Moving Cows

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 so they're feeding hay this morning. 65 in from El Dorado to go with the ones I got from Celina. They're pretty full in this pen. We'll probably move the weaned heifers out with the weaned heifers I bought in Celina yesterday. Here's the other group. They look pretty happy. Still got something to eat. That's why this cow this year is with the black bull. She's got a red white face calf. This year she's with that bull only so she's not going to get red. All these white faces gonna have. Next year's calf crop won't be so colorful. All righty we are working some calves this Saturday morning. We just got done working those so they're getting to eat now. They were the steers. These are some heifers. Somebody tell us when the top of the market is gonna be so we can quit buying. But these seem like pretty nice cattle. They've been pretty calm going through the shoot. That's what we like to see. It's a beautiful day. Beautiful December day. I'm gonna try to go spray some fall burndowns here and get a little ways through here. Kendall is at his in-laws this weekend but we're still getting stuff done. All right gotta remember how this thing works. Well it hasn't been that long. Hopefully everything works and we get a little done this afternoon and then tomorrow or next week we can roll back in the saddle. The K-State basketball lost so that's sad. But we're running. Okay it's the day we're gonna move them. Milo stocks on this side of the waterway to Milo stocks on this side of the waterway. The sky still looks really pretty today. The sunrise was beautiful. I should have taken a picture. Anyways we got another 200 acres or 180 acres or something with Milo stocks on this side. There's my number 177 cow. I lost her tag. She was the first one over here. They are gonna be a little eager to move. I hope they respect this wire. I'm pulling. So now they finished their silage on the feed truck. Came over to see what Nathan and I were doing putting this wire up here and they probably need to go and find their pond pretty soon. All right we only had enough wire and posts to fence the west third of this field. Now we're letting them over onto the rest. And so Kendall pulled up that wire. We don't even have uh it closed in yet. They were definitely ready to move to fresh stocks. And then I'm also here with the feed truck. So now I got their attention with this. We will get this closed in while they're putting their heads down in the silage and the new stocks. Hopefully keep them from going anywhere. Good girls. Just for simplicity's sake this is the same ration we feed our feeder cattle. If we have the opportunity we like to just make a cheaper cow ration but we're basically just limit feeding them this. So they're still hungry enough to go pick around on the stocks. All the baby calves are over there. They don't really, well they probably eat some of the silage but. So since these are nursing cows we do want them, we want them to have really good nutrition to produce good milk and keep their calves growing. Whereas a dry cow that doesn't have a calf on her can do just fine on just stocks by themselves plus like a just a little supplemental protein. But these we give a little, it's good to give them a little extra energy. Kendall is pulling the wire. Not very easy to pull around the corner but it's what we're trying to do. So I am holding this bucket here to help it roll around there and then we're gonna have some extra. So I don't know, probably more complicated than it needed to be but it was kind of gonna be one way or another. We're just gonna leave them open to the rest of this. But their pond is gonna be over in that opposite corner now so I doubt they make it over here. So that's why it was nice to start them on this west part just to get a little more even grazing. All right we gotta move to the pond way over there. There's three calves over here have not found their way across the wire yet. They were too afraid of the wire to cross where it used to be. We shouldn't have to hull water anymore. I don't have a, it's telling me that it's hot. I don't have my fault finder with me so I just decided to test it like this. Now you can hear it clicking pretty good. That's a good way to know if you don't have your fault finder. It's hot. Or if you'd like you could just grab it with your hand but that's not my preferred method. In real rotational grazing you would just, you would take them off of where they had just been but they still are open to this part, these 60 acres. We just pulled up the middle wire and they'll be on the east side. They won't really walk this far over here to graze over here anymore because it's far from the water they've already grazed it. Okay he made it to where we stopped with the other wire. This 240 acres is a really perfect place for cows because it has some trees for windbreak. You know it's a big chunk all together so basically we'll probably, you know, we basically have cows here two winters of every three. The cows don't seem to want my pumpkins from my porch. They just got fresh corn stalk or fresh milo stalks. Calves are laying down and happy. I'll see if I can get a count on them. So I'm out here drilling this waterway. We've got the cows and