adventures with cows (continued)

When loose livestock is found in snohomish county they're hauled to the everson livestock auction.  As I wrote yesterday , getting them back is basically an entire workday, but I wanted them back so off I went. 

The day I retrieved them emerson was having a livestock auction, and since i was there, with a trailer and had some room, I sat in on it.  The portion of the auction that I got there was the "cull" portion.  What was being auctioned were mostly older dairy cows, probably going for hamburger.  It's part of the dairy industry, and most fast-food burgers have a major dairy cow component.  The picture shows a typical cow.  they're led through one at a time, sometimes in pairs, and bid on. 

If you click on the picture for a larger version, you can see the price board -- the information on it is not for this cow, it's for the LAST cow.  Once the cow is bid on, it moves through a door on the left, is weighed, and the totals are displayed on the board.  What's showing right now is that the last cow auctioned weighed 1370lbs, was sold for 64.75 cents a pound, and that the total sale price for that last cow was $887 (1370 * .6475). 

Every now and then a cow doesn't cooperate, and this one just stood there.  She didn't want to move, and they auctioned other cows around her for a while, and then decided to try to move her.  She was a big cow, maybe 1700, and they pushed and pulled and swore at her and finally got her sort of into the door

and with a final push, she was in. 

The mostly-black cow, above, is the cow that I purchased while I was at the auction.  Here she's in the pasture next to the corral.  I think that she's an angus-holstein cross.  I believe angus because of the color and shape of the head and body; holstein because of the white.  She's in pretty good condition.  I spent $0.6425/lb for her 1100lbs, for a total of $706 for this cow.   On the right is my holstein heifer.  The new cow has a flatter back, smaller head and weighs more, probably 200lbs more.   The black-and-white cow is my little holstein heifer that I'm raising as a family milk cow. 

When you purchase livestock at auction you really don't know much about how it was raised, what it was fed, or how it behaves.  This cow seemed in good shape, and has a dual purpose for me.  1) when I process my steers this fall my holstein will have a buddy, as cows do better with other cows, and if for some reason she doesn't work out, she'll be good eating.  

Since I have no idea what she's been being fed, I'm going to watch her and make sure that she can handle grass.  There's plenty of it to eat (I've got 4 cows on 10 acres) but if she's been being fed a prepared feed her rumen may  not be up to it yet.  

 

I'm lucky that there is a spring about 15' above the level of my pasture, so I was able to run a hose up the hill and get a good trickle out of it.  I  use that trickle to fill this 300 gallon trough for the cows.  By doing that I can fence the cows off the stream, to preserve the stream bank and water quality.  I'm not anti-salmon, after all.  I'm just anti huge regulatory burdens.

Adventures with my cows

 put my cows out on the 10 acre parcel that I purchased a couple of years ago.  I had it surveyed to determine where the property lines are, and then build a corral (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5), fenced it, 4 strand barbed wire and put in some gates.  Made it ready to run cattle on. 

This is what it looks like now, complete with cows.   These are my $5 calves, all grown up.  They're 20 months old now, and I'll probably slaughter them this fall, after they've fed on the lush grass all summer.  They weigh about 1100lbs each. 

There's 4 strand barbed wire along 3 sides of this parcel, but on the 4th side i used field fence.  The property adjoins on county park land, and I wanted to keep my livestock out of the way of the dogs that are regularly walked along this edge.  The problem is that field fence really doesn't deter a cow at all.  These big holstein steers stretch their necks over the wire and using their throat push the wire right down the T-post.  The fence clips eventually slide down, and then the cow just steps over the fence. 

I didn't know that before, but I sure do now.  Here's the story: 

I checked the cows at 10am, and they were all good, happily eating their grass.  This was their third day out there, and they looked fine.  Apparently, about 4pm, they did this to the fence, climbed out, and then spent the day grazing outside the fence.  When they got tired of that they wandered up the driveway and into a housing subdivision down the street.  Apparently they had a good time eating peoples shrubs and flowers and generally making a nuisance of themselves, so much so that the sheriff was called, and a livestock hauler, and they got hauled off to the place that snohomish county has contracted to take "rescue" animals.  Everson Auction Market, in located in Everson, WA.   Very close to the canadian border. 

So when I went to check on them the next day, all i found for 3  hours of searching were cow tracks.  When I purchased the property I introduced myself to the folks who owned the houses on either side of the driveway, gave them my card, and asked that they call me if they had any questions. 

I finally went and asked one fellow if he'd seen anything, and he said he had, that someone walking the park had used his phone to call the police.  So I called the police too, and they said that the animals had been transported at 7pm the night before. 

Everson, Wa.  is 80 miles north of my farm.  It's an hour and 45 minutes if the traffic is good, and now I've got to go get my stock trailer and spend basically a whole day to get my darned cows back.  And pay $250 to the company that took them there.

I'll write that up tommorow.  It had an unexpected benefit.

Thanksgiving, 2010

Hatched 60 turkey poults today -- thought I'd give you guys a preview of thanksgiving dinner.  Couple of blue slates, some narragansett, couple of wild turkeys.  Good assortment.  All from my breeding flock.