Ag Ed 101,  Cattle

Speeding up the Melting Process…my Farmer’s Way

April 18, 2020 /

If you are a follower of Livin’ the Life, the Farm Life that is on Instagram or Facebook , (if you are not, you need to be!! Click on the buttons and follow me!) you have seen me post a few pictures of us moving to a new feeding area with the cows. We have learned that when it becomes time to start calving, it is very important for us to move the cows to an area different from where they had been fed all winter. Some years this is not a big deal. We just drive to a different spot in the field. However, on big snow years, moving to a new area in the field is not always easy. Not when there is still over 2 feet of snow in the field! This year was one of those years. On years like this year, we have to “work at” speeding up the “melting process”. We decided to try something different this year. First my Farmer broke trail to the area with the tractor, then drove around just to disturb the snow. We have done this in the past and it does help speed up the “melting process”. Here is the picture of him heading out to the new spot.

making tracks
My Farmer heading out to new feeding area

As you look at the picture, the snow doesn’t look real deep. That’s because the tractor is not sinking clear to the bottom. It is driving on about a foot of snow. Of course, the next day or so we got another 5 inches of snow. Nope, that wasn’t helping with the snow melting process and it did not make my Farmer happy. It looked like the “speeding up the melting process” was going to need something more. My Farmer decided maybe we could spread colored lime on the area like we do with our wheel lines to melt the snow. Spreading lime on our fields is a normal late spring application……on bare ground. Not on top of the snow. My Farmer has always talked about trying to apply it in the winter, one less thing to have to do in the spring, so this was his chance. They hooked the tractor up to the lime spreader and drove out through the deep snow to spread lime. It really did look a little crazy. Here is a picture of the hillside with the lime on it. I wish I had a picture of them spreading it but I did not get one.

Red lime on field
Red Lime on new feeding area

After they applied the first application, my son asked if we had any blue lime. He thought it would be cool to have red and blue on the white snow. That would have been cool! They could have made a flag!! But there was no blue so it was all red. Or pink. Depending on were you are looking from.
And of course, a few days after they spread the colored lime, it snowed another 5 inches….again!! These spring snows can be such a let down. I have to kept telling myself what I heard an old timer say….

“The new spring snow melts to old snow”

….a long valley old timer

I don’t know how true it is, but it helps to think of it that way.
Eventually it did finally warm up a bit and the snow did start to melt. Here is a picture showing that the “speeding up the melting process” is working.

hillside melting
The “speeding up the melting process” is working!
bare hillside
Here you can see the bare hill we worked on compared to the untouch hillside on the right.

As you can see, the hillside that we worked on did melt out faster then the other hillsides. Success!
We are now feeding on the new area, and have up to 50 new babies. That makes us about 1/3 of the way done. On these nice sunny days, the calves are loving laying on that bare south facing hillside soaking up the sun. That is definitely a good thing.

As I said earlier, we learned that having a fresh feeding area during calving time is very important. We have gotten a “bug” on our feedlot in the past, and we lost a lot of calves. From those experiences, we learned that fresh ground and more room is so important. The “bug” does not spread as easily.
As I am writing this, I realize that we can relate what we do with our cows during calving season to what we are doing in our nation now to “flatten the curve” during this COVID-19 pandemic. Cleanliness and social distancing. My Farmer just called it “giving them more room”. Now we call it social distancing. We do have to remind the cows every once in a while. A few totally get it. Some don’t and really don’t care. Yep, same ole, same ole.

Anyways…..time to go feed and think of my next post. That’s when I come up with most of my ideas. While I am stress-fully driving the tractor while my Farmer works his tail off pushing off the islage and hay for the cows. The islage is really heavy and hard to push off, my Farmer tells me, so I have to drive really slow. This is stressful on my part because when you are going .85 mph, a persons mind tends to wonder….a lot. Thinking, daydreaming, driving, and paying attention is sometimes hard to do all at the same time. And don’t forget about taking pictures!! Without my Farmer knowing. That is hard! (wink, wink)

my Farmer feeding
My Farmer feeding on new ground

I hope you enjoyed this post. Leave me a comment, I would love to hear from you! Until next time……I will still be here, because it is calving season, Livin’ the Life, the Farm Life that is.

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