Heifer Development

In this episode, the hosts discuss managing and developing heifers, focusing on feeding practices, structural assessments, and breeding strategies. They explore various challenges and approaches, including utilizing resources like creep feeders, managing young and mature heifers differently, and balancing nutritional needs. Additionally, they touch on the complexities of preparing heifers for sale and ensuring their long-term productivity within the herd.

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That's, so where is Amy? Where Amy? I welcome to around the shoot. Sorry. Okay, go Joe. Where is Amy? I think she's in the kitchen cooking up some something that she, she has to use her new bacon or bacon grease trap that I bought her for Christmas. Well the only problem, where is this Grease trap? Do you have a picture of it? Oh. Or when you bought it off your T mood, did it not have a size dimension? Do you want me to go get it? Do you want me to go get it? Yes. Yes. So did he, so go get it. Okay. Talk amongst yourselves. Im gonna cor, did you hear the story? This, was this a Snapchat deal? No. Tell, tell. Tell Corbin the story. Was this a Snapchat deal? No, no. I called him on the way back from holding these cows today. 'cause I was like, Hey, I gotta know the topic or what we're doing. I wanna let you know I'm on track to be here. I just gotta drop this trailer and stuff. And I hear Amy go, Joe, Joe, you know how she does that with her draw? And she's like, yeah, ask Vince. I'm trying to do it in her voice. Ask Vince what he got me for Christmas. I was like, and then Vince goes, well, I saw this deal on TikTok where she's always struggling with grease in a pan or whatever. And so this little contraption gets grease, my gosh, out of the pan. And Amy was saying, I. Is it like a vacuum? I don't know. I'm excited to see it here. He's got a picture I'm waiting with you. Got a picture waiting breath. Because apparently it was too difficult for him to get a roll with Downy Downey paper towels that you could just g in there and get the grease off, right? Like, no, no, no. That's what we do. That's what we do. Okay, you for comparison, 32 ounce Yeti. Did they send it in a big box too? Amy has hung up that it says bacon grease on it, but look, so it's got the little lid and it's got the little strainer. So you pour all your stuff in here and then your grease ends up down here. And I'm thinking that'd be great if it makes her life easier. Great. I did not know that it was a 10 ounce or whatever it is. I mean, my Yeti holds more than this thing for, uh, so did you put that, like do, where do you store it in the kitchen? Do you put it right next to the, I don't know. I don't know even know what you're, you probably got rubber dish washing gloves for your birthday look. And it came, it came with it. It came with this. It's a tiny spatula. Yeah. Hey, do you still have the receipt? No. Didnt come from, it's a coffee cup. No worse. TikTok shop. It's a coffee cup. Wait, TikTok has a shop. Oh yeah. There's all kinds of stuff on there. Do I know about it? We get a package a week from them, from the TikTok shop. Nothing. I bought three things and none of 'em are worth a crap. Yeah, we get, we get a, we get a package. Lucy gets on TikTok shopping, buys all kinds of shit. And Wait, this is a store? Yeah. Yeah. So, so she'll be watching, scrolling, like, doom scrolling on her phone, and these people she follows or whatever. They'll be selling shit. And so they'll be, what do you, I mean, they'll be trying to sell their, it's like Q Vvc, but for this generation it's like QVC. Yes, it is. And it's dooo. It's just, it's do as well. It's junk. It's all crap. It's, it's Dooo. Lucy got a, um, so she got this jiggle machine one time all the way I remember, I remember the giggles. She got that off of there. Yeah. And I stood on it. Yeah. Did she have the buns of steel now, or, Ooh, yeah. Um, and then she bought, she bought a treadmill that's like a. On a three foot by one foot square. So, so like imagine you're trying to walk in the straightest line ever, and if you step to your right or you step to your left, you're dead. 'cause this thing's going five miles an hour and there's no handrail. You're just walking on a mat that's moving. It's dangerous. That's usually what a treadmill is. But those, it's so small that I fell all the time and it would suck up my toes into the bell. Why are you buying stuff like that from freaking TikTok shop? Why do you think I did this? Why does she do that? I do not have TikTok. I feel like I thought, I thought TikTok was illegal because of something with China, so I never got it. Jayna. I feel like you just say that. I feel like Amy can bleep it out. I don't think you can say that Vince. I really feel like that Lucy was way smarter than this and she is fallen in trap. I know that I was not smart enough and I keep getting sucked into it, but I feel like Lucy would be. Oh man. No. She likes shiny things. She likes things that, I think Amy gets pleasure when I order stuff like that. So she, because she gets it. She gets to call me an idiot. She gets to call me an idiot when I order stuff like this, and it don't work out well. Joe. Vince is in a mood. How are we gonna, I'm not in a mood. I'm in a great mood. So what was your favorite gift? You got somebody not bought on TikTok shop. Ooh, that's a off the cuff. It wasn't on our roadmap. It wasn't well. Vince is yours, the bacon grease thing? Absolutely. You know that a lot of thought went into that, but No, you know, you know what she likes the most, the, the tennis shoes that I got her, not the bacon grease thing. What the hell? Well, she used the tennis shoes every day. The bacon grease. How often do you cook bacon? How often she cook bacon every day. We cook ground beef all the time. That's what I got it for, for for bacon. Well, you ain't putting anything on the side. I tell you what, when I get back to the front and there's a sharpie there, I will correct that. I hope y'all aren't that hungry because that little tray you just showed me, that looks like you can't put a piece of bacon in it. I know you gotta fold it up, but put it in there. It's like you might could put a spoonful of beef in there and let it drain and get it out and put another spoonful. Let it drain. You guys remember back in the two thousands when, when Carme said object and mirror is closer than it appears? Yeah, that's the disclaimer. That should be on TikTok shop. They still say that it's warning. Oh, they do not. The passenger mirror. The passenger mirror. Well, yeah. TikTok shopping needs to say object in person is one 10th size to scale. I'm so mad. I'm gonna look it up right now. Who would So, so to be honest, what Use Vince, turn your sound off. Oh, so what use could that little thing really have anyone? Dude, I got, I got all kinds 10, 15, 20% off. Boom. I'm buying six chop. I'm buying stuff right now. Wow. See, so that's what I can get that way with Facebook Marketplace, to be honest with you. There's all kinds of stuff I'm interested in buying there. Yeah. But marketplace, you don't get 10, 15, or 20% off, so No, no. Don't you love how you'll be talking about something and it'll come up on your timeline. I've had a couple of those recently. One of 'em was a beef jerky and then I was getting all these ads for beef jerking. It just made me hungry all the time. How about this? How about some old news for you guys and our listeners? You ever watch the movie Social Dilemma? Do you need a snowplow 48 inch wide? 282, no, two $82. That, that is like 48 millimeters wide. That's, that's probably Okay. That's, sorry. Probably the size of something that Santa brought from Milo. Really? Sorry, go ahead. No, the movie on Netflix. I know it's old, but it's called Social Dilemma. Whew. You guys watch that? Is that the one about Zuckerberg? Kind of. But it talks about, it talks about how social media has turned into the Wild West and drives people to, I, I would highly recommend it. Highly, highly recommend it. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it quite well. Last time we visited together would've been the second week in December, about first week in December. We talk all the time on the text. But Corbin, what have you been doing? You've been MIA, um, I've been having some January calves. Me too. Me too. What a ky dink. So, oh, a Ky dink a what? A Ky dink kind of like pineapple on pizza. I like pineapple on pizza. And I like pineapple in my, uh, Mexican food. Come on. Yeah, man. If I have one request for 2026, can we bring back those videos? Yes. Yes. And to our listeners who don't know what Joe's talking about, ask let's, yeah, let's just call him. Yeah, let's ask Joe. Uh, so what have I been doing? So I bred these, bred my heifers DeKalb, January 9th. And a few of them, a couple of them. Hello. I'm Marty. What are you laughing at? Why is he laughing me? Because your, your service date was Halloween. