Two Year Old Feeds Cows

Okay, and it's supposed to be over 32 degrees today, so I'm excited about that. I think it was like, it's like 12 or 13 degrees right now, which feels pretty warm. I was pretty slow getting out of bed this morning. Our, one of our toddlers was not sleeping very good. They're kind of sick. So we were, we were up a little bit with him. Anyways, I texted Nathan to see if he could just start feeding my load or start loading my load. So he got both the tractors out, started loading, um, before I was out here this morning, which helped me out. Didn't get the loading behind. And then he'll load this, uh, cow ration and, uh, feed truck. We got a lot of things kind of on the list for the rest of the week, Wednesday through Friday, because we've been stuck kind of just doing just enough to get by on all these frozen, frozen days. Now we can start knocking some jobs off the list when there's a little bit warmer weather. Meet the Peterson family, our dad, the three Peterson brothers and our families farm together in central Kansas. Our family farm started in 1882 and has been raising cattle and crops ever since. Please subscribe to this channel and give us a like, and a comment. If you enjoy the video. Okay. Inside of here, it's frozen. We got a heater on it and Nathan's getting it turned. I, I broke the ice and we put some hot water in there. That's a lot of the system. This one, we keep, we try to keep any water from falling in by putting tin over it, but this just happens whenever the water runs off. I don't know. It's just a little bit of ice is all it takes to freeze up a weak little six inch auger. It works except when it freezes for a week straight and you get moisture. Hey, what are we doing? Feeding the cows, got some distillers to the cows here and broke open the ice again. Not as cold today. So it wasn't near as much work. You like feeding cows? You like feeding cows with daddy? Oh dear. This is empty because we already fed it. We're all done. Are you saying hi? What do cows say? Besides cattle, we also raise mountain goats on this farm. Going to try to haul two loads in today. There's still snow places on the roads. Um, a little bit of ice and stuff in the yards, but we're hoping for successful, safe trips in there and back. Uh, hoping to get one load done before lunch and one load right after lunch. We ran this semi for a little bit yesterday, getting the fuel additives mixed in the house treatment that we use and hoping that everything works fine. It's like 15 degrees. So it should be all right. Nathan's walking the bunk line. There's 120 in here to sell. Yep. They're real slow moving today, but they are, they're not putting up a fight trying to go the other way. They're just really slow waiting their turn. Yep. I got that second load loaded. Uh, Greg helped me. Uh, he got up here to help load the second load. Now he's hauling that, hauling that one in. And, uh, it's not a huge sale today. I think like 1800. So it's a good thing we're getting it done earlier in the day. He should be in there by one, between one and one 30. Taking a group out of a pen. We're going to move them out to the pen that we just sold steers out of. Got to really watch where you walk. It's so uneven. Um, so we'll put these with some other ones that are growing. Okay. So those ones I loaded and sold today, the 120, uh, sold, they weighed 885, sold for just under 2000 bucks a head. Now we're moving these cows. So now I know what these cattle weigh. They they're, they're the sort right underneath them. And now we know these ones have another 60. They're probably way just over eight. Um, but these ones won't be the next to sell because we will plan on doing heifers next week. The heifers weighed the top in, uh, first sale of January weighed 811. So we'll sell heifers next. And then we'll sell this pen probably in February. We're going to move them to a different pen and put some lighter ones in here so that I only have to drive down this alley down and back once, because that's grower one pin and this is a grower two pin and so I'm just doing that to save time feeding. Come on. Hey, Hey, Hey. I am onto my last load of chores of the day. Uh, my last one I'm feeding grower two. So I feed those cattle that we're going to butcher. So I just, there's, there's seven of them. So I take this bucket of corn and that adds corn, a higher deal of corn to the ration. So I feed them a bucket of distillers in the morning to add protein in a bucket of corn in the evening. Um, but anyway, this is gonna be really fresh corn. So I'm going to take, take some corn straight out of the Sioux steel bin. I'll fill it up. I just carry this right over there while the tractor is mixing and, uh, set it in by the seat. Some people are really