Hey ya’ll! It’s Fall!
Yes, Fall Season is here once again. My favorite time of the year honestly. Cooler temperatures, beautiful colors, less grass cutting, less sweating, and less switching of the tails and flailing of the heads.
I used to be a die-hard Summer season fan, until I started raising cattle. I still love summertime, but the older I get the less I can tolerate the very hot and humid days, and the more sympathetic I get for the cattle and horses, who are constantly battling those pesky flies and mosquitos!
Fly control in the cattle and horse business is it’s own beast in the world of products. There are sprays for the premises, sprays for barns and stables, sprays for the cattle, sprays for the horses, granules for the ground, additives for their feed, tags for their ears, etc., etc., etc! Then you have 50-Jillion (is that a real number?) different brands of each; all claiming to be the BEST ON THE MARKET! It makes my head hurt.
Over the years, I have tried at least half of that 50-Jillion (probably a slight exaggeration) products to find what ‘kinda’ works to take some of the Summertime stress of being a cow or horse, for me at least. And one thing that seems to work is to NOT use the same thing over and over until those smarty-pants flies grow immune to it. You have to kind of throw a wrench in their taste buds once in a while to keep them on their little fly toes!
I prefer the spray for the animal route. My awesome Hubby bought me this cool battery-operated backpack sprayer to make life easier, and boy does it! After going through about four or five Walmart sprayers every Summer (which, by the way, can make you lose your religion…. often), he gave me one of the best gifts ever! It holds up to 3-gallons of spray, so I don’t have to make three trips from the house to the pasture to finish a job every few days, AND shoots a stream for about 10 – 12 feet away. Some of the younger cows are not big fans of being sprayed, so being able to spray them without getting close helps in getting them protected from the enemy.
Now, this wonderful backpack sprayer, I only use on the cattle, because when I try to use it on the horses, they act like they’ve been shot with a gun! I prefer, or rather THEY prefer a small hand sprayer on the body and a gentle wipe of the face. They are a little bit spoiled, I know.
I don’t know about ya’ll, but here in West Tennessee, we have a real problem with ticks, especially in the early spring and rainy fall. So, we not only have to deal with those blood-sucking, biting flies and mosquitos, but also the ticks. One natural way I do have some luck with controlling them on the horses, is to put a little bit of Apple Cider Vinegar in their water. Now, I’m no Vet, and I’m not saying YOU should do it, but I do, and I have some luck with it. Of course, it doesn’t keep them ALL off, but it does seem to minimize the numbers that I have to pull off my poor horses. And they always seem to get on their undersides and private areas, if you catch my drift.
One thing to note on the use of the Apple Cider Vinegar too is, I only use it in my static tanks that I have constant control of the amount of Cider to water. What I mean by that is, we have some automatic waterers, mostly for the cattle, so I don’t put it in those waterers because the water is being constantly ‘rotated’ out as the animals drink, so it is very difficult to keep a constant amount of the Apple Cider Vinegar in them. I mean really, you would have to patrol them every couple of hours to keep enough in them to do any good. So, I have a couple regular tanks that are like 100-gallon that I put about a cup of Apple Cider Vinegar in per 100-gallons of water. It works for me!
I hope that ya’ll have figured out the best way for you for controlling those pesky critters that suck the profit right outta your cattle! There are always new products coming out, so try them and let me know what works for you!! You can leave me a message on my contact page and let me know what you use!
Other than wearing our Super Hero Backpack sprayers and fighting those tiny blood-sucking vampires, Fall Season brings about other changes for the year. As the temperatures cool, the warm season grasses stop growing and the cool season grasses take over for a little while. If you raise cattle like us, it is our goal to renovate, if you will, our pastures to contain some of both, or have warm season pastures and cool season pastures (if you have enough acreage), which we really do not, so we want to ‘groom’ our pastures to withstand both seasons to accommodate grazing for as long as we can for the year. It helps save money on feed for the winter. It’s all about spending as little as you can and making as much profit as possible, right?
We are big fans of rotational grazing. As a kid, I never heard of such. Since starting in the cattle business, I have taken classes that taught me the advantages of rotational grazing! It’s genius actually! If you’ve never heard of it, or just never understood what it was, let me tell you the secret!
Rotational grazing is where you have several smaller pastures, or you can divide your big pasture into smaller blocks, and you move your cattle from one to another (very often), so that they don’t have a chance to eat the grass down so low in one pasture that it takes forever for it to recover. You let it grow up to about 8″ or 10″ tall, put the cows in and let them eat it down to about 3″ or 4″, then pull them out and move them to the next pasture and repeat the sequence. If you are lucky enough to have several pastures and can keep up with moving them, it works really well. Of course, Mother Nature also plays a roll in all this and can throw a wrench in your plans too. If you don’t have enough moisture to keep that grass growing, it can make things difficult at times. Just keep working at it! I am!
Of course, Fall Season is when you should have your hay cut, baled and under cover to feed those hungry cows during the winter, when there is no grass growing! If you’ve been keeping up with me on my blog, I’m sure you read about my hay cutting venture this Summer. Equipment break downs…..they are inevitable. I learned a lot about working on my cutter this year. You can read about it here on “Broken down…..gotta fix it!”
Hay……I’m not going to dive into that subject on this post, as I think I am passionate enough about the subject and my opinion about it is strong, so I’ll save it for another day! I’ll just say this, my hay will be under some kind of cover, or I will not feed it.
Fall season is also when a lot of us are taking our last calves to the Market for the year. Prices are less than desirable right now, I have to say, but 2020 is determined to follow through with it’s wrath on us all! We sold about a dozen or so calves this year, our biggest crop yet for us, as we are a pretty small operation. We run 20 Mommas pretty consistently, and most were of age to have calves.
We have three yearlings this year. Actually, one is almost a 2-year old now, and the other two are yearlings. We like to wait until our heifers are at least 22-months old before we breed them for the first time. It is our own experience that waiting until then, they make better, more mature mommas, which in turn, we have less problems or issues with them. The three heifers are very nice looking, and I’m excited for them to come of age and be bred by our new bull we purchased this year. Rocky, as we call him, will have his first calves on the ground sometime in the coming spring. I can’t wait!
Other Fall Season chores for us, personally, are spreading Lime on the fields if needed. Another tip I have, do soil tests about every 2 or 3 years to see what you need, and if you can afford to Lime or Fertilize, do it! If your soil is good, that’s awesome! We, unfortunately live in an area where we have a lot of old red clay soil, and it usually needs Lime.
Well ya’ll, I’ve enjoyed being here today! Please, if you are reading this, by all means, leave me a shout out to let me know you were here! Let me know what your Fall Season consists of where you are and what products you use to help make your life easier. I would LOVE to hear from you! Let me know what subjects you would like me to cover !
Until next time! Be safe and be blessed!