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. How much is that, Vince? Oh my God. He orders it. He orders it. He orders it. $23. $23. So this is, so this thing Vince is looking at is like a thing that a, a lady rides? No, I'm not looking at it. Let's keep going. I'm tr I'm trying to find to see how big the pie was. What happens when you order it and it's more size for bug than it's rainy. Oh my gosh. So listen, so I had a couple calves and it seems like they've been giving me the worst time ever. So I got this cat, I had this heifer prolapse and she died. And then my father-in-law, we pulled one and the cat, the cow didn't take it. So we combined forces and he brought the heifer over here and Myla had already named this one 'cause we thought it was gonna be our bottle calf. She named it Big Mike and Mike, she's like, uh, so, so big Mike has a surrogate mother, and this is how brilliant a kid's mind is. She said, uh, she said, dad, I really hope Mike, Mike does good. I said, yeah, I hope he grows up and gets to be big and strong. And she goes, yeah, and then he can breed his mama. I was like, what are you talking about? There we go. You said, well, it's, well, it's not his real mom, but she's picking up on more than we're giving her credit for. But no, we've just been, um, it's a lot of cell prep. I mean, getting ready for pictures and doing all that stuff, we. Yesterday just just fixed up our working pins that have been messed up for a long time. Rewelded in some panels and stuff to make 'em like new. So hopefully things start going a little smoother when we go to work cows. Now we actually have some, does your sale the end of January? End of February. End February 28th. You got a little time. You get a little time. Isn't it amazing how long that timeline is though? I mean, how long it takes. So, so Shana wants all of my stuff by January 11th, which, oh yeah. It takes a while. It, yeah, yeah. I, we gotta go back. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Circle back. So when she sees Big Mike, does she say, oh, there's Big Mike, or she go Big Mike. She goes, can I pet him? And said, well, sure you can go pet him, but watch out for that crazy cow that, oh, and then something else she did today, by the way, it's cold outside. Yeah, it's pretty cold. And so I turn around how cold? 38 was a 15 mile hour North wind. Ours, ours might have, we might, I don't think we got to 38, but I don't know the, the wind, that calf and that cow this morning, Vince, that photo looked cold. That looked doggone cold. It was brand new. Dude. The, the low today, tonight is 22. Yeah, that's enough. But the wind, the wind is not, the wind is cold. Yeah. So here's what, here's another funny milo story. So I was, it was, it says it was 53 today. Sorry, go ahead. I was feeding these heifers and the pens and then, um, and then I have some cows that I, that some Reeses that are supposed to be cycling that I just kept in the pins because I don't want them to get out and get, I've got bulls around and I don't want something to get, so I just let them in the steel all the time. So I move these heifers out the way. Unbeknownst to me, Miles's standing, she's climbing the gate, she's just climbing the gate. Like I didn't even know she was outside. It's freezing outside. And she looks at, I turn around, I got all the heifers, moved outta there, she's sitting on the top rail of the gate and she goes, dad, you missed one. It's over there. And I did, I missed one that was up in the corner and she goes, you want me to get it? And I said, yeah, go get it. So she goes and runs that calf out. Heck yeah. She's been helping and doing things like that a lot more. And um, I'm really noticing her growing up. And, uh, how about this, Corbin, how about today? I had a meeting with a landlord downtown, nine 30 in the morning. And uh, we have a big family trip planned for the seventh. So for listeners, that gives us like eight, nine days until we are gone for 10 days. And so we're trying to get a bunch of stuff ready to get outta here. There's supposed to be all kinds of weather, you know, we can't just have cattle around here. They need to be out to their winter ranches. So I kind of messed up in lining everybody out short of four wheelers or equipment for people to ride. And so I said, well, why don't I just run to town and fill these semen tanks? We have to get filled instead of sending the kid to do it. And I sent three boys, Wyatt, and then once they got that field gathered that we'd prepped yesterday, the boys and Abby and, well, I guess Abby and Meredith and everyone else vaccinated, all that stuff while I was sitting in that meeting. And I came down and the only thing I had to do, we loaded five gooseneck trailers. I had to load my trailer and we were gone with cattle. Not awesome. A 25 pair in that bunch, which was, isn't a huge work day, but for us in this purebred world to be hauling a mountain goosenecks, it's quite an undertaking to make sure you have the right 25 paired up, sort, sort out the bulls that are in there, the bulls that were taken, all these little things ended up there was like 28 in the field, so they had to figure out the ones that were long and we wanted to leave those here and all that stuff. But it got me thinking, man, when you brought up Myla, it doesn't seem like that long ago we were there where the kids were kind of little smart as a whip and they'd be like, dad, are you, did you intend on, you know, putting this heifer in? Did that purpose calves? Did you do that on purpose? But now, yeah, yeah, totally meant to do that. You know, because they pick up on what you're doing and now they're like full grown adults that can go out and do things, and I need to give 'em the space to do that. But then the structure to make sure that we're doing stuff right too. Yeah, it's, it makes you proud, but at the same time. It makes you wish they could stay little forever and that they, you see, you see her little imagination going. And, um, just simple things like whenever I've got, I, I got this heifer up in the barn and so this heifer got separated from her calf. It was in, and it was 85. So we talk about it being cold now. It was 85 last week for two days, and we were calving. And then now it's 40. And so this cow got separated from her calf for a couple days. So I just put the cow in the calf in the barn and I was like, well, this cow's, this calf's kind of Gantt, so I'm gonna put it in the barn. I'm gonna get it filled back up, and then I'll turn it back out. And so, you know, the calf wouldn't suck. And I, and I just wanted to make sure these things are worth too much for me to just let the thing die. So anyways, it won't suck. So I just decided I'm gonna tube this thing, make sure it gets something down its belly. And I thought I gently put the calf down on the ground. And Mya was like, dad, what are you doing? Why'd you throw that gaff down so hard? I'm like, Hey, I had to get it down there where I could do it though. It's just so funny. She's starting to help and notice things and you just, I just hope that enthusiasm stays because yesterday she also was riding around with me and she was like, so, dad, did you go to, did you go to college to do this? Like, I kind of told a little while, I was like, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've, I've been to lots of schools so that I could do this. And she goes, well, I wanna go to cowgirl school and I wanna do exactly what you do, and I wanna take care of all these pastures. And it was like, I don't know if this is gonna work out this way, but, uh, I kind of like where this is headed and, um, hopefully I'm not setting myself up for broken heart. But, uh, my kid likes ranching, so right now, always good. So Vince, did Nate always, did you always know he was coming back or was that a. Ken, same situation that Corbin's dealing with. No, he was, he was always all in on the farm or any kind of equipment or anything like that. He was just always all in like, well, it's funny, even since we've been friends, I've seen him from being like the Shady Brook employee to now he's advertising stuff on social media. It's his own deal. You're helping him right now with a pad and a barn, and it's like, I mean, we're gonna be talking at some point and he is gonna be wanting to start a family or whatever. I mean, it's like, man, it happened so quick. Yeah. So Vince was, and this might be, uh, was Sophia always like, oh yeah, I, I, I appreciate all this and I love showing animals, but this is not my passion. Could you always kind of tell? It could have partly had something to do with me being a butthole to her, but. I don't know. She's like her mama. She has a huge heart when it comes to animals. Um, if it was up to Amy, just so you know, when, if something happens to me, there will be a dispersal and within two years this place will be a reserve for stranded wounded cats, uh, everything. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Pigs, donkeys, alpacas, elephants. Just you name it. Anything she can get her hands on. If she'll be like, can save it, she'll, it'll be like the Winwood Zoo. The win. What is the, what is the one that Joe exotic had? The Tiger King probably. And then she'll be wanting to buy cows back to feed the tigers. Yeah. 'cause it'll all be illegal. No, she would, she wouldn't wanna kill the cattle to feed the tigers. We don't have a terrible pet. What was funny about that is that's how my sister is, my middle sister. I have two sisters, the middle of the two. Um, I guess the older of the sisters, the middle, middle of us siblings, she would rescue every doggone animal she could find. That's just the way she is. My other sister is like very much like me. I mean, it needs to have a purpose and it needs to have a price tag and that's the way it would roll. But yeah, it's interesting. Sophia still has the best cows though. I will say that. She her. Nate Nate's cow calved. Nate's gonna have. I love it. Don't agent calf outta 55 0 4. Don't you love it? Whenever Vince sends a pedigree, you're like, oh, that's Sophia's. I'm the first Sophia's cow. They're all the best cattle. Doesn't Sophia's cow have the good Legion heifer calf? Is that Sophia's your name? Oh yeah. The one I flushed the fall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sophia's, Vince, that's Sophia's. Yeah. Is, is registering these things a pain in the butt? Do you have to log into multiple deals or? So it got to be a little pain in the butt with herd bulls. There was supposed to be a note in there that said they have access to our herd bulls. Uh, but every time it would kick em back, so I finally just put them on all the bulls as well. No, I just go in there and do it and it knows it. It's all in one login. Yeah. Do you pay them for their, the ones that have their name on, or do they own those or No, I just did that when they were showing. Oh, okay. You know what I mean? Was it br owned or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I see. I I just did that when they were showing and I just never went and changed them by And so you just, and basically they showed the good ones and so the good ones wind up being in a lot of pedigrees and so Right. That's why it ends up that way. So it looks like my kids are way smarter than I am on breeding. They're way better breeders. They better, they're way better raiders. That's right. Well, let me ask you this, since it, this episode has dove the wrong way, and That's okay. It's okay. Yeah, it's okay. Um, oh wait Here. Shady Brook, don't your headphones please. Does that make you feel better? Yeah, it makes me feel right at home. Um, if Shady Brook had 300 calves born in 2026, um, yeah. Sophia and Nate could not show those as Bread and owned, it would have to be in their own name for the junior deal, huh? Correct. Which Sophia's not a junior anymore. Right. So I could transfer 'em all back, but I just haven't So you can transfer 'em back? Yeah. Oh yeah. And that makes me wonder, like, you know, for some of these, I don't know where the gray area is, and so it becomes a hard and fast rule. But Bruin Ranch is owned by my family. Right. So that's what I'm saying. Yeah. Show, if I go to show every cow is theirs and every cow is not theirs, they're all ours. Right. So I'm a little bit confused. I'm a little bit confused. So if, if I have this heifer and I want my kid to show it because she's the junior of the family. Yeah. You gotta put it in her name. But she doesn't have a, she doesn't have an American Inc. She's so, she's, that's stupid. So it used to be, used to be you join once as a junior and that's it. Yeah. Then they changed it. You had to pay every year. Well, I mean, I don't, 'cause they need the money. AAA needed the money. Let's just be honest. Yeah. They've only got a hundred million, so they needed the money. It's not even the, it's not even the money to me though, it's the pain in the ass of it all of saying, you've got Nate and Sophia owning all your cows instead of being all under one umbrella. It's just not, I I get that. It's fine. It's not, yeah. But there's probably a purpose. There's a purpose, there's a, there's a reason because, um, you know, if, if, if, if Myla showed up with an animal that was Shady Brook, well they wouldn't know that she was part of that or not just like it would say Brewing Ranch or, you know, if Bennett showed up as Brewing Ranch and Sophia showed up as Shady Brook and Myla showed up as Rafter five M you know, they would have to be tied to it somehow, even though it's all a family thing. Yeah. So as a junior air quotes, they have to have it in their, their name. And they, they have to show that they own the animal. So a lot of times, like, you know, Joe, didn't you, didn't you give a heifer to a, a neighbor or something to let 'em show it? A customer. A customer And I, and you had to transfer that to them. And I got them a junior membership number and stuff and, and she'll be able to show that heifer however she wants. Now, the offspring of that heifer, she can then show in the bread known division. Correct. And my kids, I guess that's the one thing that's kind of it. It doesn't matter. My kids don't show or haven't shown the interest in showing females right now. But if they wanted to show bread known, they'd be kind of a generation behind, even though they own the cows. No, no. It's So if the dad, if the dad owns it's just paperwork. It's just paperwork. So I can say that these brewing cows would qualify as bread owns you. I don't think so. Well, I mean, people do this. Okay, so. Let's say you had a calf this year. I, I got it. Yep. Got it. You just backdate. Yeah. Right before it was bred. So as I was saying Yeah. About the whole thing, you know what I mean? Yep. As I was saying, it's stupid. It is kind of stupid. But you know, there's also people out there, um, there's a guy in Alabama that bought a sweet heifer in the sale. Was it Randall? No. And he's too busy with FedEx. Um, yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Now listen, did he end up catching the guy? I think they caught the guy. I, I think they caught him. Anyway, show up. What? I swear. So this guy bought this sweet heifer in the sale, but he's an older gentleman. He don't have kids or grandkids. He might have kids, but I don't know the name of his kids or grandkids on show. So he found a junior that was willing to show and he donated them. The heifer, as long as they took good care of the heifer, you know, and that kid got to show it. So there's people out there like that, you know, they're, do you know what, do you wanna know what makes more sense than, than having to make Nate and Sophia their own logins? It makes more sense that I should be able to put Mya as one of the owners of Rafter five M landed cattle. And that way I can keep my prefix the same. That way it can all have the same, uh, member code prefix is, my prefix has never changed. Just the owner. Yeah, that's stupid. So I think that what, what the reason you say it's stupid Corbin and my knee jerk is to say it's stupid is because. We are assuming that everyone is a well-intentioned human being. That There you go. That's fair. Yeah. That's 100% right. 'cause when you start really digging into, like if we had a show expert on here and they said, well, let me throw you this scenario and let me throw you this scenario. There's stuff we haven't even dreamed up that there are people that don't have everyone's best interest in heart. Every time you involve money or ribbons, it seems like things can go awry. And we'll have that show Cattle episode eventually. Um, but not right now. Listen. Yeah, it's, uh, it's our one year anniversary kind of beginning to look a lot less like Christmas. So Christmas is over, it's over. There was intentionality when we created this podcast. There was, there's always been intentionality when the three of us have talked about things, but, um, generally, always, generally, always, um, 50% of the time, every time it works. Uh, did you guys ever think that we'd be rolling like we are and have the listenership and as fast as we have and the, I guess, what were your expectations when we started Vince? I don't know. You know, I didn't, I didn't give it a lot of thought as far as how many listeners or how successful or not successful we'd be. I just, I knew that I wanted to keep doing this with you guys and I felt like there was still some people that we could help and I was all in. What about Corbin? You have these, you operate differently 'cause you're always sending us benchmarks that you say, Hey, this is cool or this is cool. What were your expectations? Um, I don't know that I really had any hard asset expectations. I told y'all it would be really cool if we had. 2000 people listen to an episode. Uh, I just thought from the start that that would be a really hard number to hit. I just thought, man, a thousand, we can do 2000. And the reason I don't think it's hard because we're not an entertaining, because the podcast