Farming, Livestock, Real Estate
This new fence was a necessary upgrade from the old one. The old fence had rusty steel posts and worn down cattle panels, that wasn’t very eye appealing. Now with this new wooden fence, it’s more durable and looks like a feasible fence. Also, the 14 foot gate will be useful when some cattle get out and when liberty utilities has to work on the gas line. The new fence is great and will most likely be stands for awhile, but most of all it doesn’t look like something out of Kentucky.
Poppy is a 5/8SM 1/4MA 1/6AN+, July, SS GOLDMINE L42 heifer, that’s out of a WHO MADE WHO 411F cow. She is a long deep body heifer, that is wide through her top line, hip and chest floor. She is also very attractive from the front end and covers her stride. Poppy held up very at the show and the show ring, as this wasn’t her first rodeo. We brought a Fall CLRWTR SHOCK FORCE W94C heifer as well, but she only got third place. As I was showing Poppy in the show ring and after the judge had place her, I was exiting the ring the judge made the comment,” that heifer sounder then the young man leading her”. However, to save face I had been braking 18 other heifers and steers for the past three mouths and had some sharp pain in my legs the day before. Now Poppy has a nice HAUN JESSE JAMES bull calf on the ground.
Steel Magnolia is a Steel Force daughter on a purebred Angus cow,
whom we own half of along with Murphy’s Angus. She was raised by one of our per-bred Simmental receipt cows. When I was breaking her, she was at first bit skittish, but after all the consent haltering, walking and washing she finally broke. NAILE was Steel Magnolia’s first cattle show she’s been to. We also took another heifer of ours to Louisville, she was a purebred Simmental out of Hook’s Shear Force. Steel Magnolia didn’t take the first day there very well, but she got over it. The day before the show we walked her from the junior building, past the west entrance to the Murphy’s trailer, so Alec Murphy could trim on her. We had her ready an hour before she showed,so we just walked her around and set her up a time or two. The Haddens also had a full sister to Steel Magnolia in the same class. The class consisted of seven heifers total and I led the class fallowed by Cody Hadden. The judge place Steel Magnolia first, because she was easiest on the move then another heifer in the class, along with other things like depth of body and over all great shape. Steel Magnolia had to be one of my favorite heifers I’d ever shown.
Small break down on corn head. It’s a quick fix and we’re back in the field.
Yield monitor from one of the fields we finished today.
Yield monitor of 80 acres
William checking on a bin of corn as we dump into it.
Eating pizza in the field
This picture is deceiving. It was cold. The planter is ready to go, but we had to wait a few days to get started. We moved the tractor and planter out of the shed to put more seed corn away.
Stone Seed Group has the best designed bags of the 6 seed companies we bought from this year.
Bill started planting late afternoon on Thursday. That way he didn’t start on the dreaded Friday. Also our dually is not a good choice of trucks to take seed to the field. One of the tires drives on the row.
The sky was cloudy but it was nice temps. The ground temperature at 4 inches was 52 degrees. The ground worked up nicely. William said it was time to go. The auto steer wouldn’t work. Our dealer worked and worked on it but couldn’t make it go. So the old style markers it is. But Bill can’t keep up with twitter. Such sacrifices.
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We are pretty proud of General Grievous. (Dad misspelled his name on the registration papers.) He has turned out to be a very good herd cleanup bull for us. His numbers are excellent for a Simmental and phenotypically he is pretty nice as well. But we should go back to the beginning.
Here is the General at a couple days old with Sandy. She had him unassisted in 2006. 
He has given us many show ring winners; bulls, steers and heifers. The cows from him have turned out to be excellent milkers and mothers. So with all these lovely attributes we decided to collect him to share his good genetics and to use it when he is gone. Thus starts our journey into storing General’s semen. Things like this are always a learning experience.
Fortunately, Interglobe Genetics is only a 1.5 hour drive for us. This is their round barn they have on the premisses. This happened to be the first week in December and it was cold.
We were surprised that where they had the bulls unload from the trailers there is a large drain right in the middle of the floor. Of course, this spooked the General as he pranced around it. Not a good design.
They used a steer for bulls to jump. A brave guy collected the semen in a sleeve. Then they take the semen under a microscope to see his count. The General’s numbers were very good. He only had to be collected once more to get the number of straws we wanted. We drive home and wait for them to call to pick it up.
A month later, they call that it is ready to be picked up. These tanks are only about 1/3 of the tanks in this building. A nice young lady showed us around.
This is what it looks inside the large tanks. Lots and lots of canes. Lots of records to keep track of who is where.
We pick up the Generals semen and head home. Bill wants me to make up a flyer to put up at the Beef Expo. Being the dutiful wife, I comply.
But wait, we get a notice that the DNA test for the General has failed for the sire Hooks Shear Force! Wonderful. Bill is sure he used the right straw when we bred Sandy; but maybe it was Hooks Pace Setter? So we send off another hair test sample to the labs. The test isn’t done quickly. The Beef Expo comes around. We can’t put up the flyers or tell anyone we have General’s semen available because we don’t have the results back.
Then we get the results in the mail… He passes positive for the sire Hooks Shear Force.
Since he has been around for awhile, we have seen what this guy works with and how they grow. All his calves have been easy birthing. There hasn’t been one that was too big.
He works really well with our purebred Angus cows. Here is a picture of a heifer sired by General and one of our Angus cows. The hardest thing with her is keeping her from getting too finished to fast to be a show heifer. She is a real easy keeper. She seems to put on weight just looking at hay.
He also does a decent job on club calf style cows. Here is a steer that we raised from General and a 1/2 blood Simmental cow. She is sired by Dr. Who. The steer was third overall at a competitive county fair steer show and was 4th steer overall at a Simmental regional.
Last is a picture of a bull sired by General, he was a Division winner at the State Fair. He is out of a 3/4 Simmental, 1/4 Angus cow.
General works well on many different types of cows and the best part is they come real easy and then grow very fast. We decided to collect him and share him with others after he has sired so many good ones for us. He is 6 years old and still walks like a cat and still is very interested in the ladies.
Bill here filling in for Judi while she is keeping busy staying warm.
Do you remember the Jeff Foxworthy comedy sketch where he talks about his wife saying “I hate my Hair” “Well we are not going anywhere for a long time”.
That is how I feel this winter. Picture is stuff that should be in the “mud” room but because of the extended periods of cold weather it is in Judi’s kitchen.
Water jugs were being used to thaw out energy free waterer. We gave up on that this last cold spell, covered it up with straw bales and waiting for warmer weather.
It is just down right bitter cold. Thank you Jesus the kids are still at home to help/ do the chores around here. They have been wonderful through all this.
We have even put off putting embryos in cows because we think the conception rate would be down in this brutal cold weather.
I went to junior college my first 2 years and that was the last 2 really bad winters we had in the late seventies, now Isabella is driving back and forth to the same school and it is just as bad if not worse.
Set another low record this morning, just breaking records left and right.
I am still waiting for Al Gore to show up with his global warming and help outside with the livestock chores.
Cows look like they are tired of it also. Luckily we can put them all up in barns or sheds for the winter.
No mud for now, of course when it thaws we will have mud forever until this deep freeze is gone from the ground.
Well I am going to quit bitching for now.
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