Baxter Black Plays Cowboys And Agritainers

As a veterinarian, rancher and sorry team roper, Baxter Black is a cowboy. As the most popular cowboy poet, he is an agritainer. On Saturday May 30th Baxter will be playing agritainer in Benson Arizona for the first SWRRA winter finals and Crossroads Cowboy Gathering. This event is the only one of its kind, featuring vaquero style, big loop roping in the arena with cowboy singers, poets and storytellers performing on stage at the same time.

This event kicks off with an open jam session on March 28th at the Benson Country Club. Everyone is welcome to attend whether you want to play or just listen. There will be cowboy music and poetry all day on the 29th, followed by another great open jam at the Country club. On the 30th, there will be big loop roping in the arena with agritainers doing their thing onstage, with vendors offering specials on everything from art, to horse tack to massage. Be sure not to miss the Crossroads Title Challenge where cowboy singers and poets will recite their original version of this year's title Under The Rimrock!

The agritainer portion culminates the night of the 30th with the Finals Show and Dance. The top five poets, and top five performers will give a final set, followed by Baxter Black, then an old fashioned cowboy dance under the stars. All proceeds from this activity are being donated to the Benson FFA (Future Farmers of America) club.

Activities kick off again on the 31st with Cowboy Church, followed by another day of big loop roping. For more information on activities and schedule visit www.txcg.org, then come on down to Benson and play cowboys and agritainers...After all, ranch roping and cowboy music and poetry go together like chocolate and peanut butter!

Supporting Kids In Agriculture!

   As the agriculture gets older, we are having fewer and fewer young people wanting to make a career out of farming and ranching. This means it is up to the old codgers to do what we can to help those few kids interested in an agricultural career to do what we can to help them out.

    One way we can do this is by holding and sponsoring events which support youth in agriculture. On Saturday, March 30th just such an event will be taking place. The SWRRA winter series finals, and Crossroads Cowboy Gathering will have the Crossroads Finals Show and Dance with all proceeds going straight to the Benson, Arizona FFA. Setting an example for the rest of us involved in agriculture, Baxter Black will be donating his time to perform during this event. The community of Benson has shown great support for this event as well. Even the agritainers coming to this event are supporting Benson's kids in agriculture by donating their time to provide music for the dance.

For more information on this event, visit our web page. If you can't make it, and would like to support the agritainers donating their time, you can buy their cd's on the Crossroads Agritainer's Sales Page. We need to remember that the children are not our future, but what we do now, contributes to theirs!

Correction On "Do Bigger Calves Make More Money"

Even though it does not change the fact that 500 pound calves can make you more money overall than 700 pound calves, I have to admit to making a mistake. Rather than 500 pound calves being worth more than the 700 pound calves, the 700 pound calves were actually worth $80 more. (Which should teach me to use a calculator after midnight).

So how do you make more money with the 500 pound calves? A 1250 pound cow consumes 16.5 pounds more feed per day than a 700 pound cow. This comes to 495 pounds a month more hay or 2,475 pounds over the course of a five month winter feeding season. Even if you put up your own hay and can do so for only $100 a ton, the $80 market advantage just dropped by over $100, resulting in the 500 pound calves earning you $20 more per head, or $2,000 more per 100 calves (plus the additional 78 cows you could be running.)

The difference in consumption between the 1,250 pound cow and the 700 pound cow will also allow you to run 178 of the lighter cows for every 100 of those bigger cows on the same amount of forage and hay.

There have been people who commented that a 700 pound cow can't raise a 500 pound calf. In the 1970's and early 80's there were people doing just that by running smaller framed crossbred cows and taking advantage of hybrid vigor. Around the mid 80's feeders and packers were wanting bigger framed cows, and moderate framed cows fell by the wayside. By the early 90's previously moderately framed cattle such as Red Angus cows were weighing in at 1,800 pounds. Everyone jumped on the “bigger calves” bandwagon without thinking of the extra money it costs to raise those bigger calves.

Basically it boils down to an income of $101,500 on 100 of those 700 pound calves or $166,430 on 178 of those 500 pound calves with the same feed base. During times of drought, the extra money made by being able to run more of the lighter cattle could be the difference between selling out, or keeping the ranch.  

For information on my services, visit NaturalCattle Handling.com   If you would enjoy a laugh or two, take a look at my cowboy humor and cookbooks at the 2lazy4U Livestock & Literary Co.

The Bigger is More Profitable Myth

There is a commonly held opinion within the cattle industry that ranchers need to raise bigger calves to be profitable. Is this opinion fact, or is it a myth?