isn't good. I just don't know how deep the listenership, I, I don't know how many people out there would be interested in the, in the topic. You know what I mean? And then, and so, um, and you spent three years watching analytics too, right? It's not like you came in this naive, I didn't just say knew what we knew what benchmarks were of what successful distribution of multimedia looked like. And it was kind of like, man, if we could get to this number, it'd be kind of cool. And here we are. I don't wanna say we scotch tape it together. The three of us do. Amy works an incredible. Amount of time to make sure that things sound good. She puts out these little quip videos. Vince puts 'em out too. I'm very thankful for the two of you guys. Um, and there's a work. Amy does a better job. She does a good job, man. She's, and she had to grow from not knowing how to do this at all. It's like speaking a third language. And, um, I guess my expectations were that we could continue to cultivate our friendship and our relationship because it was sort of developed through a platform and it was this weird kind of a different relationship we had. And, um, I just got to hang out with my friends. And so this podcast has this slightly different feel because it's just some friends chopping it up. I think some of the episodes are better when we haven't talked in a long time. Honestly. Absolutely. Uh, they, we struggle when we've been on the phone a lot with each other, or we've been texting a lot because there's no new content and we can't remember what's old news, what's new news, stuff like that. Um. And it hasn't been perfect, right? I mean, the scheduling is still a conflict. We've had issues with audio, we've had issues with recording. We've had, um, you know, just cadence issues and, and how we all fit and find our role and make sure that we're providing a positive listening experience for our listeners, but then also maintaining this relationship among the three of us, um, who are all incredibly different people, but have a passion for family and have a passion for Angus cattle. Right. Do you know what I think this, you know what I think this podcast does? It makes like, so we're at the age all three of us wear, you don't really hang out with friends that much because you're, you're getting to that point where you're really focused on your career. You're really focused on your family. Um, and so you don't ever really get to take that time to spend for yourself. And I think that's what makes this so hard to schedule is that it almost feels like this is something that we do for us. We're not that good at being like, well, I'm gonna do this for me. And so, um, I know for me that this is just a great release. It's, uh, it's sometimes hard for me to sit down and do it because of time and stuff, but once I do, man, I'm telling you, it's, it's, it's re it renews everything I have in me. It's invigorating. Just getting to talk to you guys is, uh, it's just something I've, I've become so passionate about. It's part of who I am at this point, I guess. Um, I really enjoy it. What were you gonna say, Vince? Oh, I was just gonna say that sometimes, you know, we've, we've made several episode, I think this is episode 24 or whatever, and, you know, we've, we've done good on some episodes as far as feedback and some episodes we missed the mark and we thought we had it on the mark and we go back and listen, say, you know, there was more to be said or whatever it might be. So I'm just glad that the listeners have kept, kept with us. Absolutely. You know, and not say, oh, this is just trash. I'm going somewhere else. You know? But, um, and this has never been, I'm sorry, I stepped on you, finish your sentence. No, no, no, no. It's never been a podcast about shaping people's opinion of Angus cattle or shaping people's opinion on how to spend their money or any of that. It's just been about, Hey, let's just be three friends that chop it up and share our experiences raising livestock and maybe we could help somebody. And a lot of the topics we've come. To the listeners with that have been most successful are actually topics that have come from the listeners. Absolutely. You know, some sort of specific request, I mean, we got a lot of feedback on SI selection, um, from that last one we did because I think because so many people had requested it. Um, and, and another one, which if we we're gonna see if we have time today. I don't have a counter on mine. Vince, you have a counter on yours? I do, but it starts when we get on, so I don't know how long we, okay. We started it, it's been like 25, let's just say. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. 20, 25 minutes. Yeah. So I won't say the topic yet in case we don't get there, but I think we will get there probably. Um. Yeah, I think, uh, the more you guys can reach out to us, the more you can share with us things that you're struggling with. And then remember, this has a news cycle that's kind of odd. We're programmed to a two minute news cycle, our 32nd news cycle now, it seems like through reels and shorts and all that stuff. We're on a two week cycle. And so I got feedback today from a listener of a podcast that we did almost a month ago now. And so I do the, I do the same thing though, don't you, Corbin, where it's like we used to talk and could say, Hey, did you hear this on Rogan or do you hear this on Theo? Well, I go through spots where I've been listening to those podcasts every single day when I'm hauling or delivering bulls. And then I don't listen for like three months. You get on like a, you'll get on like a kick where you'll just go binge listen to, yeah. To all these episodes, which I mean, I do it with certain things and then, and then certain podcasts I'll get bored with and I'll come back to 'em and do all kinds of stuff like that. But yeah, and so I, I really appreciate the listener feedback and it's what helps keep it, it's what helps keeping this going. Um, one thing that I think would, would help our algorithm algorithms even more too, it's like, and I hate saying this, but just go in and rating and reviewing the show, and that way we can get to more people and hopefully help more people. And it's, listen, I can tell our listeners firsthand, um, we've talked about monetizing some things. I don't think, I don't think the three of us really have that in us. I really don't. Um, the more we, the more we do it, the more I realize that we do it. It's not about the money for the three of us. It's not. And so that makes it, we monetize ourselves, we monetize through our businesses. This is our release. And so, right. It's not more about, for me, it's never been like, let's drive traffic to the branding that is brewing Ranch. Let's make sure that people know the story of what we do so that we get the right consumers of our products. Absolutely. Yeah. And we don't need all the business. All we need is enough and we need all the right business. Um, and so, yeah. Thank you to listeners. It's been incredible. Vince, you just leaned back. Were you gonna, I stretch. Comment on that. Oh, stretching your back. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, it's been fun. Reach out with more review, more, share more. Um, share with us some things you think we missed the mark on. You know, um, lots of positive feedback on the last one. The one we're gonna talk about, uh, this week though. Let's, uh, hey, let's just say what, Hey, did you guys have a good Christmas? Yeah, let's stay on that kick. Do what I said. Yes. Let's stay on that kick. Well, I'm saying before we start the other thing thing. Yeah. You know what's the only thing that I hate about Christmas is when it's over. Yeah. Because I, I mean, don't you just live for letting your, seeing the joy in your kids? It's just man, it's just what does it for me really is So How long do you leave your tree up? Lucy took it down the 26th. I'm with Joe the epiphany, which happens to be my birthday. Whew. Anyway, Amy was wanting to take it down. Amy would've took it down the night of Christmas. Yeah. Lucy. Lucy takes Abby too. Like, hey. I was like, whatcha doing? Just leave it. We just took some mass and they just turned the lights on. Like it was the first time there was a tree in our church was Christmas day and she wants to tear ours down. Yeah. Do you wanna know my true, honest opinion on that? On on these women wanting to take the tree down on Christmas day? Why? What's that? As long as I don't have to help, I'm down. Do what you wanna do. No, I don't wanna, because I have to. I have to take it all up to the barn. Where'd you get your tree? Me? Yeah. Did you bring a saw? Amy? Amy found it somewhere. It came in a box. Oh, set it up. Yeah. Hobby Lobby. Joe burned black. Black. Those ones are burned black. No, I was gonna tell you, this is, if you wanna find out where your tree came from, all you gotta do is set that thing a blaze and some that have come from storage containers that maybe floated