Van Dyke Angus Ranch
Ranch News - July 1998
July 1st
1st cutting on the alfalfa is well under way. We have been having beautiful weather here as of late with temperature highs in the 80°s F (27-30°s C) . The hay crop is exceptionally heavy and with a few more days of sunshine we will have a lot of it up.

We are currently clipping some of the sale cows for pictures, Bobby Wellner has come up to do this. On July 24, Fred Stivers will be here to take pictures.  Although the production sale isn't until November 11th. There is preparation to be done now.

We have been getting alot of visitors to the ranch in the last couple of weeks and I have been taking some of them up to the mountain pasture. It is kind of hard to find the cattle up there at times, but on a good day you can see around 100 head of the 325 that are grazing there. The cattle are doing super.

The new sire groups that are really exciting are the VDAR Traveler 51, VDAR Ambush 1465 SAF and the VDAR Rito 1546 calves. All appear to have excellent growth and are very attractive to view. We would also like to thank Paul Sidey, Sidey Angus in Ohio for putting these pages together for us, it recently won best web site for 1998 in the Angus Journal competition. Thanks so much Paul!!!

July 9th
Sunny and hot, perfect haying weather. Highs in the 90°s F (33-36° C). We are getting lots of hay put up right now, around 1000 round bales weighing around 1500 lb. (680 Kg) per bale. We have around 160 acres (65 hectare) left to do.

After we get the hay put up we are going to start work on the sale pens, we need to expand them as this year with the cows being on it, we need room for around 225 head. The sale cattle are looking super, Bobby Wellner has been here to trim the cows for pictures, he did a beautiful job.

We are preparing to take 2 bulls down to the stud for export semen to Australia, they are VDAR New Trend 124 and VDAR Lucy's Boy 7137. We started all of their health test here the other day and in a week or so they go to the stud. Hopefully by the next time I do a ranch news we will be done haying and I will have something a little bit more exciting to report to you all about.

July 18th
The weather has really warmed up out here, highs around 100° F (37.8° C) , things are really growing and will continue as long as we are able to irrigate. We are done putting up the first cutting hay, had right at 1800 big round bales weighing around 1600 lbs. (726 Kg) per bale.

We are putting up the new sale pens now, it really is not much fun setting railroad ties in 100° F (37.8° C) weather. We are putting in 25 new pens to display the cattle in so hopefully we will not have to do this again for a very long time.

One of our very best cows, VDAR Lucy 32, died yesterday, don't really know why. She is the dam of VDAR Rito 1546 and VDAR Lucy 3181, one of our very favorite donor females. Lucy 32 was the only cow we ever had that weaned off a calf at over 1,000 lbs (454 Kg) and she did it with no creep either.

I will be going up to the summer pasture tomorrow to put out more minerals, I understand that they now are in every pasture on the place. The elk have pretty much took care of all the fencing that we did up there.

We want to thank Lee Mueller of Le Grange Texas, and Tommy Gumm of Single Tree Aangus, Glasgow KY for their purchase of embryos, Joe D. Burton and sons of Faubush KY for their purchase of embryos, and Bill Freeman of KY for his purchase of embryos.

 

 

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