calves in here. What's funny is that the cows are way over on the other side of the field and the calves are just running around by themselves like a bunch of teenagers out looking for trouble. Also they could go either direction. They wouldn't have to keep running right in front of me but that's the way it's got to be. Cattle stuff in the morning, spraying in the afternoon. Well Kendall's still doing some cattle stuff but not me but he is, I mean he is driving the tender truck over here for me driving it back so that's nice. Okay I'm over here. I brought the tender trailer. Helped Nathan fill. Got 100 plus acres to spray right here. I'm gonna go look across the creek at the wheat and alfalfa. Okay here's some second year wheat we have growing. You can see down the road there. We'll see how it handles the winter. There's alfalfa field. Dad came over here and cleaned off all the bales off of it. You can see some of his tracks right here. Not too long ago. Pretty good timing on him walking back. He's pulling up to fill another time. Look at this guy. Remind me not to run over that rack in the spring. Got my spraying done but got a little late to chores. Dad is a little under the weather so I've been doing his. Just finished my dad's chores here. Ain't gonna go parking in his shed. All the cattle are fed. My brother did the feed truck and I did my dad's starter wagon here. We got the got the job done. A day to sort some heifers. This will be the last sort of heifers from up here at the home place and then the leftover heifers will go down to my dad's to be matched with cattle there. This is a pin of 95 so the biggest 60 will sell and the next 30 will match the pin that has our home-raised calves in it. I had to practically check these ones separate today. They were, I weaned their calves later. They're gonna be put on corn stalks here after we get them moved to a different field of corn stalks. So I decided not to haul them today so that way they don't have to be led when they haven't been with that group and don't trust the system as much. Working calves today. My dad was busy so I actually have Evan back there helping me. About 45 here. We worked the other like 65 last week. I just didn't quite get to these so they'll be ready to move on. It has come time to move these cows from the field in front of my house to a field about half mile away on the other side of the creek. And so Brighton and I, what are we what are we doing? We're feeding the cow today. And we're going to feed them and then what are we going to do? We're going to we're going to catch them where? To the next field. Yeah we're going to move to the next field. We're going to catch them in my pin that I have here in front of my house. Once we catch them we're going to pick up all this fence that's around this current field and move the fence to the other field so that we get that all set up. And then we'll lead the cows across to the other field and we're going to kind of lure lure the cows into the pin by feeding them. Oh yeah it's Coronado Heights over there. You see it? Boss! The cows are out here by the pond. Boss! But they're going to come running once they see my Here they come running Brighton. They're going to come chase me. All right so we're coming up here to the pin by my house and we'll just lead lead the cows in here. There they are in the mirror. Lead the cows in here feed them a little bit and shut the gate behind them. I'm going to hold it up. Hey hey. Now point it at me. Good job. All right we're going to do two now and two later. We've still got to move the cows. We're going to feed them the other two when we move them. We have our fences another field today. Corn stalks for the spring cows. Just got done pounding a post. I'm breathing heavy a little bit. So it goes back around this little nook. Good wind break for them. This field was around 100 bushel corn I think. And so that's a lot of corn out here on the ground. Stalks to eat. Fresh stalks. They've all been picked through the ones that are on Greg's. So they're locked in in that Sioux Steel pin that he built with those panels. With that continuous fencing they're locked in right there while we build this fence. My cattle are up. Two dollars today. 195. People are getting paid 195 a pound so hopefully these girls sell good today. They won't weigh as much as the steers last week. So it won't be quite that much and it's only one load instead of two but I'm still pretty excited. Okay I can't I can't haul these in until after lunch today. I got to watch my kids. Six month old has an appointment and so my wife has him and I got to go pick up kids from grandma's. So what I am doing is pinning them up. I have 10 up in the front and then 23. That they'll just be a little bit faster. I have my semi backed up so it'll just be a little bit faster to get to them. Get them on the truck. Get them going right about one o'clock. So yesterday Brighton and I went around and picked up all the fence posts which she she didn't actually help that much. She helped me put them in the back of my truck. Normally that's a two-person job where we kind of leapfrog each other but I just picked them all up by myself so ended up locking like probably three miles. So all the posts are picked up and now Nathan and I are going