across a big ocean. Watch those things when you light 'em on fire, they'll be like green. Why am I burning it when all the bulbs quit? When all the bulbs it, all the bulbs are out, let's burn it and go get a new one. Good. You don't water yours and put a little aspirin in it or nothing. Yeah, no. I think my tree is plastic. There's no wood. Yours, plastic too. You didn't dig it out with your bare hands? No. Do you want to know why? Because that crap makes me sneeze. Doesn't a live tree drive your allergies nuts. Vince? I haven't had a live tree in years. Me neither. Since I was a little boy. Yeah. I cannot And they're, they were all the time shedding needles. Yeah, they're a mess. It's once a year. Put it in the barn. I don't have to clean it up, but I have to hear about it. Yeah. Right, right, right. So yes. We had a good Christmas. Very good Christmas. You're happy Bennett was home. Oh, you're so glad. Bennett's home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, what about the others? Were you not happy that they were there ready for them to leave? I had other kids. Oh. Oh, that's right. I have other kids. That's right. I'll darn The golden child has returned. You. Other kids may retreat to your rooms. You know, the other kids are like those the first time that's been son of a gun. Oh, don't, don't you think that's not the first conversation about that we've had in this house in the last 24 hours even. Um, you're just like, Bennett more than us. No, it's just, it, it is, uh, it's true. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Dang kid. I didn't realize how much I loved you. Oh, he helped us today. And then little things like I burn up a bearing on a jump shoot. Did I tell you guys on the podcast about that big? What? What color did that burn? Black. Black. So these guys have made a jump shoot outta some sort of old axle of like a car. What's a jump shoot? A jump shoot would be a load, portable, a load shoot. This portable? Yeah. Okay, so it's, they're extra wide. Oh, it just goes in the, it's not a shoot, shoot, it's a, it's on, it's a ramp. It's ramp on load load a pot or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you and guys, we still use jump shoots sometimes to load pots, but you'd rather not. The jump shoots typically are a little bit steeper and a lot wider and so if you go to load lighter cattle or something, they'll want to turn around in it. Sometimes they're meant to just unload cattle, be super portable and you can go from field to field to field dumping cattle Better for unloading. Yeah, I burn up a bearing because I don't know, the bearings started leaking I guess, and Bennett thought that the grease caught on fire and since it was an old car deal, the fire then engaged the springs on the brakes. The brake seized up and it locked up. That whole thing. So little things like that, Vince. And you know, I'm not handy enough to fix something like that. I'd be, I'm handy. You have Bennett's here. Exactly, so he's fixed right now. That's what he's working on, is putting a new wheel end on there. And, um, you mean the hub? I don't, I don't know. Whatever it's called then. I don't know. Don't freak. It's not, it's not a hawk or doesn't that It's mine or it's hip. So I've got a guy that helps me do stuff like that too, and he is like, yeah, just order what you ordered last time. I'm like, are you freaking kidding me? I don't even remember. Yes. I don't remember what that stuff's called. No, I'm not. Oh, you need the hub and the job and the bub. You need all, just write it down and I'll get it. Yeah. Can you just send me a text better yet, find it online and I'll give you a credit card. Absolutely. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Here's my expiration date. But it was cool. It was cool that we drove all the way to Wyoming as a family. And then we drove back. Ooh. What about the tor the winds? Whew. 10 blowing semis tipped over from Salt Lake City to where we were in Laramie on the way there. And 13 on the way back they, they said on the news, 144 mile an hour gust of wind, holy. And, and up there, there the road signs, I don't know if you guys have this, but the road signs are digital. They're like roadwork signs. Mm-hmm. And they would change as we went. Like it, they would change the miles per hour limit on the roads. I'd never seen that before. And they'd also, one section would be like no vehicles under no semis under 20,000, and then no semis under 50,000 then no semis under 80,000. 'cause they were trying to keep the lighter ones off the road 'cause of the lighter they were, they were kept tipping over. And uh, interesting. Paxton was the first one to say, he goes, dad, how come no. How come no tricked out Peterbilt or tipped over? They must have different aerodynamics. And I said, and if you, if you're, if you're a truck driver, you can call me in on this. Uh, we might have lots of truck driver listeners. Huh? Maybe I shouldn't say this. I, I said, I'm gonna say a flat top probably ain't gonna catch as much wind, but it depends on what his trailer is. But I told him, I said, you know what I think it is, I think most of the tricked out trucks are owned by owner operators and the other ones are by somebody who is not. And they're just driving and they're deadhead across the country and they get paid by load and they're like, we gotta go. We gotta get paid. Whereas these owner operators are like, this is my baby and this is my whole mortgage. I'm gonna pull out at this rest stop in little America and I'm just hanging out. Hey. Yeah, exactly. So do you have a good Christmas, Vince? Yeah, I did. I saw snaps from Lucy's house. Oh yeah. We had a good Christmas. We had good, we had a good, we had a good family Christmas. It really was, um. So, I don't know. It was different with dad not here. And I'm sure that's probably the last one we'll have in that house. 'cause mom's wanting to sell the house. So, uh, you know, it was good. It was good. Everybody was there. Yeah. Kind of nostalgic. Sophia didn't make it, but everybody else was there, so Yeah, it was nostalgic. It was good. I bet it was. Yeah. But, um, but no, we, we, we all had a good time. We all played, we all played left, right center. I lost the first round, but I did win the second round. Did you see that stack of cash in my pocket? What is left, right center? Yeah. All one. It was all ones, but it's still a stack game dice. It was still a stack baby. So you roll these, you got two. You got two dice. Three. Three dice. You get three. We play with dollars. So you start out with $3. And you roll three dice and you either have left, right, center, or a dot. If it lands on the dot, you keep your money. If it lands on left, you pass a dollar to the guy on the left. If it lands on the right, you pass a dollar. Right. Or centers in the pot. So you might roll three centers and you put $3 in the pot and you're done. But the guy next to you may hand you a dollar. So I was out, I was completely out for several rounds, and somebody handed you a dollar and somebody handed me a dollar and ended up winning. But, um, it, it's fine. How do you, how do you determine when the game is over? When someone gets all the money, when all the money's in the pot or somebody else has all the cash? Mainly when all the money's in the pot. So you want all of it? Yeah, I want all, so you want all of it? Yeah. How many people, what 12 was that? 12 people? $36. It's $36. That's a lick for a $3 investment. Yeah. So was that more or less that? More or less? The problem was coffee mug. The problem was I handed Nate $3 and I handed McKenna $3 and I handed Amy $3 and I handed my brother $3. So I mean, I needed to get all that back. So basically I broke e, I think I walked outta there with $3 extra than when I walked in the house. Because you're the only one that had any dollars. Yeah. I stopped at the store and got a bunch of dollars and the girl at the quit market's like, where are you going with all these ones? I was like, we're gonna play a game. That's it. Yeah. We're gonna play a game. She's like, yeah. Right. Anyway, I did. Before we move on to our topic, I did just get a report from the er, white Road Crash. Oh, you did the FBI's involved. So more to come. So who gets the Christmas cash Federal girl investigation? Who gets the what? Nobody Who gets the Christmas cash. There's no Christmas cash. It was all a farce. Yeah, it's the FBI's would be a Valentine, maybe a Valentine's sum that, Hmm. So does he have to give it to the fbi? I then we, yeah. Maybe we'll keep our listeners up to speed on this. I think, you know, I, we did a poor job of that. We said Randall. It was Randall up Church and who didn't know of our listenership three in Clay County, Alabama. Yeah. But I was getting texts and phone calls, like, who are you talking about at this fence? I was like, Randall. Oh, we didn't say his name. Yeah. All the Denver and Nebraska cohort of listeners didn't know. No, they don't know about R. White Road and Clay