Working Ranch Blog

End of the Tunnel by Brett Haas
May. 17 2010, 9:40 PM

I apologize for my lack of writing this past week. We were finishing up breeding our last group of heifers and I was working through a pesky head cold, so needless to say, I was perty much spent by the end of the day. I didn't do much more than eat supper and go to bed. Today, though, marked the beginning of the end. Now the only thing left to do was move a few groups of cattle around, and come Wednesday the bulls go out. So, today we did some moving.

This is a rare shot of a peculiar species, Packardus Top Handus, egaged in a behavior not normal to its kind: getting a gate!

Once again the ever reliable top hands, Shorty and Jim showed up to help. Kirk and I trailered up to Shorty's and met the dynamic duo up there. Our goal was to move our home-raised heifers up to our intensive rotational grazing system we have on a couple of traps at Shorty's. Kirk and I put up the electric fence on Friday so we were good to go. We had to move three pastures of pairs to make way for the heifers. We started up at Shorty's and worked our way south until we got the last bunch moved out of the way. Then we headed back down to headquarters to retrieve the said heifers. Of course, as always with heifers, there was a mix-up to be fixed before we could head back north. So after a little sorting we had everything where it was supposed to be. It took a bit. The goal was to take four heifers out of the first pasture we came to and put 'em in with our home-raised. Well, we got the four sorted and were headed out, then, of course, the rest of the herd decided they needed to check out where we were going and soon our sorted heifers became unsorted. Oh, no worries. It's nothing a couple of top hands like Shorty and Jim couldn't handle. So, after Kirk and I got 'em sorted again, we put 'em with the home-raised bunch and headed north. Soon they were in high cotton. (I mean grass) We stuck 'em in the first cell and they should be ready to move in three or four days.

We've been rotationally grazing these two traps for the last couple years and it's worked out pretty good. Last year, we put a few too many head in and had to give up on it for a bit. We've had quite the wet winter and Spring though, so the grass is a plenty. We put 50 pairs on one of the traps a month ago just to trim it down a bit. It only took 'em about four days to get 'er done, but when we went up there to move 'em it looked like we'd mowed it with the brush hog. It was perfect.

I know it's become trendy to be "green" nowadays, but the truth is that for any good stockman worth his salt, everyday is earth day. The earth is how we make our living. If we treat it right, it'll treat us right. Ragweed is a bad problem for us here and the quickest way to get a bunch of it is to overgraze a pasture. You graze a pasture to the dirt around here, you better like burning diesel mowing ragweed in the summer. That and you better like feeding hay early and having the same problem the following year because of the lack of cover forage during the winter. I know some folks have the idea that cattle grazing is bad for the environment. The truth is Cattle put back what they take, all the while making up some tasty beef in the process. Most of the pasture we graze couldn't be used for anything else. It has neither the top soil, and is geographically challenged (too many hills and rocks) to be cropland. Cattle also aerate the soil that decreases compaction which allows bugs and worms to burrow and leave behind rich organic matter. Happy earth equals happy grass equals happy cows equals happy cowboys equals happy consumers. I think that's an equation we all can enjoy.

Are you wrapping up your Spring works yet? Tell me at thekansascowboy36@gmail.com. You can also friend me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter.