February 1, 2011
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Aren’t you happy for all the weatherpeople? They are SOOOO excited, with the prospect of an epic storm! Although they refrain from rubbing their hands together in happy anticipation when they’re on-air, giving their dire predictions of “the worst since 1912,” it is difficult for them to hide the glee in their voices. I hope….I guess…that they aren’t too disappointed. Wait…yes, I DO hope they’re disappointed!
When I heard the Farmboy punching numbers on the phone at 5:30 this morning, I knew he hadn’t slept much. He was calling in the guys to get an early start. Everything we do on the farm to take care of our livestock involves electricity, and the prospect of hungry, thirsty cattle standing around with ice freezing and piling up on their backs is grim.
Our feeding is primarily done at silos equipped with automated feeders. When the man whose job it is to feed arrives (after having driven as much as 10 miles from the headquarters of our ranch) he goes into a little building beside the silo, and if all goes well, he turns on some switches and a steady stream of juicy silage from inside the 90-foot tall structures is transported, via a little conveyor belt, out into a long, 50-ft feeding station, which is covered overhead and concrete underhoof.
The cattle know what is coming, and they crowd at the trough, snuffling and snorting and brushing each other aside, to get the best place at the table. They adore the taste of this high-quality feed that was chopped and put into the silo last summer. It smells wonderful to them, even though a non-farm visitor might find the the odor rather…strong.
A small amount of grain is also fed at the same time, and if the silage is the cows’ meat and potatoes, the little mixture of ground corn and distillers’ grain (usually from an alcohol plant far to the north of where we live) and soybean hulls is dessert.
All of this operation requires electricity, every bit of it. It takes electric power to operate the feeder, to grind the grain mixture back at headquarters, to pump gasoline or diesel fuel into the truck that delivered it, as well as into the truck that got the man feeding to the silo.
There are waterers at most of the silos, too, and these require electricity to pump water into the little tanks. We have ponds scattered all over the pastures everywhere, but sometimes they get low, in times of drought. And sometimes they freeze over, when it is extremely cold. The waterers ensure that our cattle can always have fresh, good water all the time, a critical feature for livestock management.
We put out creep feed for our baby calves, because in winter it is especially important to supplement their mamas’ milk. Yesterday, the men made sure plenty of calf feed was made, again relying on electricity to grind and mix the grain and pipe it into the truck for delivery to the various creep feeders around all the pastures.
I’m not sure why it is called “creep feeding,” but I think it is because the smaller feeders are closely surrounded by sections of fencing that will allow small calves to ‘creep’ through, while keeping their mamas out. The mamas (and daddies, if they are spending time with the mamas) would have the tendency to overindulge if they could get at the slightly-sweet, highly nutritious calf feed. And overindulging is BAD for livestock. In fact, cattle and horses and probably other types of stock would eat themselves to death, literally, if allowed to have free access to all the rich feed they wanted.
Back to today and our immediate situation: So, we got an early start this morning, trying to beat the weather. We have generators at the ready, one that can be hauled to silos to feed if necessary, one that can be connected to my mother-in-law’s house, which will allow her to remain warm and have water, and then there is the welder which is on a trailer and can be pulled to wherever needed. We’re hoping they won’t be tested, but we’re prepared.
And as I look out my window, I see the cold rain falling, and as the temperature drops, slowly and steadily a layer of ice is building up, encasing every twig and branch and surface. More than 300 area schools are closed today, in anticipation of this. People wisely listened to those secretly happy weatherpeople and made plans for whatever comes our way.
I’m making a large pot of potato soup and a pan of cornbread, finishing some laundry and hoping….hoping the electricity, so important to us in so many ways, manages to remain in service. If not, I’ll light my lamps, turn on the gas fireplace and hunker down to weather the storm.
Comments (6)
Oh my, much work to keep cattle in good shape in this weather. The same thing here for our son but his cattle operation is not on the same scale as yours but with his sons in school he is the only one doing it. As I type this the radio is announcing all the schools and activities that are clsoed or called off for the day. I agree with you about the weather reporters and on this one they seem to be correct so far.
I just completed a book “The Children’s Blizzard” by David Laskin a nonfiction. A good read. Stay warm and safe!
With all the preparations you’ve had to go through, ……. makes me SO thankful we no longer have livestock. We’ve had cattle…not nearly as many as you folks, and the hogs. Our hogs were at one farm, about 3 miles away from the farm where we lived. In the winter, while the sows were having pigs, Don would just go down there before getting snowed away from them, and stay, so that he could put the tiny piglets, imediately, under the heat lamps, and try to keep the sows from smothering them. We had a few sheep. Now THOSE mothers, would frequently, for some reason, not claim their lambs, and they’d have to be bottle fed. At one time, we had just a few goats. They were hard to keep in, where they belonged. It’s so hard to get away from home for a vacation, or just to leave overnight, when you have livestock. Hmmm…….bet you didn’t know that. (o; But thanks to folks like you, I certainly enjoy those T-bone steaks!
Now, for us, it’s just corn and soybeans. Instead of taking care of the livestock in the winter, Dale hauls all our grain out, with the semi. We used to hire that done.
What a huge factor this bad weather can be in so many ways! I hope you all are safe and sound now, and that the baby calves make it with no problems at all! How about the chickens?
I’m basically a city girl so I don’t get the fact that we paid $$$$ for in the ground FREEZE PROOF waterers and we have to check to see if they are frozen????? What part of this am I not understanding? I hope the joyful weather people aren’t right because if they are we are going to have 2 ft. of snow before this is over. I think I’ll take the snow over the ice you are getting. Blessings as your day progresses.
Thank you for explaining to this city girl all that goes on, and especially when a storm is coming – I will be praying for all of you as the day goes on!
It is still liquid rain here south of you a few miles. We went out to our property yesterday and did some last minutes things that we wanted to get done before the storm arrived. It brought back memories of living out in the country a few years back. We had a bad winter there and I remember how we all just did our best and dealt with it. What else can you do? Hopefully, all will go well up there in your neck of the woods and we won’t have to put up with too much inconvenience….except the coming cold spell which I dread.