County, Alabama. Okay. So anyway, you gonna lead in the topic, Vince? Go for it. I got, I'm burning up here. Well, I've almost forgot it. We've had a lot of requests about heifer development. How do you guys develop your heifers? What do you recommend for heifer development? Um, some red flags at heifer development and, you know, let's just start, do you want to just start with heifers? We're gonna keep heifers that wanna be part of your program. What do you do with them? How do you treat 'em? That sort of stuff. Then we'll, I'll make a note and we'll come back to how do you develop heifers for a sale, because I do think that one I don't have a lot of expertise in and I know that that one is extremely difficult. It, it's like bull development, which we've talked about too. And I don't know if we've done a great, great service to, I don't know that we did a good job with that either. Well, we probably didn't do a good job with that, but we'll try to with heifers. But Corbin, first of all, you wean your heifer calves. What is standard protocol at the Rafter five m um, ranch and calibrating? Well, it's, it's quite a bit different than, and I've, and I've adjusted it over the years because I think, um, at first my margins were so slim that the goal was to save as much money in feed as I could. I mean, you're, when you talk about spending, uh, we were spending sometimes $9,000 for a load of feed, and then we were selling heifers for they were worth $750. So at that mo, at that money, it didn't really pay, you know, it was really hard to make it all work. It was really hard to feed 'em and justify feeding 'em, because if I had to go sell 'em the next day, it was really hard to, to justify putting that much money into 'em. Um, but now as the margins have gotten better, I think we've started feeding 'em a little better and taking a little bit better care of 'em and realizing that. The better we take care of those younger heifers until they're bred back as wet toos, the better your cow herd ends up being, you know, in a lot of ways. I mean, if you can get 'em br bred back as a wet too, then that cow generally goes on and does, uh, does good things. So with that being the goal, um, Vince would probably be better at, at describing how to get 'em there. 'cause I just barely figured out what the goal was here. Well one thing I think that you said that was spot on is it's changed, it's evolved. It's not, this is what we do and it's the same every year because your genetics are different. You know, you might picked some bulls that made and made them to some easy fleshing cows and they easy fleshing bulls and you got, you gotta manage 'em a little different. But the, the biggest thing is knowing that. Something wasn't right, and you needed to change something the next year, right? Yeah. Because absolutely. You know, how many times do we look and you're not gonna just keep looking at 'em and say, well, I don't like how they're looking, but I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing. I mean, that's not fair. And then, and then to be fair too, I, I'd say your eye changes as you get, as you get more experience and you realize more what you're looking for. Um, one of the things that's that's changed for me is, is being able to look at the bottom end of that, of that pin of heifers and realize that that's the, those are the ones that I'm trying to progress. Um, for whatever reason, some of those heifers are behind, maybe they're younger, in a lot of cases, they're younger. But, you know, the, I think knowing, knowing what you're, you know, you figure out over the years what you're doing. What am I doing here? Like, what's the goal? And so, right. The goal is obviously to. Make a cow. Right, right. Isn't that the goal with heifer development? That's right. But you know, something that you just touched on, your eye changes. I look back at old cell catalogs that I thought were awesome, or even my own cell catalogs, I pick on myself, you know, back then I thought, man, that was a smoking good rip. And man, I love this picture of this cow. And you look back and you're like, God, that was a terrible picture of this cow. Isn't that stupid? You know, she ended up being a good cow, or maybe she really wasn't. And I didn't know it at the time, but, um, the picture, like, God, that was terrible. And, you know, your, your eye need, you need to be open-minded enough to know that you don't know it all. And you could use some guidance from somebody, even if it's just bouncing it off a friend, you know? But, um. Vince, do you, do you feed your sail heifers separate from your, your keeper heifers or do you have 'em all in the same pen? I feed 'em separate. Um, I do push 'em a little harder because generally I don't want my heifers to be heavy when I'm breeding them. Yeah. But to get a good picture and presentation on sale day, they need to be a little heavier. And it's, um, now this is Springs, right? This is the ones that are gonna be springs or falls. Breads. Falls. The breads too. But the other thing too is, you know, you people start wanting to come by and look at stuff and I'm not gonna take 'em through a pen of stuff I'm keeping. And because people will lose focus and say, Ooh, I wanna buy that thing. I don't wanna buy what you're putting in the sale. I wanna buy that one. I like that pedigree better. I like her better. Or whatever it might be. You know? So, so you don't want to, you don't want to deter people from what, from what they're there to look at, you know? Yeah. And, and management told me that before and I thought, eh, I don't know about that. But I started seeing it some, so I just said, what, you know, okay, we'll just sort 'em out and they need to be sorted out anyway just because of, you know, they need to be up there handier for pictures and For sure. Yeah. And for videos. And I don't want to get a group of 40 up every time to pull five head out, you know? They just need to be sorted in handy. If you have a place to put 'em. If you don't have a place to put 'em, then don't sort 'em. And I'll tell you what I, I'll tell you what's, uh, before we go any further and then I'll, I want to ask Joe a question. Developing heifers is, is actually really fun. It's really fun getting to watch 'em change. It's really fun getting to watch 'em grow. Um, I like, I like heifers. I really do. I like being able to, you know, drive through a pin of 'em and, and try to pick out which one you think is gonna be the best cow, even though you don't have a clue. Um, I just really enjoy it. So, Joe, um, how do you develop heifers there? I mean, because you, you know, you're not feeding any bulls around there, but obviously you have to feed your head for something, right? So, yeah. Um, it's a challenge. And to your guys' point about learning every year and trying to do better and trying to adjust, it's one that I've really struggled to balance. Um, first and foremost, the most important for me is rangeland utilization. Um, our country is rough enough and the fields are big enough that one of the heifer's jobs is to go out and learn how to forge across country. And she's learned that oftentimes on the side of her mother. But then something about making a heifer weaned and going out, they will go out to the far stretches of a field that you didn't even know were accessible. Um, we actually have had to learn to be very careful about that in some places. Places, because you might spend all summer trying to find heifers that are gone all the time. And, uh, if you have neighboring bulls, that can obviously be a problem. So what we try to do is, I read an article quite some time ago, and I don't know if it was right, wrong or indifferent, but, uh, trying to get those heifers to about 60% of their mature body weight. So we bear in mind that most of our cows are somewhere between 14 and 1500 pounds by the time that they're mature. Um, we have outliers on either end of that spectrum, more bigger than smaller, and trying to find ways to make sure that that animal is not, I don't want a fat, fat 800 pound heifer. I want a well grown out 850 pound heifer, and I don't know how to explain that in body condition terms, but I want that heifer on an increasing plane of nutrition too, if at all possible, which is very difficult in the fall breeding season. Um, but we've had to figure out how to do it. In the past, we've supplemented with a little bit of alfalfa hay just to get their protein up because that time of year, those cattle would be on dormant feed. We do have some environmental challenges, like I've said with Foothill abortion. We're in the heifer development phase, we wanna make sure that they get their brucellosis, vaccination, all their pre-breeding vaccinations, and then they have to get exposed to that tick somehow. So there are some vaccines that have shown some good promise. Um, and then the best way is to make sure that those animals, when they're in puberty, puberty and cycling have been exposed to the tick himself. And