Sidey Angus - March 2000 diary

March 07 - Up & Running

I took the site down to do some maintenance work the past few weeks and I was suprised to see all the e-mails from people who missed seeing it. I have updated some things and will be adding more pages and keeping the farm news current on a steady basis now again as well.

I intend to keep the new cattle photo page updated with photos from around the farm and the herd too. If all goes right, I will have a photo series on every cow in the herd along with her complete information on the herd pages by Summer. I have began this process with some of the cows and older herd bulls in our sale pens already. Take a peek at cow Tag #351 or her maternal brother Tag # 218

March 09 - Gorgeous weather

Wow, it has been beautiful the past few days here in Western Ohio with temperatures right at 80º F ( 27º C). I have been wearing just a light short sleeved shirt to feed the cattle in. I know snow is expected this weekend though, so I guess this party is about over. I sure did enjoy the brief stint of Spring. We have had a calf each day this week and they sure make a person smile to see them struggle their way to their feet and then begin to enjoy the sun and the smell of grass on these nice days.

Our Fall '99 bulls by GDAR SVF 216 Ltd are really showing their eye appeal on the top lot and we have been utilizing his son, Circle A 2000 + , heavily in the Fall breedings. Watching all the white snow show up on the ultrasound scanner screen done on last years 216 Ltd calves sure proved his marbling ability to me. They averaged over 6 % IM with less than ..2 in back fat as a group.

March 10 - Cold... Cold... Cold..

Well the bottom did fall out on our warm weather. Yesterday we saw 79º F ( 26º C) and this morning at 5am when I called Rachel it was 26º F ( - 3.3º C) . She said it had actually warmed up to 36º F ( 2º C) there on the East coast of Sweden. I laughed when Rach said she will have to adjust to a place where we can be as hot as Cyprus and as cold as Sweden in the same day. Last summer we did see 105º F ( 40º C) and it did get as low as -29º F ( -34º C) actual this Winter.

We completed hauling manure on last year's red clover hay fields yesterday and today we will be disk chiseling it under in preparation to plant corn next month. This week allowed us to clean the barns as well as top dress our Winter Wheat with Urea Nitrogen and then broadcast red clover seed over the wheat fields in a secondary pass. The clover will be our hay fields next year. It is a great companion crop to the wheat here in Western Ohio. The clover provides a solid base to allow us to combine when others fields are too soft, gives us nitrogen back into the soil for free, allows us a source of green chop all Fall to feed cows, provides our hay for next year and then is turned under to proved organic material and nitrogen to the following years corn crop. We have about 170 acres ( 68.8 hectare) of Hard Red Winter Wheat here and red clover is on about 85% of that. The remaining Wheat ground will be drilled with SUDAX^® which is a blend of Sorghum and Sudan Grass for green chopping in August and September.

March 14 - Meetings & snow

It is to get 50º F ( 10º C) today and the snow is melting off the yard and pasture well already. We did get about 7 inches ( 17.78 cm)on Saturday evening and it made it a Winter wonderland as it hung on the fir trees and brush in the woods. It has been a busy week for me with meetings already. I was elected as Vice-President of the Executive Board of Directors of Bright.net Ohio which is my ISP as well as the largest ISP gateway in Ohio. Yesterday I was re-elected as secretary of the Executive Board of Directors of BTC-Buckland Telephone as well.

March 14 - Ultrasound data

I thought I would post the new ultrasound data for our entire replacement group of females today. I was tickled to death with the results and no heifers have been removed from the list. Bonnie Bradford of Premier Ultrasound did the scanning as she is not only my neighbor but also the American Angus Assn. Certified Ultrasound Technician for this part of the Midwest. Two of her comments made me grin.. Where are the bad ones? and There is sure a lot of white in these images.
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Tag #	Sire	Back Fat	Sq in Ribeye per #100	Actual % IM
378	VDAR Lucys Boy	0.19	1.28	5.64
379	VDAR New Trend 315	0.30	1.21	4.37
382	VDAR Lucys Boy	0.32	1.28	6.14
383	GDAR Dutch 5226	0.27	1.02	5.08
384	VDAR New Trend 315	0.24	1.45	5.57
385	GDAR SVF 216 Ltd	0.17	1.20	6.27

The red numbers represent numbers that are where I want the herd to be at. My current goals are to average under .25 inch of back fat. Have over 1.25 square inches of Ribeye per hundred pounds of Body weight and average over 5.50 % of Intermuscular fat.

March 17 - New Bull calf & herd visit

It is just at 34º F ( 1.1º C) today at Noon with a stiff wind blowing to make it feel colder. We had a new embryo transplant bull calf born early this morning in the calving barn. He is really quite outstanding and full of pep and vigor. This bull is a Rito2100 GDAR son from the VDAR Beauty cow family. Actually he is a full blood brother to the famous herd sire producer VDAR Beauty 228 as well as our full brothers VDAR Nordic Rito 510J and VDAR Nordic Star 512J in the Bull Pen.

Steven Estes of Huntington, Indiana visited the herd on Wednesday. It was enjoyable to discuss the industry and direction while walking through the bull pens and cow herd as he pointed out Tag #351, our Bon View Emulation EXT 473 daughter by a Rito 9J9 cow and our Tag #350 N Bar Emulation EXT daughter from the Blackbird cow family with her March 2000 heifer calf at side by GDAR Dutch 5226 . #351 produced one of the top scanning Rib eye area/ negative back fat bulls in last Summer's crop for us while Tag#350 produced the top marbling heifer in the herd whose ultrasound data is shown below as Tag #385.

March 25 - More Ultrasounds in a Busy week

It is 70º F ( 21.1º C) today at Noon with a robin's egg blue sky creating a beautiful day. We had another new embryo transplant bull calf born earlier this week sired by VDAR Vision 243 out of VDAR Lucy 5156, a VDAR High Profile daughter of a 315 maternal sister to VDAR Lucys Boy. On Tuesday I delivered two Fall calving cows to happy new owners near Wapakoneta, taking advantage of the damp weather to deliver them as well as work on the calving pens for our final batch of babies due in the next few weeks.

We also did carcass ultrasound on the January through March herd sires at Premier Ultrasound in St. Marys on Tuesday. I hope to post the results here when we get them back from the association. Bonnie Bradford of Premier stated she expects some great marbling with small fat numbers to come back to us based on her experience with the readings.

March 27 - Nice news, halter breaking

It is 50º F ( 10º C) today at Noon after a night of showers that left us with .45 inches ( 1.14 cm) of rain. I would gladly take a week of rains like that one. The Shaner family stopped by on their way home with their showstring yesterday afternoon to give us the latest results. They had purchased Tag #522, a VDAR Lucys Boy from our Bon View Emulation EXT 473 daughter, Tag #351 last Fall at private treaty. Ultrasound results taken yesterday had shown him with a 4.65 lb ( 2.07 kg) per day rate of Gain for the past 78 days and yielding a well marbled quality grade on 11.2sq inch ribeye area with only .24 inch of backfat. not bad for an 11 month old.

We began halter breaking a batch of calves this morning. We started with two potential show bull candidates in Tag # 529, a super thick September EXT son of our 1992 Prompter x Independence daughter and Tag # 532, a December SVF GDAR 216 Ltd son of the 1984 Independence matron herself.. The females were a September VDAR Lucys Boy from our 1997 Summitcrest Scotch Cap 0B45 x EXT daughter; that same EXT daughter's December GDAR Dutch 5226 calf; and our outstanding January daughter of 216 ltd from the super VDAR New Trend 315 x GDAR Equalizer Queenmar cow here.

Sidey Angus Farm Diary - March 2000