Posts Tagged With: #ranchingsummer

Monday I headed to Park City, Utah for a National Water Resources Conference. I was down there all week. I had a good time, toured a brand-new water treatment plant. Learned about terminal lakes, how CA does not have enough water storage, how Utah has some snow sonar they are using to predict the upcoming water supply, and much more. The cows got out on Monday, and Toni and Anna got them in and fixed the fence. Monday was another hot day at home, so the wasps were still out. After chores, Toni and Anna went and gathered the mares that needed to head to Pullman on Tuesday to be ultra sounded. There were 2 down at my house that were moved up to Moms. The other 2 just needed to be put somewhere they could be caught easily. The big boys and dad are still in wheat harvest.

On Tuesday mom and Toni went to Pullman to pick up Pinky and Viper and they took Charlie and the outside mares up to get ultra sounded. Overall, the outside mares all did really well. One of the outside mares is three, so very young. They all loaded great and unloaded great in Pullman. Went into the stocks well and overall were super good. All three were believed to be in foal. One went home from the WSU campus, the other 2 came back home. The real disappointment was Charlie. She had absorbed so we did a biopsy. The bad news is that her chances of carrying another foal are 10-50%, so very disappointing. Viper and Pinky were happy to be home and Viper had forgotten about circle tracks, so once turned out in the big pasture had to run around a bit. Jaxsen stayed with Skip. Anna fixed fence, chopped weeds and worked on the calves. Dad and the big boys are harvesting wheat in Kahlotus.

Toni had a demo with ranchbot on Wednesday. Her friend Liam has taken a job with ranchbot so came out to see if they could help with our trough monitoring. We now have one device installed so we can see what we think. Then people out to look at horses. Anna continued working on weeds, halter breaking and fencing.

Thursday Jaxsen and Anna took Jaxsen’s steers, and one of Kade’s since we had reserved 3 spots, to get their feet trimmed. There were lightening and thunder storms, rain, etc. Terry and Erina sent their mare, Sadie, who is by Dude and their mare Livvy, over for Kade to ride. She came off the trailer in the big thunder storm really well. She is at Toni’s for Kade to work on. She is a broke, pretty dark bay mare. Not super tall, but built really well.  Boys got sent home early due to the rain, so they were able to help with chores.

More rain on Friday, so the boys came home early again. I came home on Friday. Anna stayed with grandma for me on Friday. Marlo came to help Toni and Jaxsen with chores. She went out back to feed Windy and Redy. We have them on Purina Ultium. All the horses love this Ultium product. Especially Redy and Windy. Toni didn’t give Marlo the right feeding instruction, so Marlo didn’t have the Ultium pellets in the mix so Redy bit her Marlo so show his dissatisfaction. Redy is pretty funny. These foals are really looking good on this product and we have the team to thank for it. When Blackie adopted Windy, we knew we needed to get really good feed into both Blackie and the 2 foals to keep them happy and healthy. We put calls in to our friends and owe a big Thank You to Morgan McDowel of Old Mill Country Store in Ellensburg, Rowdy Barry, and Lane Howe with Purina for helping us figure out the best option and getting it over to us. These foals aren’t just coasting, they are accelerating on this feed.

Saturday Toni, Anna, Jaxsen and I got the cows with bull calves in and bled them for preg checking. Dad took a bull to Benton City, our last bull, to deliver. We are officially sold out of breeding age bulls for 2025! Don’t worry, the 2025 calves are high end and we are selling bulls for 2026 delivery right now. Note that Ben was at work in the morning when we needed to sort his crazy longhorn and her calf out of the herd. So we got the cows with bull calves in, sorted, weaned the bull calves, got the last bull in, got him loaded and sent dad on his way. Then started bleeding cows. That blood will go to the lab and will tell us which cows are pregnant and which are not. This is a low impact way to get this done and help make management decisions. We also prefer to work the cows at our pace, especially with how many of them have to be caught and led through the chute due to the high volume of ex-show cattle that we have retained. Way too many tame ones!

On Sunday 6 of the bulls calves were out, they knocked a pole down. So we fixed that and got them in and re-weaned. We got some new pics of a few of the foals. Worked on Holly. Fed hay. Etc.

How quickly we have gone from the beginning of summer to the end. We are officially done breeding horses for 2025. We have had some interest in late foals but we are done. We are really excited about the level of interest we have had in the foals this year. Anyone wanting to get theirs picked out and on the weaning schedule, please let us know!