so, or herself, I don't know if ticks are asexual or what, but we try to put 'em in country where the ticks might be a little hungry. We call it like a field without cattle for a while. And maybe those heifers will get bit while they're cycling, but not carrying their first pregnancy. What happens if they're not cycling and they get bit, like, does it still not work? Right, it doesn't work the same, or that's, that's what some of the research has shown. But the research has been, it's been extensive, but I don't know if there's been a lot of conclusion. And then we've also found out there's varying levels and strains, if you will, of this foothill abortion tick. And it's just, uh, man, all this stuff is such a moving target all the time. How do they even know if it's been bit in during the cycle to test it? Well, they, so not far from here, there's a 5,000 acre ranch, the uc, Davis, um, Sierra Foothills Research and Extension, um, campus, I think it's called. And they'll actually know that heifers aren't cycling and they run 'em through a trial and they expose 'em to the tick and then they, you know. Run 'em through another trial when they've exposed the ticks. And so that's how a lot of this research has come about. Now, I, I do think there's still a lot we don't know, um, we've had some really mild winters for the past two or three years and there are a lot of people who just anecdotally say that Tick hasn't been knocked back. 'cause if it freezes and stuff and it's cold, that tick will get knocked back kind of in the population. Well, if it's not that cold and the ticks are allowed to continue to flourish, maybe the instances of issues will increase too. So when we talk about heifer development, I think the biggest thing for me is making sure that those animals can navigate whatever management scenario will be thrown at them, um, for their mature life. And so I try to make sure that they don't get a ton of preferential treatment. Um, that's where I've changed a little bit. I've probably too hard on 'em in the past. I've probably stunted some heifers in the past and then learned that same. And in stunting 'em Corbin, have you noticed too that there's kind of like two tiers of stunting them? You can make them smaller than they should be, but you can also retard their fertility and like it's pay hour, pay me later. Like they might get that like you mean they're just later, later maturing. Or maybe that growth pattern continues to go because you didn't get it out of them early. And so their nutritional requirements for growth and maintenance and then nursing a calf continue to rise. And so that's where I've been encouraging. I've been asking some friends at universities, I was like, Hey, we need to run the economics on a 3-year-old replacement heifer nowadays. I think that there's some merit in looking at that because these ones that are grown out to three, I've said this before, when we calve twice, we had that November herd. We were trying to move to a fall herd. So we took two different years to move those cows. 'cause I knew they'd get too fat if we moved them that far. So we made 'em springs, then we made 'em falls. Um, the heifers though, every time we would just hold and breed for a fall calf, those heifers that caved at 30 months lived till they were like 13, 14 years old. They did not miss, that's the, they never fell out. That's a, that's a honey spot right there is when you, if you can go from spring to fall or fall to spring, I think that really, that's where the research needs to be done. I don't think there needs to be any research as far as Calvin 'em, well I'm not saying there doesn't need to be any research. I'm thinking Calvin 'em at three might be something that like, I feel like mine, we get a huge or. I would starve them so much that they wouldn't, that it would be, uh, insignificant. I don't know. Its fun to talk about. It's just the numbers game Corbin, like maybe my research is anecdotal and saying there's a lot of cows here that are old and they're all ones that were part of that role. So what's going on there? You know, like, could you afford then if you, if you put another $1,200 in a year's worth of feed into that animal, but you knew they'd last till they were 15. It, it's, it's an economic question. And I know the, we'll have somebody reach out and be like, you need to be harder on cattle. And you Yeah, I get that. But we also need to run businesses that work and business sense. And what's the, uh, what's the other side of that? I mean, how long are the other cows last? I mean, they would've to be some extensive research to say, Hey, my other cows are only living to be nine. Well, that, that's obvious. Well, and then, um, there's a gentleman in Idaho who has been, I. Really shrinking his heifers, breeding them extra young. He's a friend and he's trying to stunt cattle so that the genetic growth they have inside of their bodies is actually higher than what they express so that he can run more cows, like the whole moderate cow on hillside's kind of a theory, but shrinking that mature cow size and those nutritional demands, but keeping locked into those steers, all that growth and development potential. So I think these things are all interesting. It's very interesting. Um, so how, how much of it is you'll, you'll figure out real quick how much of it is controlled by genetics? How much of it is environment? How much of it is Absolutely how we take care of them, Joe? So I'll say this. When I first kind of got started here, I felt like, you know, we had a couple that were carryovers and those always did better. So I had the bright idea to roll my falls to springs, and springs to falls. On my heifers. The prob part of the problem was from fall to spring is not a big deal. It's only adding, you know, from sep September to January, you're only adding a few months. Yeah. From spring all the way around. The fall was a lot more. Well, and that, that really didn't bother me much. But what happened was I had some cows that should have made pathfinder and they would not give them to 'em because that goes off of your average, your whole entire average Right. Of however many days your heifers calve in. And I took all for, for two years, I took two or three gr for two or three years. I took two groups out and it screwed me up and, and I didn't think that was quite fair either, but. And it's hard, right? Because I, I've lived by being pretty hard lined about this guys. I mean, if they don't fit, we get rid of 'em. I don't roll 'em, right? All of those things. And I know Vince, when you've talked about rolling cattle before, you've said, Hey, that's a lot of those cattle end up in the commercial herd or something like that. So I don't want people to think we don't have standards and a typical purebred guy that just doesn't get 'em bread and fertility problems and all that. What I'm saying is, is that we need to be having conversations about the economics of all of them and the ramifications of these choices because, um, the next step of what I was gonna tell you guys is, is do you have a target body weight at calving in mind? Uh, no, no, no. I have a target, target, target, BCS, target body condition. I want them to be, I want 'em to be in good shape. Uh, I don't want 'em to be fat. I don't want 'em to be skinny. I want 'em to be somewhere in the middle. I don't have, I can't put a number to it. So a few years ago I was sitting at the sale barn and I was watching, and I got to watch lots and lots of runs at heifers at some of these special sales. And it seemed like at these special sales, the heifers were seven, eight months bread. Um, like the kind where the auctioneers like be easy on 'em, boys, they're gonna ke you know, and, and they're really heavy bread heifers and elite type sales. It seemed like the heifers that weighed 1150 were too green and the heifers that weighed 1250, you were like, that's a big good heifer that we're gonna have no problems with. And so when I started observing all that, I know that there's different mature height and stuff like that behind these heifers, but I try to get our heifers right around that 1250 mark before they calve without accelerating their nutrition right in that lu trimester to where, you know, we feel like we're catching up and then we're gonna cause calving or dystocia, dystocia issues. Now the other thing I'll tell you, Kevin, when it's 105 out, 110 out, like you guys are dealing with too, some of those heifers that we get too much bark on the ones that are weighing 13 and a quarter, 13, 50, 1400, oftentimes those are the ones we have trouble with. Those are the ones that have dystocia issues. And maybe not because the calf is too big, maybe she's got too much fat inside of her. Maybe she heats up and gets exhausted quicker. I don't know the answers, but. I do know that what I wanna do is I want the lifetime average daily gain of that heer to be as flat of a curve as I can get up to that 1250 at calving. That would