| April 01 - Breeding |
| Very Pretty out this morning but about 20° cooler than the past
week. It's about 55° F (12° C) which is normal for this time
of year. It started to rain a little about 1:00 PM. We received .3" (.76
cm) yesterday or rather last evening I should say. I need it to dry off a
little so that we can fertilize the pastures a bit. The warm temperatures really made them
shoot up this past week but I'd like to get some P & K on them to boost the Clovers
and Trefoil. When they are doing good it always brings the grass on very strong too.
I ran up to Moulton Embryos to put a Paramont Ambush/VDAR Lucy 5156 Embryo in a recipient over the Lunch hour. I am only about 4 miles (6.4 Km) away so it almost takes more time to get the trailer hooked up than to do the whole thing and be back home. I've also got two other embryo recipients in heat this afternoon so I will be making another trip with them same time next week. I have a straw with two embryos that are full-blood to VDAR Beauty 228 so this will work out just great. |
| April 06 - Heifers |
| Had a thoroughly enjoyable day on Sunday. Talked with a couple good friends, finished up a catalog and enjoyed the nice weather. Everything just seemed to be right. Finally had a heifer calf after about a dozen bulls in a row. Actually we had two. A GDAR Executive 727 out of a DHD Traveler 6807 cow and a GAR Sleep Easy out of a Leachman Prompter cow. The run on bulls these past weeks did leave us with some super sons of 315 and EXT though. It'll be fun to watch them mature. |
| April 07 - fertilizer |
| Real good week around here. It has finally been dry long enough
to do field work. We finished hauling manure from the barns today and dad was able to turn
it under with the disc chisel this afternoon. Put 6-15-40 fertilizer on the pastures this
afternoon. I like to fertilize the legumes and let them fixate the nitrogen to enhance the
grasses. I've always been a big fan of Voisin and his theories and views on grass
productivity. Multicultural pastures are very intriguing to me and have proven their worth
here. I'll come back later with a folier feeding for the pasture in about June or July.
This has worked very well for us. The rain just cut loose here tonight so it will be perfect to push the fertilizer into the soil. I would like to drill some more seed onto a couple of the pastures in the next week or so if possible. Corn planting will be starting with a vengence around here very soon. The neighbors were appling their herbicides this afternoon already. |
| April 09 - Rain (not boring) |
| Rainy and very blustery out today. We received over an inch of
rain (2.54 cm) over the past 14 hours. Sometimes
heavy, but mostly a fine mist all day. My hoof trimmer was here today and said that he
received 3" (7.62 cm) over night at his farm
about 30 miles (48.3 Km) South of here.
Apparently there were tornados touching down in Northeast Ohio above Ravenna so I'm glad
that we only got a glancing blow of the storms that were around today. Had a lot of bull customers today and its always nice to show the cattle. Even nicer that several will have good new homes in the next week. We were also able to put three embryos in recipients so all in all it was a pretty pleasant day even if it was a busy one. It was definately not boring... |
| April 11 - Delivered - offline |
| Very sunny day, 68° F (20° C) but
breezy. Got back from delivering bulls just after Lunch time this morning. It was about a
110 mile (177 Km) trip to Butler County, just
North of Cincinnati. It is the same distance for us to go to Columbus, Toledo, or
Indianapolis, Indiana as it is to Cincinnati. I have been trying to stay off I-75 lately
because of all of the construction work and had a nice drive using the State highways.
I'll give up a little speed to be able to see more country and farms. Actually I am pretty
bad on the pedal so I don't give too much speed up either. I also had a nice visit with Dale Goettemoeller from Maria Stein this afternoon as he stopped by and selected a Finks 5522-6148 bull for use in his commercial cow/calf operation. He also operates a large lime spreading operation in this region as well. I've been experiencing severe annoyance with my main computer these past few days and am going to tear it down for a complete overhaul. It's something I've put off for too long. The site will remain up but response from me will be off-line for a while. |
| April 14 - Dreary 'n slow |
| Rainy and overcast day today, 60° F (15° C).
Yesterday was busy with it being very nice and sunny, but its been very slow and quiet
today with all of the dampness. The grass, flowers and hay fields are looking super
though. Had a couple more very nice VDAR New Trend 315 heifer calves during the night sometime. That looks to be our best and most consistant sire this year by far. That cross has been super on some of our good Dr. Spock daughters. |
| April 16 - Hot! |
| It is super hot right now, 77° F (25° C).
