Sidey Angus Farm Diary - December 1997

I have been working on some ideas for changes and updates to the site for a while and finally got around to it. There is still more to do and I will also be dropping support for version 2.0 of Microsoft Internet Explorer to be able to use more JAVA applets in the near future. There are bound to be bugs with the amount of construction I just finished. Let me know if you find any and please bare with me.

On Monday, we Lutalysed recipients and cows to be rebred as the follow up to the GnRh shots we did last Monday. Hopefully we will be breeding a good group in the next few days and transplanting embryos by the middle of next week.

I made it back home from Tennessee late last evening in one piece, but just barely. I delivered a new herd sire to West Fork Angus Ranch at Bethpage, Tennessee yesterday morning and had a very nice trip until the last 100 miles returning home in Ohio.

West Fork Angus sells Angus bulls and females near Westmoreland in Northern Tennessee near their ranch billboard on Route 52. I got to visit with Frank Brown and his family for a short bit and really enjoyed seeing the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee loaded with cattle still on grass.

There had been snow squalls off and on all day but I did not run into anything big until I hit a whiteout near Cincinnati. It then got much worse as the highway developed black ice near Dayton, OH causing traffic to travel at about 15-20 mph on a six lane interstate for about the next 30 miles. Nothing strikes terror like pulling a gooseneck trailer while being in the middle lane surrounded by traffic and feeling the truck start to go into a spin on the ice. I could have just read the headlines... "Cattle trailer wipes out ten cars on interstate." I got it stopped, the state got their salt trucks clicking and I ended up home with my respect renewed for both the ice and people who have to drive on it for a living.

We have had three days of just plain unpleasant weather with rain, sleet and snow. It gets muddy and slippery in the afternoons and icy at night. Temperatures are staying right around 30º F (-1º C).

We are down to 25 acres (10 hectare) of corn yet to harvest whenever the weather breaks to let us back in the fields. The yields are still great but the moisture is still high.

We got a visit from our local elevator manager this week bringing bad news. It was part of chain that had been bought out by the regional Countrymark last year and they are now closing it up. Provico-Moulton had been my main source for feed and supplies as well as the outlet for our grain sales for over twenty-eight years. They were located just 4 miles (6 km) from the farm. We would now have to travel over 18 miles (29 km) to the branch elevator that is taking over the territory. That is a long haul with tractor and wagons. We are considering marketing to other companies, upgrading our facilities for more grain storage and purchasing much larger wagons or hauling equipment. We have to make some hard business decisions fairly soon as they close up on Jan. 3rd.

I lost a bank of simms in my main computer about a week ago and couldn't use it to put up additions to the site until this weekend. I did update New Trend 315s photo in the Reference Sire page and added info on GDAR Dutch.

We finished the corn last week. Now we have to market it. It won't be coming out of the bins anytime soon with the current price declines. Weather wise, our forecasted snow is now rain, but at least we did not get the ice that some of the Northern counties did here in Ohio.  I would rather it be a bit colder and a lot drier. It makes the chores easier when you don't slosh through mud.

Had a nice Summitcrest Scotch Cap heifer calf this weekend. She is a biut a week early, small but super active and quite thick. We have six more head in the labor pens right now. They'll all probably come early. I wouldn't bet against Christmas eve.

We had a very wet Christmas this year, but no snow. It rained all day on the 24th with a total of .8 inch ( 2 cm) of rain on top of .4 inch ( 1 cm) from the day before. This put the main pasture under water, but it has receded very quickly. Temperatures have been about 35º to 38º F (2º to 3º C) during the day and  not much colder at night.

We had a visit from Roy Hershberger at from Baltic, Ohio this morning to look at bulls for his growing Angus herd. He seemed very pleased with the EXT son he chose from us. In addtion to the Angus herd he operates a purebred swine farm and wheel shop in his Amish community.

While discussing ear corn, he mentioned his moisture meter system for telling when corn was dry enough to be cribbed. I had said that we used a new digital tester and he commented that his did not have a read out of any kind. He selects six ears from various spots in the field. He places water in a tub and then places the ears in the water. If they all float then the corn is ready to be cribbed. If only some float it is just getting close. I thought that this was very interesting and is probably as accurate as my high tech system gets sometimes. I learned a long time ago to never underestimate the vast usable knowledge of a good Amish farmer!

We have about an inch of snow ( 2.54 cm) on the ground right now with more falling. Its nice to see things actually start to look wintery.

We have not had any new calves yet but the mamas sure look about ready to cut loose. The Fall calves are having a ball running around in the snow. The ground is finally frozen a bit, and they can get better traction after these past weeks of muddy conditions.

The University of Cincinnati won its first Football bowl game in 47 years this past weekend by defeating Utah State by a good margin. Having suffered through too many losing seasons as a member of the marching band, it was nice to see them actually even get to go to a bowl, let alone win one. Now if Coach Huggins can get this years crop of basketball players straightened back out...GO CATS!