Selling Calves

It is that time of year again when we sell last year’s calves.  We had a private buyer for the majority of the calves this year but will have some left to sell at the sale barn next week.  Most of the calves we sold will go into a feed lot to grow for another approximately 6-8 months until ready to be harvested at 1400 lb. They weigh between 600 and 650 lbs. now and are about 10 months old - they were 80-100 lb. when they were born.  We saved back a few heifers to become cows and the private buyer will be saving a few that he bought to grow up to be cows too.We ran them through the sorting alley and John would swing the gate to put the steers in one pen and the heifers in the another.  To make a quick determination of the sex of the calves John ear tags them at birth with right ear for one sex and left ear for the other.  Sometimes he had to be quick to move the gate to the other side of the chute if there was one heifer followed by one steer, etc.  More sorting for size in the steers in the pens.  Feeders like the animals to be pretty close in size so they can be sent to the packing plant at the same time.Truck parked in the driveway waiting to load as soon as they are sorted.  This type of trailer is called a Pot.  It has two floors to haul livestock so can haul double the amount than a single level trailer.  The cattle have small stair step ramps to go up to the top level which is lifted up and secured to load the bottom level.Up they go, one by one into the truck.All loaded and on their way to their new home.  As you can see we have no snow and the temperature was in the low 50s so it was a beautiful day to be working outside.  Love having weather like this, in fact it could be this way all winter.

Lynn