Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Going to the Bank Today.

I'll carry in some numbers, with hat in hand, and hope to farm another year.

Good luck. Hope the rate is lower and the terms are easier. (They won't be but it is the thought that counts.)

The wife is getting started on that too Richard.


Good luck!


From the looks of your operation, I'd say you have nothing to worry about!

The older I get, the more I hate doing that.

I don't like owing.

Got a couple small things financed because the deal was right. All my tractors, and cows are paid for. No land payment.

Might not be "big", but I know those that are, and sure wouldn't want their bills.

Knew a couple of farmers that committed suicide when it rained too much to get their crops out...

No thanks.

Well folks, in Iowa they don't give farmland away.

Jim, thanks, if things get tough enough, I may have light my .25. cent cigars with a check written for 14 cents. Not them hundred dollar bills like some Montana, and Texas ranchers do.

I'd love to get of debt, thing is, I just keep spendin' money.

Richard, I remember back in the late 60s when a farm between A.C. and Newell went for $4000 per and people were wondering how it could ever pay for itself.

Right John, my wife, and I paid $2600, and it was a local scandal.

No way stupid me would make that work.


Farm land will almost never pay out at prices at the time.

I know the feeling good luck..

I hated those days when I had to go and try to get an operating loan. I was the world's worst at doing that kind of business. Thankfully those days are long gone. My cattle, equipment, and land are all paid for, and as I look back I see a lot of missed opportunities, and wish I could have some of them back. I'd loved to have bought more land, but those days are long gone as the price of land here is sky high, and far too rich for my blood, especially at my age.

I just thank the good Lord for what He has blessed me with, and given me the opportunity to have.

I'd have more hunnert dollar bills iffen I had some drillable oil on this ol' land. Jed Clampett, and a few others I know do pretty well that way..

Back years ago, there was a company that came in around here and started drilling wells, for gas and oil. They hit mostly gas, and some folks were told that they were going to be able to hook their homes up on this "free" gas, plus get a royalty check. Never panned out, and all those wells were soon abandoned. I have a 200 plus feet deep well on one of my places that was dug back in the 1940's, and I put a pump in it years ago to water livestock with. It was sulphur water, and at times a black oily substance was in the water. Always made me wonder what would have happened if they'd kept digging. Who knows, I might have been like Jed Clampett.

I did get a pretty decent water well in NM from an old oil well drill.

They didn't find oil, but the water we pumped out of it was suitable for livestock.

My stock loved that sulphur water.

Sulphur can kill cattle.

It can, but what I've seen, is you run it into a holding pond or stock tank, and the sulpher dissipates pretty quick.

I'm watering some cows from a pretty good sized pond that I fill with an irrigation well. When it comes from the wellhead, it's stinky as all get out, but after a day on the pond, you never smell it.

The sulphur in water is more a bad taste and smell than anything else. It's not going to hurt at all. There are two kinds of sulphur wells here, black and white sulphur. The black stuff is awful, and will eat up pipes, tanks, and pumps. I have a white sulphur well here that we used for our water on this place for a long time. We used it for everything but drinking. I finally laid 1/2 mile of line and hooked up on county water.

The Sulphur in dried distillers' grain with deep well water can be toxic to cattle.

What isthe difference?

Wabi, the farm here where I've lived since 1985 was previously owned by a family member, who watered his cattle and hogs out of this well. This farm has always had a shortage of water, since the creek dries up in mid summer, and the ponds didn't hold much water. I use county water when the creek isn't running, or when I'm rotating pastures. My horses drink the well water 365 days a year.The well on the adjoining farm that I also own is sulphur as well, and I used it for many years to water my stock on there. There are also a number of other sulfhur water wells in this area.

Maybe there's a difference in the level of sulphur in wells, and that's why it happens in distillers grain. But, in my soon to be 69 years here on this earth, I've never heard of a problem with it here.

It's not the water alone. They use Sulphur in the distilling process to lower the PH of the mash. They use sulfuric acid to clean the machinery.

If the Sulphur content of the DDG is high, and the well water is also high, some dead cattle is the result.

We did not learn this the easy way.

Did yours get the polio type disease I've read about?

Barry we were slow on the draw so to speak. One of the calves would struggle to get on it's feet. Usually it would in time. Some of the down animals we would get a vet on. The vet's did not know any more than we did. They would treat with vitamin B , with little if any success.


When our son called the state beef specialist, he said to cut the DDS by I think 20, or 30% That is when the cattle stopped dying.


I'm still sore, that is putting it mildly, at the feed salesman he was using. The salesman knew all along what was going on, and did not do anything.

"I'll carry in some numbers, with hat in hand, and hope to farm another year"

I've never been able to understand how and why it is that the folks who make our food live in a state of constant financial desperation.
Good Luck. And God bless you, God bless you all.

There is a huge ethanol plant here, and many famers feed that byproduct. I wonder if it has any sulphur in it? I've never heard of any problems.

https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/publication...s-of-the-ethanol-industry-to-beef-cattle

Unto itself, probably not. But the article at the link has a warning about additional sulpher, like in water..

When DDGs were a new deal, the high sulfur killed a lot of cattle. Experience has taught the suppliers to have it assayed and they blend it down if needed so that acceptable levels are the norm now.

Seldom do we see problems from high levels anymore, I think there can be "hot spots" in the feed that contain an elevated level. And some animals are just individually more susceptible to problems. Remember a case where a guy was allowing free access to a tank of the syrup product and got in trouble.