When I checked the market prices at Amarillo, Texas tonight, 700 pound steers were bringing $145 cwt while 500 pound steers were bringing $187 cwt. This meant (that at least on this day) a 500 pound steer was actually worth $65 more than a 700 pound steer. In reality, that 700 pound steer is costing you more than the $65 difference in market price per head.

The average amount of feed to maintain a cow (depending on whether or not she is lactating, and what trimester of pregnancy she is in) will ranch from 2.5% to 3.5% of her body weight. For the purpose of keeping the numbers round, I am going to use an even 3%.

A 1,250 pound cow will have a daily feed requirement (1250 X 0.03) of 37.5 pounds of feed. This comes out to 13350 pounds of feed per year to raise that 700 pound calf.

A 700 pound cow will have a daily feed requirement (700 X 0.03) of 21 pounds a day, which comes out to 7665 pounds of feed per year.

By dividing the difference in the amount of feed needed to maintain the 1,250 cow by the amount needed to maintain the 700 pound cow, we find that you can actually run 1.78 of the 700 pound cows on the same amount of forage as it takes to run one 1,250 pound cow. This equates to running 178 cows raising 500 pound calves on the same amount of forage as it takes to run 100 of those soggy 700 pound calves. So just how much more money can your ranch bring in with the more moderately framed cows?

Based on the above market prices, you will make $6,500 more per 100 calves on those 500 pound calves. However when you add the additional 78 calves you would raise, this adds another $72,930 which brings the total to $79,430. When you take into account the extra vaccines and wormers you will need, the total will drop a little, but you would still be putting more than $70,000 a year into your bank account on the same amount of feed and forage.

For information on my services, visit NaturalCattle Handling.com If you would enjoy a laugh or two, take a look at my cowboy humor and cookbooks at the 2lazy4U Livestock & Literary Co.

Observe, Ask and Analyze

Much of what we assume we know is a result of how much we think (or don't think) about what we experience. All of what we do with livestock is based on what our past experiences have been. Until we change how we observe and think about why animals react to us the way we do, we cannot make any meaningful changes in how we do things.

Some reactions to my last post, http://cowherdmanagement.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-bison-chased-horses-cattle-chased.html are perfect examples. Several of them were up in arms. They threw out examples of individual bison leaving a herd to chase horses and even one which apparently broke into a pen to gore some horses. It would not be reasonable to assume the entire human race violent based on Charles Manson, Hitler and Stalin, so why do we do it with the animals we handle?

It doesn't matter if we are working with bison, elk, horse or (insert breed) of cattle, other than a few individuals, their overall temperament and behavior relies heavily upon how frequently and what methods are used in handling them. The problem lies in the fact that when an animal does something we don't like (such as charging a horse) people tend to look at the behavior as an independent action rather than as a reaction to what we have done. In our eyes we may have not done anything to warrant that (re) action. However we need to take into account how the animal(s) have been handled in the past that has instilled these behaviors into them. I've run across people who own ranches (as opposed to ranchers) who refuse to work cattle with horses because “horses make cattle wild” or that horses are “too unpredictable and hard to handle.” The simple fact is, as stockmen and horsemen, we need to not simply acknowledge that an animal or group of animals is unruly or mean. We need to observe when they are reacting in negative ways and be introspective as to our actions immediately prior to the negative behavior. In order to modify the behavior of our livestock, we must first observe and recognize their behavior to the point we recognize the negative behavior before it actually happens.

This philosophy of observing and analyzing goes far beyond just improving the behavior of our livestock. All too often the deterioration of our pastures is not noticed until it is a borderline disaster. We need to continually observe, and think about our observations.

The pasture I am in now appears to have healthy grass from a distance. However there are large areas that upon close observation have large amounts grass at the base which are gray and matted. This makes me ask myself which would be more beneficial; taking only a third of the grass as planned, or taking more grass while breaking up more of the dead plants?

Another observation I have made concerns water availability and predators. There is a theory that having more water points makes it harder on predators than having just a few “ambush” points. What I have observed is that there are more coyotes in the pastures which have a higher number of water points. Now that the observation has been made, we need to ask a question and analyze it. The question is “does fewer water points help predators by reducing ambush points, or does having more water points simply support more packs of coyotes?”

For our ranching operations to be as successful as possible, we need to observe, ask and analyze instead of simply reacting without analyzing.

For more on my services visit Natural Cattle Handling. If you like humor, be sure to check out my humor and cookbooks at 2lazy4U Livestock & Literary Co.

