Has started.

A day in the life of a cow farmer.

You could always learn to code

Maybe landscaping?

Yes, 4:30 AM every morning as a youth on the family dairy farm too. Best part of the day.

Just mixed a Bloody Mary then off to a gun show in Kerrville followed by lunch at a taqueria. Looks like a pretty nice day.

Looking like some pretty cold days coming up. Sure you'll be affected,also. I imagine keeping the water flowing will be a chore.

You guys must have missed the storm over that way. I had a six foot snowbank to move in my yard yesterday. Thankfully it didn’t fill back in again overnight. Only got a little below zero last night here in ND. Edk

Good morning, Sam.
4 above, here in balmy NM - so looks like I get to go chop ice, again.
We've still got enough grass that we're just caking them, luckily.

Sam, you have a gift of making hard work look like fun.

Kwitcherbitchen and make me a steak!

I've kinda been saving this.

-5 here this morning in the mountains of Utah. I always enjoy going up to the ranch in Idaho and feeding cows. Id take what your doing any day.

Stay warm.

"The eye of the master fattens the herd."

Thanks for all your hard work. This country and the world really, survive because of folks who get up really early every day.

Wonder what them turkeys been scratching through all day?

Cowshit, just like geese do

Thanks to all the farmers and ranchers that keep the super market shelves and coolers full .A lot of folks never realize what work it takes to do that

Pheasants love grain hay.


After it's been warmed up in a cow....

I've been awake since about 4:30 this morning thanks to some serious carpal tunnel and a badly snoring wife.

Ar least I'm indoors. 🙂

Thank you Sam

You are supposed to be raising beef, not chickens.

That's more like it.

Just in case you thought cows had too much to do.....now we chew their food for them.

WabGoon makes it look much, much easier.

Crhistm9s Clarholes anyone??

Sposed to be 40 below wind chill this coming week.


But you know....it's a dry 40 below!

When I first got word of this Siberian vortex thingie

First thing I thought of was you and Sammo’s bovines

Sam, I envy the life you lead. I sincerely wish I could.have figured how to support a wife and three kids doing so.

Today, I envy the cab and heater on that tractor. I have been sitting on a chair outside, since 5:00 AM watching a confined space entry team.

But hey, at least it is up to 12 degrees here today, and the wind has died down.

I worked on a dairy fam in Idaho for 3 months, loading hay bales. They make the alfalfa bales 95 pounds up there. My partner and I put a thousand a day in the barn. Some brutal work!

I watched the farmers milking those cows, that too is brutal work. Up at 4:30 every day including Christmas and New Years.

That is tougher than loading hay bales.

Place down the road a few miles got one of those grinder goodies a couple of years back. They had built some new pens with pipe and what looks similar to guard rail material, new five strand barb wire fence around the area, and I wondered what they were up to. Seems they are associated with, or owned by, our local auction yard and they bring in stock and feed them up on the ground up hay. Interesting looking operation. I don't know if they auction off the critters here, or haul them to market somewhere else.

Guess it must be worth the effort, fixing their food up for them??

Sammo....you need one of those twin auger vertical feed mixers.....wouldn't have to pay that guy to process your hay for you.

3' of snow on the ground, -20, but no damned cows.

I'm good.....


Those are free-loaders, not chickens.

Lunch appears to be a good one!

That’s quite a few bails of hay. Do you grow it or buy it?

Them poor cows ever get a warm meal?

Roundoak has an $80,000 log splitter


just sayin

Yeah, but Sam says that would take all the fun out of it.

I think he bales it.

Alla those baled up grasshoppers will raise the protein content for the cattle!

Oldman, I need all the exercise I can get... Round bales make for round bellies...


Jahrs, we had to buy a couple hundred ton of extra hay. Dismal growing conditions here with relentless grasshoppers, drought and deer.




Cheers gentlemen!

Them oysters will get that schitty taste from your mouth!!

He buys it from CA. It’s baled up grapevines from the Napa valley.

Hats off to ya SamOlson.

Keep the deer plugged in and the yote rifle handy. Cheers and good luck. The rate things are going the beef should be pampered a little more. $$$

What’s the temperature up on the rez

Ever find thoise cows Sam?

Still missing 3 pair but at least where they're at they have lots of grass and snow to eat. No water now but they snow graze. We had a dozen 3 year old cows doing the same thing here at home. I'd chop ice but they never came up to the tank.




10, had to switch to Bud Light!



Gruff, only the finest my man, only the finest...



Buck, and all you other fuuckers, cheers!


Dog, glad we still have some cattle left to feed. One more drought and it's gonna be bad.



Viking, 3F now but it's going to get cold. Highs of -15F and -17F next week. We all gonna freeze!

You know you are a baller when you throw a round bale to the stupid horses.


#pimpin


BTW.....who backed into or otherwise dropped a bale on that feeder?

Did one of yer bulls get into the coral? That one looks like half cow half horse to me :-)

Cuzz, we've been feeding those idiots since Sept/Oct.

And I'm pretty sure the hired man hit that flimsy bale feeder while trying to bust through a snow drift.

That big prick got arthritis and I can't even ride him anymore.


Thinking about rugging him out and butchering his ass when he sheds off this spring.

I bought one of those tombstone feeders years ago. It was super heavy duty one rated for bulls.

