I know it has been a challenging spring to get anything accomplished. With record amounts of rainfall and copious amounts of mud, this has been one tough spring. But now that we are getting some sunshine and the grass has started to grow, we can take a deep breath and be glad that winter is long since passed.

The cattle at ESF are enjoying the new growth of grass. They have not been eating any hay for about two weeks now and we still have some left over for next year. Most of the calving is done at this point. We still have 10 cows left to calve but everything else is on the ground. All 8 heifers that we retained and developed two years ago had a live calf, and all of them were delivered unassisted. These girls are not camera shy.

We have worked all the cows that have calves on the ground. On April 15th we vaccinated and dewormed the heifers, and we had Dr Parker at the farm to tract score and pelvic measure them as well. That same day we also had Dr Parker do a Breeding Soundness Exam (BSE) on our bulls before we turn them out to start breeding next month. KBN Field Associates Ron Shrout and Heath Mineer came that day to help us work the cows.

As for other activity at the farm, Tracy with USDA, has been doing some spraying and fertilizing of some of the demos. The rye grass down in the bottom is looking good and should make us some good haylage this spring.

We finally got the mess at the wire pile cleaned up and ready to be seeded down. We cut a lot of firewood out of the trees that they pushed over, but now everything is pushed up into one big pile that can be burnt once it dries down a little bit.

He was not injured and his truck was drivable, although only after they pried the fender away from the tire. The barn however did not fare so well. He ended up taking out the main support beam in that corner of the barn, as well as a couple other support post and two sliding doors.  We are currently working through his insurance to get the barn replaced. As close to the road as this barn sits, I am surprised that this doesn’t happen more often. 

The wind blew the sign across the road and bent it a little, but it is good enough to be rehung. But until we get it back up, just look for the twin 4x4 posts.