If Bison Chased Horses & Cattle Chased Rabbits

Why are equines the only grazing animal which seemingly enjoys chasing and dominating other grazing animals? This is a question which has baffled me for years (actually decades) yet it is an important aspect of animal behavior that people seem to miss. I bring this up because of a recent discussion on bison.

I know there are a lot of people out there who are going to counter with “My bison charge anyone on horseback,” but the simple fact is, they aren't. If they were, cutting horse trainers would not risk using bison to tune up show horses worth tens, if not hundreds of thousand of dollars. So why does a herd of bison “charge” people who are horseback? Curiosity.

When confronted with something new, grazing animals are generally either afraid or curious. If they are afraid, they will watch cautiously or flee. If they are curious they will go see what it is. If one or two of a group of grazing animals get curious about something and start running towards it, the whole herd will follow.

In the case of a horseman being “charged” by a bison herd, it is a case of a few of the animals being curious enough about something to run over to check it. The rest of the herd follows. The first thing that pops into the rider's mind is panic, which transfers immediately to the horse. Horse and rider vacate the premises with the bison following trying to see what the heck that strange thing is.

Cattle will do the same thing. A person walking across a field full of yearling heifers who are not used to seeing a person afoot, will come stampeding right up to the person and if the person runs, they will keep following. If the person stops, so do the heifers, but they may come close enough to them to sniff them.

Once I had a steer in a little group of five hundred that was insanely curious about rabbits. One morning all five hundred were running around the pivot, as a herd. I could see noting they were chasing so I rode to that pivot to check it out. When I got there they were all stopped in a big circle. When I got to the middle, the one steer was standing on a jack rabbit's leg while he was licking it. Other than standing on a leg to pin it down the steer was not doing anything aggressive towards the rabbit. On the contrary, he was grooming it!

This was not a one time affair with this steer. In the several months I had this group of cattle, I had to move them back and forth across some desert ground to some remote pivots. This steer was naturally in the lead, and whenever a rabbit jumped up in front of him, he'd take off chasing the rabbit.

There is a similarity between the rabbits being chased by that steer, and riders being chased by bison. Instead of thinking about what was really going on, they both ran like heck to get out of the way. All the bison are wanting to do is check you out, and all that steer was wanting to do was give the rabbit a bath.

The point to all of this is that bison can be worked horseback. You have to put some thought into it and acclimate them first. After all, if bison choused horses, Indians would have ridden bison and lived in horse hide teepee. 

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The Value of Holistic Herding

Many people look at what I am doing with holistic herding don't see the value. The first misconception that most people have is that, on their ranch, it would be impossible to do. The owners of the cattle I am currently herding once thought that as well. I first presented the idea of combining their cattle into one herd five and keep them moving years ago. Their reaction was "It is impossible to do" in this area. Now that they have been forced by drought (less than 10 inches total over three years) to lease pasture and have their cattle herded on the Circle Ranch  they are totally sold on the idea.

The benefits of holistic herding are:

1. You know where your cattle are 
2. You know what the condition of your cattle are
3. You can gather your cattle in one day, without hiring day help
4. Cattle actually do better in a herd situations than in small groups
5. Take advantage of grazing areas cattle don't normally graze
6. Concentrating the cattle and moving them concentrates manure and herd effect, which in turn helps build soil and increases both the amount and diversity of forage while improving hydrology of the land
7. By increasing forage and areas you can graze increases your ability to either run more cattle or lease grass for yearlings.
8. Reduces the amount of infrastructure to maintain in order to keep the cattle watered
9. Reduces overall fuel, maintenance and labor costs.
10. Reduces the amount of water needed

 Numbers eight and nine are hard for people to wrap their minds their minds around. Using the Circle ranch as an example, this is easy to explain. There are an average of five water points per pasture. In a herding situation, it is possible (and preferable) to water the herd at a single water point. By placing a single water point with covered storage in each pasture the Circle ranch would reduce the amount of driving to check water by as much as 80% (The costs implementing this could be offset by selling your now defunct drinkers)

How can it reduce the amount of water you need? A five foot diameter drinker has an annual evaporation rate of 750 gallons per drinker meaning that each of the pastures would require 3,000 less water per year or 51,000 gallons less water for the whole year (not counting the 1,000,000 lost in evaporation in the existing uncovered storage tanks ). How much would this reduce your ranch's electric and fuel bills in a year?

Once a person get past the excuse of not being able to herd holistically, there is no reason not to do it.

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