Now that September has arrived, the days are cooler, darkness is creeping up on us earlier every day and we are starting to work on our fall ranch tasks. The cows will soon be coming home to a new landscape and they will begin to explore the freshly logged areas. We are working through our to do lists to make sure that we get all the necessary tasks completed before the winter freeze. Let’s take a peek into six fall tasks that are important for our ranch in 2024.

Pasture Maintenance

As we do every year, we are assessing the condition our pastures and predicting how much forage the pastures will provide to our cattle for the season. This fall, we’re navigating a landscape altered by the Rossmoore Lake fire cleanup. We had salvage logging done over the summer to clean up the burnt timber and new fences built.

So our landscape and pasture conditions are different this year compared to previous years. With a slightly changed pasture rotation, we are relieved to now be able to use the grass that has grown over the summer.

Herd Health

The health of our cattle is always a priority, and it is even more important going into the winter.  In October, once the cattle are all home, we will start vaccinating and weaning the calves. We preg check the cows herd so that we can have an approximate calving date on each cow. This helps us to make decisions on which ones to keep over the winter. Winter feed is very expensive, so it is important to only keep the cows that are productive and will be expecting a calf next spring. Secondly, we will make decisions on which heifer calves to keep as replacement heifers. These calves will be bred next summer and become apart of the cow herd. Careful consideration is taken to decide how many calves we will feed over the winter for our beef program, while considering our past years beef sales. These fall decisions help us to prepare well for the winter ahead. 

Winter Feed Preparation

With colder temperatures around the corner, we are taking inventory of our hay.  This year, along with last year, we have been experiencing drought conditions so our hay crop productivity has been significantly lower. Therefore, we are having to purchase quite a few large truck loads of hay. Ideally, we like to have them in the stack prior to the snow arriving so that the trucks can unloaded easily. Proper nutrition is essential to keep our herd healthy over the winter and to ensure that we maintain the body condition of the cow herd going into winter.

Facilities Maintenance

Fall is a great time to perform routine maintenance on our ranch fences. This year, we have had quite a few new barbed wire fences built due to the 2023 fire. This had allowed us to now focus on repairing some of the rails in our corrals to ensure that the corrals are strong and maintained for when the cow herd starts arriving.

Sheep Breeding

Our sheep are on fall pasture right now and they will soon be moved into their winter pasture ready for breeding season. Then our ram will be turned in with our ewes, around the middle of October. Prior to breeding season, we must vaccinate the ewes and start to feed them grain every day to flush them. Flushing helps to increase the ewe’s nutrient intake and body condition prior to and during breeding. We do this to help increase the rate of ovulation and in turn hopefully increase the number of lambs that the ewe will have.

Feeding Calves

Since we wean the calves from their mothers in October, we must start to feed them hay and grain.  Our replacement heifers are fed a small amount of grain over the winter to keep them growing them and keep them in good body condition.  It is important to slowly start them on grain so that their rumens can adjust.  Not all the calves usually start at the same time, so we must push them over to the feed troughs each morning and evening to encourage them to try the grain. We carefully watch to see how many are eating and then increase the grain proportionally over the next few weeks.

Each of these fall ranch tasks, from pasture maintenance to preparing our calves for the winter, is a step in our yearly ranch management. Facing the challenges of a changing landscape and climate conditions, our dedication to the land and our livestock remains unwavering.