in determining dark cutters. So to pick number one on the sole...

Dun, i agree with you. I have no thought though on what cowmaker defines as spooky and hard to handle. Some people consider an animal spooky if they cant get within a few feet of it while others define an animal as spooky it they can't within a few hundred feet of it. Im not trying to argue...

Take a look at them this fall and choose the one that has filled out the best by that time. No matter which one you pick, you will have to load the number 2 heifer at some point so don't let that stop you from picking her.

Rob, that's not nonsense, that's good advice. A person can also look at the top of the shoulders. They should be flat across the top and you shouldn't see the shoulder blades on top as they walk. Also look for a crease where they shoulders meet the neck. Read the cattle and let them tell...

One of our landlords used to own a butcher shop and he once had a lady come in that wanted a hog butchered. She must have been from the city because she came back the day after she picked up the meat to accuse the butcher of cheating. She said she only received two sides of ribs and wondered...

Many people around here frost seed red clover into their wheat in early march and then can bale it later that year and several times the next year. My grandfather has been feeding his cows only red clover hay during the winters for years with great luck. I fed it last year to my cows along...

I don't feasible to stand back and say that a whole group of cattle will finish at the same time and at a certain weight. If your selling slaughter cattle by what they weigh and not by whether or not they are finished out, then I believe both you and the consumer are being cheated. A finished...

We wean our calves at 7.5 months. We sell them when they exhibt the signs of being finished, not after they have been on feed for X number of days. This way they are at their peak as far as carcass quality goes. Usually about 14-15 months old.

We raise bottle calves, and wean them at about 6 weeks. If I were you, I would give the calf all the grain it wanted and start switching it over to a ground corn/supplement mix. Since it is part dairy, I would give it almost all the grain it wanted. The pasture should be enough roughage for it.

The greens are the majority of what the cattle consume, but our neighbor claims that they also will pull up the turnips and eat them. There are different types of turnips from your garden variety to turnips made for forage, which have more greens.

We sell to Tyson/IBP and the base price given to us is for a choice YG3 carcass. Anything different than that will get premiums/discount. They pay a premium for YG2's.

Cattle are lazy and if fed hay free choice they probably won't utilize the corn field like they should. Limit hay consumption. You could also try planting turnips in the corn field. I heard reports of 5-6 tons of forage per acre off of some turnip fields depending of planting time, etc.

Turnips are becoming popular in my area. They can produce tons of forage per acre and some people are planting them into corn stalk so in the late fall/winter, the cow can have turnips and corn stalks. Are hoping to plant some this year. I don't like feeding hay so that's one more way the...

We have fed it in the past, with fairly good results. We like to cut it just before it heads out. Once it heads out, it loses feed value, but on the other hand you can get a little more tonage if you let it head out, so either way has benefits and drawbacks. We plant at 120 pounds an acre and...

If you don't think you have enough time for the forage to dry completely, then you could make silage bales out of it. This idea is becoming more and more popular with producers in this area.