to wind this wire from around this field that the cows were on. Kendall and I yesterday tried to pull the wire to the next which worked for about half of it but then for the other half there were too many corners. So we're going to wind the second half of this wire then we'll move it over and and put it on the other field. Also last night you saw I was drilling some cover crop with steel. I was having to stay away from the outside of the field because this wire is still here but we got about 20 acres drilled last night and then I'll finish it after we wind this wire. Yeah planting the cover crop in December. We've done it before it should work again but it's kind of nice after the cows have been on it to get some cover not only to smooth up the cow tracks but to replace it with some cover. Okay I got 24 separated off they're going in the belly those ones are going in the back. Hey going up there All that's left is the front and then I'll be empty. Means we took over 100 last week. I told my dad I didn't want any and so I told the other order buyer we didn't want any and I didn't stay here in Salinas. So hoping to take some next week right before New Year's because they're always higher in January. Kind of forgot to vlog for the rest of the day here. We wound up that fence this morning and then now Nathan and I well we just finished putting up the new fence. First the wire first we unwound the wire around the edge of the field and then we put up all the posts so the the field is ready for the cows. So there's the cows behind me so Nathan and I are going to try to lead them. We're going to try to lead them from here at my house across the creek and then there's the field kind of about half mile that way so not too bad. Hopefully the cows behave. We were about to about to let them out but the mailman came so we're like we better wait not scare the mailman a whole bunch of cows running at him. Oh great they're already going the wrong way. Hey come on cows. All right now we've got distillers on the ground so now that the cows see that they they went right over there but we couldn't we couldn't put the distillers on the ground until we were in the pen. So now we will just put this wire back up and they are inside the pen and we'll get the wire hot and we'll be good to go. There's their new home for the next couple months. Show us how to expertly put in a post here Kendall. I thread it through the wire I put it in if it has a little stepper you use that you got to put it about the right height for cows we set it a little higher for calves it's down like four inches above the knee for cows it's more like hip. You might have some brand new posts you don't have to straighten them. Yeah we got some brand new ones. Some of our posts probably are way old I don't even know. I think they're gonna like it here we've got some green wheat growing in the draws they've got a lot of corn out here and good wind break we call that wind break so besides now having no water from a hydrant instead of a pond they'll be really really easy and happy here for two months. We'll have this one and then we have a little bit more corn to let them on so we'll probably do 30 days here and then let them on to the next one as well. Okay so I had to pull one to a doctor this morning. I have less cattle to feed now after the last two weeks we've sold off three loads of cattle so our distillers use will cut back a little bit and just total feed my chores will shorten by you know the length it takes to drive one full bunk line so that's not a big difference. We have these two loads 100 115 head to gradually work on from starter on to grower now of course all the so still plenty to do but it's nice to get those cattle turned into cash that's the name of the game in the business. Looks like Crosby wants to go with me usually when I have the trailer I let him ride in the back seat he hopped right in though. I have three more breads to take over to put with those corn stalks we wean their calves a little bit later than the others and they just it'll be a lot cheaper to put them on those corn stalks now they're just a little late I wanted to wait till we put them on the second group five to nine and from 2a to five staying in the same groups they're in just moving so here's the cattle we're putting back in the bin five and from 2a mostly ones from Salina plus I think there's like 14 steers from Eldorado or something we kept the heifers separate but we put the steers together hey hey come on cattle cattle are really hungry when cattle are hungry they move pretty well but when they're really hungry they stop and eat everything along a bunk line we start them out in those smaller pins it just allows them to find the feed in the water a little bit better and then uh this pin they actually have to put their their head down on those ball waters instead of being able to see the water like it would look at a pond so that's why we start out with those smaller pins and we kick them out into these bigger pins um if you're wondering I think the steers he got averaged like 560 and the steers I got averaged like 610. We are pouring pens of cattle for life. You know what that is? It's hot chocolate. It's 2022. 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 See you guys next time!