Van Dyke
Angus Ranch
Ranch News - June 1998
| June
3rd |
| Busy is the word out here, we are currently getting all of
the cows out on summer pasture. The last couple of days we have been hauling the cows with
heifer calves up to our mountain pasture. It is beautiful up there. A week ago we seen a
huge mountain lion, that is the first time in my life that I have ever seen one so it was
a great experience for me. There is an abundance of wild life their including elk, deer,
antelope, bobcats, mountain lions and brown and black bear. My true hope is that none of
them decide that our animals look good enough to eat. Larry Cotton was out yesterday to
select cattle for our fall sale this year. We are putting a great group of cows on the
sale including a good portion of our donor females. Along with the cows we are also
selling 25 heifer calves, 15 bred heifers and 8 pregnant recipients ultrasounded with
heifer calves.
We are still not getting any rain to speak of but it did snow a little bit here last
night, I guess we will take our moisture however we can get it. They are predicting a
pretty hard frost tonight so I got the job of covering all of the plants and flowers in
the garden. |
| June
14th |
| Things are starting to get a little bit easier here. We have
received around 3/4 of an inch (1.9 cm) of rain and have
all of the cows out to summer grass. We moved the cows with heifer calves yesterday to a
new pasture and to say the least it was a disaster.They are, however, all close to being
there now. The calves did not want to move up on the mountain and so we were forced to
take alot of the calves by themselves which is no easy chore. The grass there is fantastic
and right now they are in about a 5000 acre (2023 hectare) pasture so that ought
to keep them going for along time. We have lost two heifer calves up there so far and I
really do not know the reason for it, hopefully that will be it for the summer. We have
a beautiful set of calves this year, the VDAR Ambush 1465
SAF and the VDAR Traveler 51 are awesome, I think that they will be two of the very
highest growth sires we have ever used. We have a beautiful set of calves also sired by VDAR Lucy's Boy and his son, VDAR/KA
Legacy. The females sired by VDAR Vision 243 and VDAR Rito 953 all have excellent calves on them and I think
the maternal on them will continue to go up. We plan on starting to put up are first
cutting of hay this week, I do not think we will have to worry too much about rain if the
past weeks is any indication of things to come. |
| June
22nd |
| We finally got some rain, about 2 inches (5.1 cm)
in the last couple of days. Now the grass should come on, and it is about time to get the
swather out. Always something to do. We want to thank Wayne Knight for his
purchase of embryos out of VDAR Polly 900, VDAR Beauty 900,
VDAR Evergreen 5026, and VDAR Miss Wix. Also many
thanks to Rick Wit for his purchase of embryos out of VDAR
Beauty 900. |
| June
23rd |
| The moisture is finally coming good. We have now received
about 3 1/2 inches (8.9 cm) of rain over the past week. Temperatures have been
around 65° F (18° C), and with a little bit of heat now things will really
start to grow. We are attempting to start cutting hay now, with the rain we are receiving
we mostly likely will have to make haylage. I started halter breaking our Nile heifer
today, it did not go real well. Hopefully in the next week or so I will see real progress.
She is sired by VDAR Ambush 1465 SAF and out of our Hazel 355 cow. She is a super heifer and I really do not
want to get rid of her but if you are going to consign a female to a sale I think you
should bring your best.
We are going to start clipping the cows for pictures at the end of this week as Fred
Strivers will be out to take pictures for the sale the first part of July. We have put
together a fantastic group of sale cows and heifers and are really excited about it. We
have been getting alot of visitors as here of late so that is always encouraging. |
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