brave. They've been buying cattle, uh, through all this cold snap. We kind of have been waiting it out. Usually we're buying quite a bit of quite a few calves in January. Um, but with how poor the conditions have been for starting calves, we're kind of glad we're taking a break, hoping to get ahold of some next week. Um, and the temperatures are going to be in the thirties and forties next week. So I'm pretty excited about that. I do some office work from this tractor. I like, if I have phone calls and stuff to make after morning chores or something like this to do, I can get more done quickly in the tractor than I can in my house. Cause with two toddlers in my house, they come circling all around. Plus all my bunk sheets and my data is right here. So, um, it worked out pretty well to do my office work from the tractor instead of from my actual desk inside with two toddlers who are probably hungry, ready for supper and want my attention. So now I'll go in to that and have supper and see my family. My dad sold cattle for many years and he, uh, he can wait, he can sell them Thursday and wait until the check comes in the mail on like Monday or Tuesday to find out what they sold for. And I, I just cannot do that. I've got to know within hours. I'll either watch the sale on my phone or sometimes I'm in at the sale, but not very often, or, um, I will call in and find out what they sold for, but I'm not as patient as my dad. I gotta know. And I like to do the work to find out, you know, how much they made per head or on a, on a potload basis. All right. We've got two more nights of cold left. Tonight's going to be the first one. It's going to get down to negative, uh, I think negative two with the windchill way below that it's, it's already really cold windchill. And so we're going to feed another bale here. Got a nice, nice sunset feeding the bale with the, uh, with the dewey's, uh, bale bed. Sorry. It's so windy. Got them fed. It's going to be a cold one tonight. Just my dog eating ice. What are you doing, Cross? I can hear him. Unhooked dad's wagon, dad's wagon from his tractor, feeding tractor. Uh, Ron, uh, hay grinder's coming, uh, this morning. So we'll get some of these bales ground up off these. Got a trailer over there. And quite a few of these in the yard, fill up the hay bay. So today is the last day of the really cold spell. When I'm chopping ice in this Creek this morning, I could tell the water level was like, I don't know, probably eight, six, six, eight inches higher than what it was for the ice level. Evidently yesterday, it got warm enough to run water over the top of the old ice because there's the old ice down there. And then it, it refroze last night. And then, uh, now the Creek is like really deep. So I'm sure it'll all thaw in the coming days and stay running then. But I thought that was kind of interesting. I haven't really seen that before. Hopefully this will be the last day. I have to chop for a while. The cows are happy. Ziva got to come with this morning. She's having the time of her life sniffing and although she's going to be cold because she's a weenie indoor dog. Are you sniffing? Finding birds yet? You're looking. Here's the happy cows. Okay. So it's a Sunday. I'm doing evening tours just about finished here. And I saw my first puddle standing water for, I'd have to look up how many days, but right here we got snow that's melting and, uh, we got mud coming underneath. So that's what's in our future this week with temperatures in the thirties and forties. But, uh, yeah, that's the first I've seen of unfrozen water or snow in our feedlot for a long time. Last night it only got to 32. Well, it was right around 32. So it, it didn't ever freeze. So this morning everything's, it's like foggy and everything's wet. So the ground is wet on top, but it's still hard and frozen, which is totally doable. The problem is it's going to stay around this for a few days and then it's supposed to warm up even more. And so then it'll be muddy, but we're hoping to bring the spring cows home that don't have calves on them. Um, because they'll actually be, um, calving pretty soon relatively. So we'd like a place in a pen for them so they don't stomp up a field more. Uh, we'll have a big open pen for them. Then these, it would be kind of nice to have an open spot and a bunk line to put them, uh, but we're still waiting to see where that could be. So if it warms up, it'd be nice if it didn't keep raining, but, uh, it's been keeping raining. Might be a muddy spring. You know, this field, this acre here is going to be stomped up a little, but it's also going to have the most manure on it. We, we might have to do some light tillage here before we can plant it. Hopefully the rest of the field has manure and, you