What a PITA :roll: My wife wonders why I always get stressed on the day I deliver cattle to the butcher. She had to help me today, so she found out why.
I penned four of them up very easily about 11:00 a.m.. I lured them into a pen with some horse sweetfeed. I could not believe how easy it was to get the four I wanted in one pen at the same time. I had one 1200 lb or so that had some longhorn in him that always gave me problems and I figured today would be no different. I fed and waterered them good and left them in the pen for a couple of hours until the trailer came. About 1:00 the hauler's wife calls me and tells me he's had a stroke recently and that he would need me to run my steers down the chute and pen them up at the butchers. Great! I've done it before but at 46, I'd rather pay someone to do it, but my regular guy is busy. We load the steers up easily on the trailer and get to the butchers.
The butcher has indoor holding pens, so I choose a pen and wedge the door open in the hallway. I open up the trailer and begin to gently prod the longhorn with my cattle stick. He jumps right off the trailer and walks down the chute and pens himself. The other three refuse to budge. After 15 minutes, they exit the trailer and stand up on the landing before the ramp down the chute. No amount of poking or prodding would get these 3 animals to move. After awhile, one of the workers on the kill line who just happened to be there getting stuff ready for tmrw, shows up with a cattle prod. This should make short work of things right? :roll:
20 minutes later, after at least 50 jolts to the cattle, after two of the cattle getting wedged together and actually getting stuck, and the third falling down and not being able to get up because the other two were awkwardly jammed together, we get the cattle into a pen. What a PITA!
On the bright side, the cattle look to be the biggest I've ever grown. I'd estimate that the average hanging weights will be 50 pounds heavier than normal. I noticed that it cost me $50 a head more to feed these cattle for the year, and that they were on average 50 lbs. lighter at purchase time. After I get the hanging weights, I'll see if my experiment with bypass protein paid off. It sure looks like it will.
I penned four of them up very easily about 11:00 a.m.. I lured them into a pen with some horse sweetfeed. I could not believe how easy it was to get the four I wanted in one pen at the same time. I had one 1200 lb or so that had some longhorn in him that always gave me problems and I figured today would be no different. I fed and waterered them good and left them in the pen for a couple of hours until the trailer came. About 1:00 the hauler's wife calls me and tells me he's had a stroke recently and that he would need me to run my steers down the chute and pen them up at the butchers. Great! I've done it before but at 46, I'd rather pay someone to do it, but my regular guy is busy. We load the steers up easily on the trailer and get to the butchers.
The butcher has indoor holding pens, so I choose a pen and wedge the door open in the hallway. I open up the trailer and begin to gently prod the longhorn with my cattle stick. He jumps right off the trailer and walks down the chute and pens himself. The other three refuse to budge. After 15 minutes, they exit the trailer and stand up on the landing before the ramp down the chute. No amount of poking or prodding would get these 3 animals to move. After awhile, one of the workers on the kill line who just happened to be there getting stuff ready for tmrw, shows up with a cattle prod. This should make short work of things right? :roll:
20 minutes later, after at least 50 jolts to the cattle, after two of the cattle getting wedged together and actually getting stuck, and the third falling down and not being able to get up because the other two were awkwardly jammed together, we get the cattle into a pen. What a PITA!
On the bright side, the cattle look to be the biggest I've ever grown. I'd estimate that the average hanging weights will be 50 pounds heavier than normal. I noticed that it cost me $50 a head more to feed these cattle for the year, and that they were on average 50 lbs. lighter at purchase time. After I get the hanging weights, I'll see if my experiment with bypass protein paid off. It sure looks like it will.
