July Pictures

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creekdrive

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Kind of dreary & wet out today, so thought I would share some pictures from the past few days. Don't know what I did to my camera settings but these all have a yellow hue to them :mad: :mad:

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17 yr old cow - still doing great. She doesn't move as quick as she once did, and her bag is starting to sag a little more than it used to. Last year I was convinced she was only milking on 2 quarters (still weaned a good calf), but this year her bag is definitely full and working on all 4 sides. The grass this year compared to last is a lot better too, which may have something to do with it? We were thinking we would sell her this fall, but I don't know anymore, prices aren't very good and it's not like she owes us any $$$ - she might get to stick around another year. I'd like to see if she could hit 20.

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here's her heifer calf this year. This one will be retained for sure.

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BA bull calf. There's quite a few nice ones this year, but I'm really like this one so far.

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rear view

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good place to lean

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another pretty nice looking bull calf.

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yearlings. Have about 50 of these - we always buy a bunch of 'scrubs' in late fall/winter. Most of these were roughly 300lbs when we bought them and pretty scrubby looking. Will probably sell them late August/September, or sooner if the grass runs out (which doesn't look like that will be the case this year)

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Won't do quite as well this year with the market coming down like it has. But all of these were bought cheap enough that we still won't do too bad (nothing like last year though where we more than doubled our money on some of them even after subtracting feed expenses). The heifer on the far right of this picture was 145lbs when we bought her. Don't remember the exact amount off the top of my head but I think we paid $150 for her and 3 other ones all the same weight. Took a bit of pampering but they sure look nice now. Did better than I was expecting.

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commercial pairs

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crappy picture - but this little 2nd calver is sure doing a good job. She wouldn't be a whole lot over 1000lbs and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that calf will wean over 700. The cow is Gelbvieh X Shorthorn and the calf is SimAngus sired.

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Gelbvieh sired steer. His 10 yr old Sim/Angus dam behind him.

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This girl always milks herself thin, but raises a big calf. This is another Gelbvieh sired calf out of a 6 yr old sim/angus cow.

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Big Ears with a Gelbvieh sired heifer calf.

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pretty close to my idea of a perfect cow. mostly Angus with a bit of shorthorn a few generations back. 5 yr old.

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6 yr old Hereford x Shorthorn cow with a Gelbvieh sired heifer calf (born Apr. 19 so not even one of the older calves). This cross makes some real nice calves.

Hope I didn't overload anyones computer by posting too many - there was a few more than I thought there was going to be when I started this post :oops:
 
inyati13":25swztpi said:
Gorgeous pictures. Real working herd. Thanks.

I don't see a fly!!! Where are you in Alberta?

Wonder is flies are a big a problem up north compared to here?


Nice cattle!
 
Nice cows. I really like the crosses you are running. I run Gelbvieh and Balancers, I have thought about breeding some of my balancer cows to a Sim-Angus bull. Should make some real nice commercial bulls
 
inyati13":a7k8119n said:
Gorgeous pictures. Real working herd. Thanks.

I don't see a fly!!! Where are you in Alberta?

Thank you! They don't have quite the luxuries your cows have, but they don't exactly have to rough it either. We are in East Central Alberta (about 2 hours South East of Edmonton if that helps). Technically from Sedgewick, but there is 6 small towns/villages all within a 25 minute drive.

I didn't notice until you mentioned it, but you are right there is no flies in any of those pictures. They are here, although I'm sure they are nowhere near as bad as what a lot of you have to deal with. All they get for fly control is a dose of ivomec pour on before we haul them out to pasture. Sometimes if the flies are particularly bad we will spray them with a fly spray mid-summer. The mosquitos are worse than the flies this year.

