At home on the range things are busy as usual. This past weekend Alissa and I went home to do our best to help out. Hauling water is now a daily chore. Haying sumac and sedan grass (a.k.a. cane) as well as CRP has taken most of the time lately in an effort to produce enough feed to compensate for the drought.
This weekend Alissa and I helped with the haying (baling and stacking bales of cane) and hauling water as well as our own endeavors of body condition scoring the cattle. When we body score a cow, we are using a 1 to 9 scale to determine the outer physical condition of the cow. This will alert us if a cow is too skinny that something is wrong or if a cow is too large that she might be eating more than her share of grass. This is helpful in the long run because we want a happy medium for our cows, by monitoring how the cows change through out the year.
Although we got up much earlier and worked much harder than if we were in class, the break from school was a welcome change, reminding us of why we go to school in order that someday we will be better cattleman, stewards of the land, and business managers when we return to our
home on the range.