It was very expensive and we were very proud of it.


I fugged it up the second week we had it trying to put a bale in it with the feed pickup.


Still mad about that one.




We had the stupid horses on pasture up at dad's until it got too cold to haul water to them.


Now we are feeding them small squares. Two a day. Buried two of the boy's horses this fall/winter. So not quite as many now....





I had made a really nice small square stack. I was very proud of it.


The bum lambs broke out and ate all the bottom bales on the face of the stack and the face collapsed.



I was secretly hoping to find a couple bum lambs underneath the fallen bales....but have not yet.

I tried to drop a bale in that lightweight unit with the pickup and of course it was a bad idea.



Horses, it's blessing when they die on their own...




And small sqaures, it's a dying art. Wish we had a stack of 'em for calving season.

Idiot squares are handy when the equipment to feed the big bales doesn’t work.

#petfeeder lol

I actually really like small squares.


Saving them for lambing.

Cool pics SamO!

Only thing ive done that compares to that is oilfield work.

No pics…

Always stickler for explosion proof electronics.

Ive seen ice on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sam will you get those 3 pair back in the spring or will they find their way to some ones table?

why did you have to get rid of the boys horses, I have had to put down 5 or 6 over the years,usually a 357 between the eyes

He looks to have been a good and strong horse in his day. Short but stout. A good horse for bareback.

All the guys around here run these..... haven't seen a hay grinder in years. You can dump whole bales in it and grind em up.

Jim and Gruff, our old square baler isn't in working order so the last couple years I've made a couple dozen mini round bales. They are still way too big to load by hand but small enough to use for certain things when you don't want a full size bale.




Dave, I like to be home too much to handle the oil field, the time off would be nice though!

That's a young man's game.



Norm, I expect to get them back. They are in a very remote area and theft is not a concern. Weird to be missing cows this late in the year though, winter set in right after we gathered and they didn't get located.



Jahrs, he's actually a fairly tall bugger maybe 15 hands? Big ol' haevy boned sonuvabitch, must have a little draft blood.



Hardway, I don't want to know what one of those costs! For our little feed yard the tub grinder works good. We are blending 4 different types of feed right now.

Looks busy.

How much hay do you grind at once.

Ben, you know the drill!



70-80 ton.



Local farmer about 10 miles south had a beautiful field of peas that got hailed out. His hired man(young guy) has an old round baler and a swather so he hayed it.

Light bales full of peas. My dad was hustling bringing two bales at once from the stack and I was dropping one in the chopper as fast as I could. It would chop one in 30-40 seconds.

Sounds like good feed.

We chop our grass silage in June, bag about 600 ton. Enough to get the steers through the year.


Quite a few dairy's have those screw mixers (posted above) around here. If the knives aren't in tip top shape it it can take a 35-40 minutes to chew up a bale. Seems like half a job to grind them that way.

Always good to see Ben posting.

Happy Holidays to you NE PA folks.

Love the pics, Sammo!

Wish I had one of your tractors right now for moving snow!

Rooster, you would be welcome to take one just get it back before morning...lol



I have my heavy weight jumper cables already laid out next to a 6430.

-20F or colder it won't start on it's own.

Ben, that is a stash!


What percent moisture on the grass silage?

I can make you 500 ton of them, if we can figure out an economical way to get them to you.

Does it come in purple or better yet seafoam?

Great thread, thx for putting that together sam....

Great pix. .....amazing stuff under those conditions...

Spose to dip below 20* here by friday....add us to the prayer list.

I’m gonna take up ranching just as soon as cows can feed and milk themselves, sweep out the barn and then take a shower.

#Evolution

🦫

Where does a cow go to file a complaint about the Server throwing food all over us?

#CowHeadsMatter

🦫

Kingston, Beaver just PM'd and said Bin would take care of fuel.

Everyone here uses the big square bales.... I went to the cafe at the auction yard this morning for breakfast and my buddy says they never put just strait hay in those mixers.....always a mixture of either corn/oat silage, hay, and other stuff....could be almond hulls, beet pulp, cotton seed, plus liquid stuff..... says a full load takes about 15 minutes to fully mix.

These are mostly dairies and a few small/medium feedlots.

There's some, particularly, dumb lookin cows !

One of my best friend's Dad died in one of those when we were in High School.
Nobody knows exactly how it happened. I remember that every time i see one. Which is often.

Not that any way of dying would be good, but I think that would be a horrible way to go.

& cows look best, like this !





Porterhouse from the local Farmer's Co-op.

Great Pics Sam, Stay warm.

IS that some of that .............'berta beef??

I heard about that stuff on the Letterkenny videos folks post here.

Geno, for a smart guy, your reading comprehension sucks !

Re-read the last line of my post !

Sheesch;

Hold into the skimmers !

I wish you fellows would quit talking about, "cow", cow beef is beef but.

Dude,

I just figured them Ontario beef merchants would put the steaks on a truck, drive it AB, bring it back and label it as "berta beef".

Folks used to bring their "agricultural green product" to Humboldt County, then ship it out as "Humboldt's Finest" so they could get a better price than saying it was grown in Modesto.

Take it from me, Canada raises good beef, and pork!

Do you wanna get striked?

Is that anything at all like being smoted?

Did someone say, beef?