How do you farm?

[showing71]

We run 170 pairs on the land around the home place which is right around 500 acres. We lease the 100 acre heifer/young cow pasture and a few other small pastures. Cows are calved in the 40 acre area right next to the calving barn (we aim to have the majority of calves born in February), and they stay in the area until we are finished AI-ing and implanting embryos (middle of May) and are fed hay during this time. Then the pairs are sorted into the other pastures with the herd bulls that match up best with the cows (typically into 3 groups) and are rotationally grazed. Cows and calves are on grass until late August or early September, depending on how long the grass lasts, and then calves are weaned (average is right around 600 lbs). Cows then stay on grass until corn harvest is done and then they go to stalks. Steers and heifers are backgrounded and sent to the feedlot. Replacement heifers and bulls are dry lotted and are given a grower ration during the colder months, and then are fed hay until they go to pasture or are sold. The top ~ 15% of the bull calves are kept to sell private treaty. We typically keep the top ~25% of the heifers as replacements (purebreds and commercials). We keep 10 head or so of the lighter weaned calves to feed out and sell for meat.

We also have around 1000 acres of alfalfa and grass hay. We keep the hay we need (at a surplus) and sell the left over. We have 300 acres of row crops that we have custom planted and harvested for feeding the animals, surplus is sold.

 

[Beef Man]

wE OPERATE IN A SEMI ARID REGION OF N.E. Montana. We farm about 2000 acres mostly feed which can be peas,sweet clover, alafalfa,hay barley, and recently some corn.Also .ofcoarse a little wheat.We lease a lot of our grass and use about 3500 acres of our own rougher praire to winter on. A lot of our harvesting is done with 400 breeding cows and usually 35-50 replacements. We produce breeding cattle Hereford so summer over 40-50 yearling bulls. Most of our leased land is grass and consists of about 6100 acres. One of our biggest headaches is fenceing as mostly all herd district so we have to build and maintain all fences, also do all our own water,salt and mineral. Keeps 1 man busy. Our commercial cows are hereford bred red angus or red angus cows bred to hereford bulls. We honestly feel that this is a super cross and have found them very easy to handle and from my observation make wonderfull feeder cattle and these heifers are excelent cows. All of them can walk a mile or better to water every day and can make the winter the winter on some native grass or sometimes just good straw and a good quality cake.[I bet some of you thought I was going to say that we K, Pharo'd them ] Not many years ,here , does a cow winter on nothing.This is mostly a open and windy area and 1 of our old hands says it is 9 months of winter and 3 months of poor sleding.I really wonder what it would be like to run a pair to the acre or something like that. I guess i better explain something. One of you is going to ask why we dont run more cows on the amount of laand we control. We always try extremely hard to leave , about 40% of the grass opn every pasture. Some years like this one do'snt get the moisture or timeing is wrong for our native range and then we have a problem. Anyway it has been interesting to read about each of your operations.

 

[ALACOWMAN]

good posts.... mine is like a petting zoo campared to yall

 

[Jake]

Everything we run we own. There are right at 2000 acres total, around 650 tillable and the balance is pasture and creeks. Cedar trees are a significant issue with the pasture ground and we are in the process of reclaiming pastures and maintaining those in which we have cleared. The tillable acres are corn, wheat and alfalfa. The cowherd consists of high percentage angus cows bred to angus bulls, there are all of 5 red cows in the herd. The marketing plan on the calves changes year to year based on market conditions and ROI if they were to be backgrounded. We are in the process of looking at succession plans which is may easily turn out to be the most stressful and toughest events a family can go through.

 

[IluvABbeef]

Like houstoncutter I am not in the cattle business either, though would hope to be back in it again if it's still in the stars for me. We have 320 acres of land that is rented out to a neighbor who runs a dairy operation and who uses the land mainly to plant corn, wheat and canola on and run a few cattle in the pens in the summer to keep the grass down.

Before we had to go rent (before dad passed on), we had a mixed farm running stocker steers and crops. We'd get around 80 to 90 head of steer calves (around 500 to 600 lbs) of mixed breeds (Angus, Red Angus, Charolais, Simmental, Shorthorn, Hereford, Limousin, etc.) in late fall to early winter (purchased via private treaty) and feed them in the corrals for the winter months on chopped barley and timothy-alfalfa-brome mix hay. We went from feeding chopped barley to barley silage in the winter which seemed to help increase weights and make the calves grow a bit more over winter than with a grain-hay ration. We still fed hay along with the silage though. Then come May we'd kick them out to pasture (around 120 acres in total) and have them graze in a rotational-continuous system from May to September, rarely to October or November. Usually around September to October would be to time to sell them, since most of them would be reaching around 900 to 1000 lbs by then. They'd go to a local feedlot where they spend the last few months of their lives getting fattened up before being shipped south to be slaughtered at the Cargill/XL foods slaughter plants around Calgary.

Meanwhile we'd be using the fields not used for hay and silage production as crops. Dad had access to another 160 acres (not exactly rented, since it was his DB's land) to use for barley and canola, both being raised as cash crops. We'd have around 80 to 100 acres of hay land, 40 for silage and the rest for cash crops. Since corn will never be king where we live, barley is the best crop to produce and sell up here, and just as good for cattle as corn. Canola was grown and sold on contract, and barley grown and sold to the local feedlot were we send our backgrounded steers.

I could post about my plans for this farm on here as well, but since this is mainly about past and current operations I'll have to refrain from that for the time being.

 

[bigbluegrass]

I have a 52 acre farm which I own. Right now I have only 5 cows. I am going to AI them this year and hopefully do that every year from here out so I can get rid of the bull. Most of the land is wooded with only about 10 acres cleared right now. I am working to clear most of the remaining land. Some day I hope to have 20 or more cows on this place. I do rotationally graze the land in the spring, summer and fall. In the winter I feed purchased hay with a bale graze system. Some year I am going to figure out how to rotation graze all winter. The past two years I have sold all our calves direct from the farm to neighbors and family as beef. I take them to the butcher and they pick them up. Right now the hanging weights are between 400# and 500# at 14 to 24 months. I am hoping with AI to be able to jump that up using better bulls.

Interesting reading all your posts!

 

[Nesikep]

Well, around our place, we're pretty much all on benchland about 300 ft above the Fraser river, Most people just sell hay or raise cattle, the biggest have about 100 head, we have 23. We are set up to grow vegetables and grain, but don't have markets to make it worthwhile anymore. We used to grow an acre of carrots and a couple acres of squash, an acre of onions as well as potatoes. Our place used to be an apple orchard that supplied Buckingham Palace with apples in the 40's... There are 3 of those trees left. If you travel 30 miles north, you have the Diamond S ranch, which runs 600 head I think, and if you go further away, you have other big ranches such as the Douglas Lake ranch (owned by Walmart!!!), The Gang Ranch (I believe it's North America's largest ranch), the Chezacut ranch (we were dreaming of buying it years ago). These larger ranches have square miles of deeded land, and 100's of square miles of range.