Bringing the Cows Home

Gonna wash some stuff off. I'm sure it'll stay clean. 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. Not very often do we end up with all three feed trucks slash wagons lined up. The feed truck goes down to dad's and feeds some cattle down there and then the wagons are up here. This is our starter ration for the cattle that have most recently come in. It's a lot higher hay and less silage and then we transition them onto these the heavier silage ration. Then we also have Greg's pickup here since the the cows. Cows are still over on the milo stalks. I was just pressure washing so my face is all dirty. And as you've been seeing in our in our other videos, we've been feeding the cows over on the milo stalks and so we just haul silage in the pickup bed which is a little redneck also but since we're driving back and forth with pickups it it works. We were feeding them hay in the cold but since we're going to be moving them home we're feeding them silage so that their rumens get used to the silage so they're ready to go on a ration once they come back to the lot to have their babies. So as soon as it dries up we're going to get them moved home. They're within just a couple weeks of having of their due dates so we want to get them home but it's been so muddy that we're kind of stretching them over there and that's why we're feeding silage over there too. So we've got four feed equipment lined up and the payloader is going to work getting them all loaded so kind of a unique thing but we get her done around here. You can watch dad in action while I wait. I was gonna go do something but I thought I should film while we have everything all lined up. This spot in the yard it's it's nice hard gravel but it always just gets kind of slippery muddy and then it's in the shade so it's always like the last to dry out. The rest of the yard and the pens have dried a lot the last couple days because of the wind and the warm weather. You can see I'm in a t-shirt. I was pressure washing in a t-shirt this afternoon. It's like 62 degrees so we're thankful things are drying out and it looks like we might have next week to to get some stuff done. Got a partner today we're out trying to find a short and an electric fence. We've narrowed it down to like a stretch of 200 yards where it must be between and maybe Ada can spot it. You see any missing insulators Ada? Okay I eventually found the culprit so that seems to be touching the metal. We have a lot of wood posts here and insulated posts but there's a few metal ones out here and that was the culprit. Okay unloading some more heifers at my dad's place. We sold 60 so we're bringing down 60 and they'll fill a pen. They're up eating some of the ration. My dad left he put some extra ration in the bunk because he knew we were going to put them in this pen. This is the pen that those bread heifers have been coming in and out of but we're kind of going to move them so it has a lot better structure. It's not all mudded up as well as this pen over here. Still has weeds growing well not growing but standing. They won't mud that up yet. Nathan and I are setting up a catch pen here just with these panels all the way back to the shed and my brothers. This is an old dairy barn so we're going to use what's left of the bunk line and set up these panels. It's wet out on the field so that's why we're not going to set up the large catch pen out there. Don't get my truck stuck Nathan. It's loaded with silage and distiller. Smile you're on camera cows. Come and get some eating. Let me feed them some more. Okay we put some straw in the receiving pen. As you can see that pen next to it is muddy. All of our pens are a little muddy but anyways they got a dry place when they first come in today. We got 46 head coming in tonight. Okay there's the new cattle. Don't drop it. I won't drop it in the mud. So they're uh some eating at the bunk some sniffing around with the straw. Blair what did you help daddy do? I helped daddy unload the cattle. Yeah and what number did we count up to? I don't know. 46? 46. She was a really good help counting. Yeah listen to mom. Don't point it at me. Point it where we're walking. Also a great flashlight holder. Oh we didn't take the trash out Blair. So not only did the um those cattle come tonight we also got a load of distillers. So um I came out and I had these lights on outside. Anyways it is February 1st and I'm out here in a t-shirt and shorts and the videos you guys watched of us last week were like I mean it was freezing uh and now it is it's pitch black dark out here and I'm out here in a t-shirt and shorts and I believe it's still over 55 degrees. But anyway we got distillers in tonight and a truckload of 46 calves. So dad is working on the pen conditions. Obviously the weather has been exactly conducive to some sloppy pens. When we get the piles piled up then they have dry spots to lay down. There is more rain in the forecast. Doing this you know hopefully when that rain comes it'll run off and run to the lagoon rather than soak up in all these pockets if we didn't have them cleaned. The snow came there just there just wasn't a chance to do much cleaning and then it all melted slow and soaked in. So it's been a challenge. One of the toughest weather as far as the pens in a long time. We don't get weather like this very often and that's why you don't see very many livestock buildings around here. Like to have cattle under a building in a monoslope or something if you had weather like this all the time that's when those things pay. You know here we're having sun and wind and everything's drying out pretty quickly. We'll see if it's one of those winter springs you know 1 in 20 where it's just really wet. In 1993 you know it was really wet there were bad pen conditions. Most years we can get by just fine if we're doing basic maintenance in the pens. So we don't have as many cattle as we do sometimes. We haven't bought back real strong just partly because we want to not have too many and be able to keep our pens in good condition and you know buy cattle when margins are better and the pens are better. So that's kind of our thought. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! All right we're catching the spring cows. One of the new spring heifers has already had their its calf well twin calves actually. So we had brought them home last week in the mud because we knew they were close. These are still a couple weeks away but we don't want to have to keep feeding them over here. They need more nutrition and the roads have dried out. So we built this catch pen in Greg's yard along his old bunk line and we're gonna get them up in the alley and get them loaded up and taken home. I know you like your milestones ladies but we need you a better place to have your babies. You're just gonna have to leave. Brighton can you say bye to the cows? Say bye. Can you say bye cows? All right now that we got the cows loaded up we're gonna load these panels onto the trailer and get those back as well. I'll help Nathan here. All right we've got these bales loaded from where we had the millet. This is the last load going out from there. It's closer than I thought and so we were a little worried. It's a mud road to get to this field. It's like definitely all back roads. You hardly ever meet anyone but they're also not the most maintained roads so we finally got a window. The field's still a little soft but we decided to go ahead and get them home so we don't have to worry about it raining again. Hopefully this alfalfa will produce a lot more this year than it did last year. And hopefully this wheat that we put manure on will be pretty nice. Off to a good start. 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.