know, some, I guess, vertical tillage from hooves. Uh, but hopefully we'll just be able to plant into the rest of it. Be nice to have a winter pasture to put them. And we've considered putting them on one of our pastures, um, but they're kind of hard to get to. And then you, you kind of mess up your grass for the summertime. So then you have less feet in the summertime. So all the, uh, continual adjustment gain. So today in Nathan's mobile shop, I am, uh, got another starter deal going on. So getting pretty good at starters here, at least taking them off and putting them on. Lawnmower has been acting up during the summer and we just made it by and it's been on the list. So a little chilly, but 32 feels pretty warm when you've been out in five degrees. So we're hoping to just get this starter rebuilt rather than do a replacement and hopefully less. But I got the cables off and I think it's just those two bolts and hopefully it slides out of there. So even a little engine, you know, start is pretty basic. So I've been doing a lot of them, I guess. All right. It is a Tuesday morning. A very heavy fog came in last night. Uh, it's right at freezing level. Um, so the roads, they did a two hours, two hour delay at school today. The roads are pretty iced over, uh, but there's still like snow drifts on the sides of the roads and all over. And there's some mud too. So somehow we've got mud, ice and snow kind of all at the same time. So we'll see if it warms up any today and melts this ice. But I had to take like every step that I took out to my tractor this morning was like two thirds of a step because I was, I could have slid any four directions. So I was like, whoa. Um, anyway, I'm going to get chores started and then I'm hoping to make it into the special calf sale. So the line has like three to 4,000 head today. And beans we haven't bought for a while. I was hoping to buy some Tuesday and buy some Thursday of this week. Uh, so I'm hoping, hoping that works out and that the roads aren't too bad to drive, drive in there with the pot. Well, honestly, I, I kind of wish it would keep getting down to 15 at night and maybe 35 during the day, but it's not going to, I think it's going to thaw enough for all the frost to come out of the ground. But on the bright side, I, uh, don't need to chop ice in the Creek so you can see it. You can maybe see it. It's running on top of the ice, which is what it's been doing during the day. I just haven't been here, but then it, it's been freezing on top of the ice at night. And so the ice got really thick. You can kind of see how thick it got. So there's the hole I've been chopping. So there's deep water there. There's just a couple of inches here, but it'll be running now. And all, all that ice will eventually thaw. Okay. I put the bunk eating the most part where I'm not trying to film them anyways. Well, if you've been watching, we, uh, have been without our cat loader through this whole cold spell, like ever since Christmas or something, and we've been having to use our big loader that's, uh, usually used for other things for loading feed because we had to get this, uh, main cylinder rebuilt because it decided to come apart on us. So, uh, we got it rebuilt. Looks good. Uh, new seals and everything. New threads on the, the rod there. And, uh, now we're going to get it back on. Kind of hung up here, getting, uh, things back on and we got to reach that into there and we'll be back in action. This loader is a lot more nimble than that huge one. We had enough stuff in the shop that, and it was leaking oil. So we just parked here outside of the shop. It was kind of a funny spot. We didn't know it'd take so long. She started right up after sitting for so long. Oh, there it moved. It's full of air first. So nobody worried. The cat is back. Look how easily I fit in these slots. Oh, much nicer. I don't feel like I have to think every second about not hitting the walls. Just twists and turns in and out of there so easily. So my question is, did this cylinder fail because of all the years of us rocking this bucket back and forth to shake off the extra and should we not do that? Or does it not matter since it took 40 years or whatever? Well, we haven't had it that long. Took a long time for it to fail. But I don't know if it was from rocking back and forth or not. It's also a lot easier to aim it in the wagon. We built this extension to be able to use the big bucket, but this works a little better. Well, the snow is melting and so are the roads. The roads are rough right now here in Kansas. Thanks for watching everyone. Check out our music videos linked in the description. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat and explore our website www.petersonfarmbrothers.com. See you guys next time.