which is a big change from the 48° F (8° C) it was when I fed
this morning. It was only to have gotten up to 65° F (18° C)
so this is unusual. The Tornado warning buzzers are sounding like crazy this afternoon. We
only got 1/2 inch (1.25 cm) of rain overnight but neighbors just
five miles (8 Km) to the South got 3 inch (7.62 cm)
and Southwestern Ohio received 4-6 inches (10-15 cm) of rain. A
friend in Northeast Ohio also said that their newly planted oats fields had water laying
everywhere. We had a Miami Valley Angus Assn board of directors meeting last evening near Eaton. Everything is on track for this Fall's Show and Sale in November and the association is in very good shape financially and membership wise. We have about 224 members on the rolls right now. The association is sponsoring the Ohio Angus Preview show in 1999 so I am glad that we will be prepared. This was my first meeting as President and it seemed to go very smoothly. |
| April 18 - Typical Ohio - fence |
| Typical for Ohio the temperature will swing widely in just a few
hours!, 34° F (1° C). this morning. The calves are taking it
quite well though. It would be nice if it quit raining long enough for the pastures and
lawns to dry a bit. Maybe we could even start to think about planting some corn. It has been a very pleasant morning. Have been working my maps today to try to figure out a better pasture rotation. I am going to drive some new wood posts in but think I'll also use some tape fence and step in plastic posts this year too. Some friends get along well with just one strand of the electrified tape but I don't think my cows are quite as well mannered. I get carried away and always overengineer every project so I'll try two strands as a compromise. We currently use three strands of 12 gauge high tensile for division fences with wood posts at 35-45 foot (10-14 meter) centers and use 6 strands for the main fence boundaries with 15-20 foot (4.5-6 meter) centers on the posts. |
| April 22 - Corn |
| Started to plant our corn last evening. We've received just very
light drizzling rain the last two days and the ground tilth is in just excellent shape.
Although we no-till our soybeans and wheat, we use reduced tillage for planting corn. A
pass with our conservation field cultivator, application of preplant herbicides with a
light incorporation, and then the planter run. We use a dry 6-15-40 fertilizer mix as a
starter in the planter. Since we are on a 3-4 year rotation we don't use insecticides. We
will knife 28% liquid nitrogen into the rows in a month or so. The pasture is looking excellent. The clovers and trefoils are thick and tall. I am trying to run that fine line between letting it develop a strong root system and not letting it get too much top growth before turning the herd onto the rotation system. We are out of round bales, but have quite a few weeks of wire-tied square bales left. If the weather stays nice, I'll shoot for starting the pastures in about a week. |
| April 24 - Full bore - truck |
| I've been pretty much brain dead today or sure have had a poor
judgment day. Glad I had all the chemical formulations figured out yesterday. Every farm
in the township was running at full bore preparing seedbeds and spreading fertilizer or
herbicides. The dust was flying thick on the fields. I am amazed how dry they got so
quickly. The soil tilth is just fantastic and I did not see even a damp area in any of our
fields. We planted about 85 acres (34.4 hectare) yesterday and
not quite another 50 acres (20.2 hectare) today. We shut down operation this morning for a while to take delivery on our new farm pick-up truck. It's a 1998 Dodge heavy 3/4 ton to replace our old Dodge pick-up that had over 120,000 miles (193,112 Km)on it. I have a 1994 model 3/4 ton and there are alot of nice new features on the 1998 but there are some things that I think they did better on mine. I always am slow to accept change in the things that I grow attached to I guess. |
| April 26 - Wet, dreary day |
| We planted about 75 acres (30.4 hectare)
yesterday until we were rained out of the fields at about 7:00 pm last night. It has
rained pretty much all day today but we only have .5 inch (1.27 cm)
in the rain gauge for the past 24 hours. That will be just about perfect to make sure we
get good activation on our herbicides. We had a family get together in Findlay, Ohio today
and they definitely had much more rain there. Findlay is about an hour's drive North of
here on Interstate I-75. It is to dry off for a few days this week. We can finish the corn
here with one really good days run (if we push hard). Talked with my friend Lee Van Dyke for a while last evening and got caught up with all the latest in Montana. If things go right, I'll be heading out to visit with him and his family this Fall. They've been able to get a lot of their Barley and Spring Wheat planting done this week too. I know our winter wheat looked excellent this morning as we passed by most of our fields on our way to morning services. |
| April 29 - Finishing up Really good day! |
| I've had a super day so far! We were able to plant 40 acres
(16.2 hectare) yesterday and have just under 35 acres (14.1
hectare) to go to be done with the corn for this year. We got a tenth of an
inch ( .25 cm) of rain overnight, but if the sun comes out today
we still will be able to get finished. The ground was in excellent shape yesterday
afternoon. Had a really nice Dr Spock heifer calf last evening. She is really stout, quite big boned and a real hunk. We have always had good results with him and maybe even better results now than when we first used him over 12 years ago. He seems to really knick well with some of the newer pedigress. Ordered more semen on SVF GDAR 216 Ltd. Will try to save some for flushing our Summitcrest Heiress females. I hope to put a page up in our sire pages in the next day or so. |
|
|
| This Web Site was created by Paul R. Sidey I do Agricultural Web design and Cattle Sale Catalog Typesetting and Layout ©1997 Sidey Angus Graphics, all rights reserved |