See Flies:


3waycross":a7k8119n said:
Nice cows. I really like the crosses you are running. I run Gelbvieh and Balancers, I have thought about breeding some of my balancer cows to a Sim-Angus bull. Should make some real nice commercial bulls
Coming from you that means quite a bit - I've seen some of the animals you've posted pictures of in the past and they look pretty dang nice. Thank you! The Gelbvieh calves must have been photogenic when I took those pictures. There was only 18 cows bred Gelbvieh last year. Getting to be a fair number of Gelbvieh daughters in the herd though and so far we are happy with them. Had planned to use our Gelbvieh bull one more year (he's a 6yr old) but a couple days before we were going to turn him out he wrecked a back leg. Have him at home now hobbling around to see if he can heal up good enough to go through the auction. Been a month + 2 weeks already, he might have to be hamburger... Gelbvieh x SimAngus seems to work really nicely, I'm sure you would be happy with the calves from Balancer X SimAngus.
 
Good looking cattle as usual. What are the genetics of the two BA calves? The bull looking on in photo 4 is really thick. I guess you get enough cold to help you with fly control, we are covered up with flys, skeeters and all other kinds of bugs this year. I got zapped with wasp last week today it was fire ants, not to mention while mowing two snakes! We really need to get some cold weather this winter! I hate bugs!

Gizmom
 
Nice pics, as usual!... Gelbvieh crosses well with lots of things is my experience.. I gotta get some pics of mine up here one of these days.. I think I've made up my mind on the 4 replacement heifers for the year.. as always they have a few faults but they're doing pretty good.

I have a bunch of cows that milk themselves to skeletons, but they breed back reliably and raise scale-mashers... I'm alright with that, just keep them in the back pasture :p
 
Always enjoy looking at your cattle, if I had 100 like your ideal cow...thanks for sharing.
 
gizmom":1kldqait said:
Good looking cattle as usual. What are the genetics of the two BA calves? The bull looking on in photo 4 is really thick. I guess you get enough cold to help you with fly control, we are covered up with flys, skeeters and all other kinds of bugs this year. I got zapped with wasp last week today it was fire ants, not to mention while mowing two snakes! We really need to get some cold weather this winter! I hate bugs!

Gizmom

Yes I think the cold takes care of a lot of the bugs up here! Snakes (as long as they are non-venomous ones) don't bother me. Our yard is a mating ground for garter snakes. Literally hundreds living in this yard. Friends are always asking why we don't start killing them. They don't hurt anything and they take care of all the mice so we let them stay.

Here's a link to the pedigree of the first BA bull calf pictured:
http://abri.une.edu.au/online/cgi-bin/i ... 9=5C5E5027
He was born Mar 26 with a 77lb bw

That is his sire looking on in the next picture. He's a 2 1/2 yr old. He is a Chisum grandson. Very easy calving and I think the calves are all pretty sharp looking. He has a really nice calm temperament too.

the next bull calf is sired by our Camaro bull that we had to sell this past winter when he wrecked his stifle. I seem to have missed this calf when I registered the others - OOPS. Good thing I tried to search him and noticed that! He was born Mar 23 with a 85 lb bw.
Sire's pedigree: https://abri.une.edu.au/online/cgi-bin/ ... 9=5C5E5E5E
Dam's pedigree: https://abri.une.edu.au/online/cgi-bin/ ... 9=5C5E5E5B

The picture where Blaine is leaning on the cow - that is another BA pair. The bull calf is sired by the Camaro bull and the dam goes back to Kodiak. The heifer calf out of the 17 yr old cow is another Camaro daughter.

Nesikep":1kldqait said:
Nice pics, as usual!... Gelbvieh crosses well with lots of things is my experience.. I gotta get some pics of mine up here one of these days.. I think I've made up my mind on the 4 replacement heifers for the year.. as always they have a few faults but they're doing pretty good.

I have a bunch of cows that milk themselves to skeletons, but they breed back reliably and raise scale-mashers... I'm alright with that, just keep them in the back pasture :p
Would love to see some recent pictures of your calves Nesi! And everybody needs at least 1 back pasture cow ;-)

Thanks everyone else for the comments too.
 

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