Tag: cows

What Does A Cattle Operation Look Like?

Every operation is different. Every one unique. Every one doing things just a little different. This is a view of ours. We aren’t judging anybody that does things different than us. This works for us.

How Often Do Cows Have Babies?

Each cow will have a baby roughly once per year. We have three groups of cows. Our winter herd of cattle that calf in January/February. The spring herd starts in April/May and the other is fall calvers, beginning around September. We have the cattle from start to finish, birth to harvest. The cows are always on grass. The calves are on grass a majority of their lives. They are finished on a corn based diet to add the marbling, which provides the taste to the meat. We fully believe in a holistic approach-everything is intimately interconnected. The part of the year that our cash crops (corn and soybeans) aren’t being grown, we have cover crops growing. Not only because we believe this is foundational to our soil health, but it extends the grazing season for our cattle. The more time the cattle are grazing, the better for our operation. We want to minimize the amount of time/money we have to feed hay.

What Do Cows Eat?

We use rotational grazing as well. Each of our pastures are broke into paddocks, some with permanent fencing and some we use movable electric fencing. Our cattle our used to seeing the posts and knowing that is their boundary. By implementing a system like rotational grazing, it also extends the grazing time. We can graze a paddock then move the cattle off of it. This allows the grass to recover and we can come back and graze that piece more often while the soil health is improving, not deteriorating. The finishing cattle that are fed corn, are fed corn from our fields. We know exactly what has been done to the corn and when. We know that we harvest and store the corn in optimal circumstances. We know and understand exactly what goes into our feeding ration and spend a great deal of time creating that ration and tweaking it to make sure it’s perfect.

Who Takes Care of Cows?

I think now is a good time to remind you that we are a family farm. There are 3 of us full time on the farm: my father-in-law, My Forever and myself. My mother-in-law does all the paperwork, keeps us well fed and helps evenings and on weekends. Matt’s grandma is a land owner in the operation.

How Do We Keep Track of the Cows?

Therefore, with that said. These cattle are watched by 3 people. I’m mostly in charge of the cows in the pastures. Henry takes care of the weaned calves and finishing cattle and My Forever helps and make sure everything gets done with all of them. We have hundreds of cattle, but I can tell you a description and story about 98% of them. The first and second calf heifers I’m still learning. Each cow has an ear tag with a number in it. For each pasture, I make a list with all the cows on it. Once a week (at least), I go to all the pastures and mark off each of the cattle (this was adopted from what my mom does with her cattle). We drive by the cattle almost daily, just to make sure they are where they are supposed to be.

Family Farm versus Factory Farm

I stress and will continue to stress, our cattle are well cared for. We take care of them before we take care of ourselves. We have a lot of them, yes. We are not a factory farm, we are a family operation and very proud of what we produce and how they are cared for. As I type this from our deck, I can see our first calf heifer pairs grazing contentedly around our house. Cows are like children, they will let you know when they aren’t happy and need something. It’s all a matter of listening to them.

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~Matt & Kelsey

What Does a Farm Look Like?

Every farm is different, but here is a break down of what our farm in Northeast Kansas looks like.

Briefly, let’s do a whole farm overview. In the coming weeks we will break each segment of the operation down in more detail, but let’s start with a whole broad sweep.

My Forever and I both grew up on very similar farming operations. After getting married, I moved into his operation. It is a family operation with three generations involved. There are three of us full time on the farm, My Forever, myself and my father-in-law, Henry. My mother-in-law takes care of all the paperwork for the farm and keeps us well fed. She also helps in the evenings and weekends when she can. Matt’s grandparents started the operation. His grandpa had a four wheeler wreck and passed away before I came into the picture. His grandma remains a large land owner in the operation.

We have cow/calf pairs, row crops (corn and soybeans, rotated and mixed with cover crops), hay and pasture ground. Each operation will be broken down into much more detail in future blogs! Matt and I have chickens, but they aren’t involved in the family farm. They are a hobby for me basically!

Matt loves working in the shop on projects. He’s an amazing creator. He can fix anything that is broken. He can create, out of nothing, almost anything. He loves making and fixing things! We save quite a bit of money on repairs because he can fix a lot of things! He’s so talented in everything he does.

Here’s the thing…life on the farm is incredibly hard. There are a lot of dynamics involved in a multi-generational business. Working with family everyday is hard. Working with your spouse and then letting things go at night, is difficult. The days are long. The work is hard. The stress is high. There is always something to be done-we are never “caught up”. Matt does something on the farm everyday, weekends don’t mean two days off. He is always doing something. Since we don’t have kids, I work a lot of hours alongside of him. Because of this, we both pitch in with the house and keeping up with laundry and dishes and cleaning. But honestly, in the busy seasons, a lot of the housework gets skipped over. There are so many hours in the day and we have to take something off our plate.

Farming is a lifestyle that not very many people want. We have a multigenerational family business. Our business has to make money, otherwise three families are out an income. We put so much of our blood, sweat and tears into making this operation profitable so that we can continue the life that Matt has dreamed about living since he was a little boy. We are living our dreams. It’s hard, it’s draining, it’s exhausting, but it’s our dream and we love it!