Farm Blog

I took a steer to the locker to be processed the other day. The steer had cut his face and rather than risk an infection I just took him to the locker a little early. He weighed about 1100lbs on the hoof when I took him in, so he was a little light. I think we'll keep this one and possibly sell 1/4 or 1/8th off of it. I took him to a locker down in Sibley, IA called Jakes. They look like they really know what they're doing and the butcher has great customer service. We still have to run the numbers to see what the inputs were so that we can set a price on the beeves pre-processing. We still have 2 more that need to go in, but they're scheduled for about the first or 2nd week of November. I setup the corral to run the steers into to sort the one out that I took to the locker, and left the corral in place to feed the other 2 in so that they get comfortable with the corral. Next time I shouldn't have to worry so much about pushing them through. Hopefully they'll just walk right in and onto the trailer. Today I'll work with George and Sara to move the corral out to the pasture. I'd like to wean all of the calves this week and run them through the corral to tag, castrate, worm and vaccinate the heifers. We'll have to see how the weather holds. We got some snow this weekend and they're calling for snow tonight and tomorrow and rain/snow for the rest of the week. It would be nice to work the cattle in warm weather, but sometimes the timing just doesn't work.