This is probably a record for us to be able to delay feeding cows until December. The fall has been very mild and since weaning, the cows have been grazing corn stalks and wheat stubble.

11/01/04: Weaning for 2004.

Weaning this fall came a little later than usual thanks to the abundant rains these past few months. Our pastures stayed in reasonably good condition so we left the calves on the cows a bit longer. Also, we had an extremely wet fall that delayed harvesting and there has been little time to devote to the process of separating calves and starting to feed them every day. The calves look fairly good overall, the weaning weights are up slightly from last year. We are culling the younger ones to take advantage of the great prices on feeder calves.

3/12/04: Bulls ready for sale.

All yearling bulls and heifers were ultrasound tested yesterday by Jason McLennan and the bulls went through breeding soundness exams today. They are now ready for sale. This is a very uniform set of bulls that will work well in many herds. Call us or stop in to see them.

We moved our calving back a couple weeks this year to try to avoid the worst of the winter storms. Our calf crop is well over half done now and the calves are coming along nicely. We're especially excited about the calves on the first-calf heifers, we'll see how they develop as the year progresses.

10/20/03: Our trip to the neighbors.

Today we attended the Sale of Elite Females over at McCumber Angus Ranch. This was a great sale with the cows, bred heifers and heifer calves selling strongly throughout the afternoon. We purchased three bred heifers and one heifer calf. These females will fit very nicely into our herd. Each was selected to add specific genetics to our herd that we did not currently have. We expect these four heifers to make a significant contribution to our progress in building a herd of high-quality cows.

10/10/03: The Tours are finally over!

We were fortunate this fall to be able to participate in one of the premier Angus events of the year - The National Angus Conference and Tour! This was an outstanding opportunity to get a look at some wonderful Angus cattle from dozens of herds all across North Dakota. It was also a great time to meet other Angus enthusiasts from all over the country and even a few from outside the US. Well over 400 people attended the Conference and Tour. We would like to sincerely thank the Tastad family at McCumber Angus Ranch for hosting a stop on the tour and allowing us to display pens of cattle for this huge audience.

Our Heifer Pen at the National Angus Conference and Tour Discussing the heifers with Vance Uden of TC ranch

On October 7th, we were privileged to host a stop on the North Dakota Stockman's Association All-Breeds Tour. This gave us an opportunity to put together a much larger display of seven pens with a full range of animals represented. We showed off some outstanding cow/calf pairs, bred heifers (which were very well received), replacement heifers, bull calves, herd bulls and our consignment of 3 heifers to the upcoming North Dakota Select Sale.

Looking down the row of pens at our stop on the ND Stockman's Association All-Breeds Tour
Another shot of the Stockman's Tour