mind. So if you, that's the thing about it. If you're gonna carry 'em over, just put 'em on grass and maybe a little bit of feed because they're still growing, they're still maturing. But you don't need to get 'em pig fat just 'cause when your buddies come over say, ho oh look at these heifers here. Don't they look good and blah, blah, blah. I mean, that ruins a lot of good animals. It really does. Yeah. It's overkill. The something else that I've learned over the last couple years, and it's really made a, a big difference, um, talking about develop 'em until they get bred or, or what kind of body condition you want 'em be in bred. I've started keeping mine a little thinner. Yeah. Um, this, this group actually is a little heavier than I'd like 'em to be, than I'm breeding on now, or that we bred on a little while ago. But, um, and I also was talking to my nutritionist and he told me no fermented feed until they have their first calf. And when I pulled my heifers off of silage and just kept 'em on dry hay and dry grain, my, my breeding went from 50% conception to 80. I mean, it was huge. So, lemme ask you that. Um, I had a gentleman send me a text the other day about bulls, and he goes, the biggest lesson I learned was no fermented feeds. What? Excuse my being naive. What's the deal with the fermented feeds? Do you know, Vince? So, kind of what he talked to me, I, I think, and, and I'd have to ask him again, but I think it has something to do with all their body chemistry and it gets 'em a little fat. And they get fat in their der um, you know, that's why he said after they have their first calf, which I don't do that, like my springs are fixing to start calving. We started feeding silage in November. I feel like they're close enough that they're not gonna get a lot of fat in their, they're not, you know, they're, they're bred, they're over the hump. So I start feeding them silage in the fall to get 'em off of, you know, when they, when they're running outta grass and I want 'em to have enough energy and whatnot when they're calving. So I go ahead and start 'em on that. I, I must. If I'm recalling correctly, that's what he told me. But now I could be wrong too, and I don't wanna sound like we're a crew that's hammering on silage or fermented feeds because let's face it, the reason it's used is because it's an incredibly cheap resource. Absolutely. Incredibly cheap. Like it is cheaper than my grass that I'm turning cows out on. I I got in a conversation with a guy in, um, South Dakota, not Bud Pel, um, but South Dakota, this is 15 years ago. And truly not Bud Pel, but the guy told me, he goes, yeah, you can't be, if your grass is that expensive you, that, that country probably needs to be houses and it doesn't even need to be in beef cattle production. 'cause I could do a cow so much cheaper. And I went to this muddy lot where they were Calvin Cat cows in the mud and he was telling me about crop land values and all this. And I was just like, man, that's just, I'm not saying a guy shouldn't do it. That's, that's okay if that's your resource, I'm just more comfortable. Doing it this way. Right. Um, and so if silage is one of the resources you have, that's incredibly cheap, I think what we would just say is be aware of those things. Right. Be aware of the negative ramification of Overdeveloping. Right. Well, I think, I think what can happen is you're born into a region like, uh, those, the, the people, like our friends from South Dakota, they were born there. Our friends from California, Joe, we were born there. Vince, Vince is from Tennessee his whole life. I'm, I've been in Oklahoma a long time. So the problem is, is that we get into these, um, we get into this tunnel vision where, where outside entities, we, we don't want to hear 'em, we don't wanna hear people say that, oh, we don't need to be using fermented feeds. We don't need, we don't wanna hear it. And so I think it's important, and I think, Vince, I gotta commend you for being able to say, you know what, I wanna back off on that fermented feed and we're gonna see if I have a, a better outcome. And it, and it works out. So, and it, it probably cost me just to tick more. But what I mean, we're not feeding them hard, but the biggest thing is what? Well, what's open cow. That's what I was gonna say. What does it cost me for them to not breed? Yeah. And, and Joe going back, I, I may not want to just hijack this, but talking about forgiving one that raises, maybe raises a big calf and didn't breed back as a two. So two of my best cows, the cow that, uh, I sent y'all a picture of today that had a calf standing there with her, she was the first one to calf. She had her first calf, she skipped from spring to fall. She's never missed a beat. She's eight calves at a hundred and or 370 days and she skipped a calf and she's all the way back up to 370 days. You move them. Isn't it crazy? I, yeah, I've noticed too. I mean, how can I complain about that? You can. You can move those cows up 30 days a year. I mean, how can I complain about that? You can't complain about that. Um, no, I think you, I think so. She missed one so I should cut her head off line is maybe something was going on with her. Maybe we had bad weather. Who knows? Drought. Maybe the bull. Maybe the bull went bad. Who knows? What about my whole calving season right now that I've told you guys helping out my dad and all that stuff. Like we're breeding cows a month ago and usually we're done by Halloween. Like that's all just running out of time. We weren't having time to cedar cows. We weren't having time to do the, and we got behind and it's gonna affect us for a long time. Right. But it was the right thing to do. It was the right thing to do to help help some people when they needed. They had a time of need. But, okay. Let's shift gears 'cause we've talked about developing these heifers. Um. And I think we all develop them incredibly differently, which is great. Um, uh, I, like I said, our deal will be like big pasture deal, but we've also learned not to starve those heifers. Um, you know, force 'em out into the country, learn the country, but do not starve them. They have to have that opportunity to grow and their ultimate goal is to be a cow that's gonna be productive for a long time. Um, Vince had said something about, uh, the fermented feeds and, and Corbin was really somewhere, it was very similar to us. It just in the middle, right? Like there's, there's a place he's learned to develop 'em a little more. Now you two have both marketed heifers. How do you tow that line of having one sale ready? Because Vince, you said, I've learned not to show my replacement heifers I'm keeping because guys will start questioning and you only want to show people stuff that's for sale. And I would feel the same. Um, I would also tell I'm not trying to be sneaky or anything. No, no, no. But how many of them, if they just evaluated oranges and apples in the same field, would say, well, that'd have rained good enough, because the sail heifers probably have a little bit more flesh on them. Correct? Right, right. So now I will, I don't mind trying to show somebody, you know, these are replacements. As long as they understand, you know, mainly it's a good friend like you or Corbin showed up, or Wilson or Brian Marshall or somebody. That's good. So all the listeners know that if you get to see his replacement headers, you're truly a good friend. No, but, and the rest are not those. What I'm getting at is those guys know that they can't have those heifers. They're not browbeat me. They're not. Well, you know, I really, I don't wanna buy this heifer in the sale. I wanna buy that one over there. No, that's, that's my replacements. Maybe we should You'll get to buy offspring off of those. Exactly. That's the future of the program. Those are the future. And it's hard to determine. I look, we're the guys are coming to torch these cattle in 15 days and I don't know what's in the sale yet. Right, Vince? Well, you asked, uh, you asked how do we get one? I have, I'd have to defer to Vince on every bit of it. I don't think I've ever had one sale ready. I don't think I've ever got one ready enough. It, I, you can really screw one up. You can get 'em too fast. Heif fast. The are interesting, the open heifers are so you can get them too fat. Same thing with bulls. Yeah. Have you noticed when the heifers, we, we had heifers that we put in the sale, about 10 of 'em. Um, this would be five, six years ago. It'd been the year that was a nine. So 19, I guess. Um, they would've been in twenties sale. So five years ago. Have you noticed they just kind of hang out and clip along and then all of a sudden you go check 'em and you're like, whoa, we went too far. It's so far. I feel like heifers are more delicate than bulls there. Or am I just making that up? So here's, I think heifers require less feed. Could be by a long shot. So what were, what were you gonna say, Vince? 'cause you have to develop 'em. So here's for a photo. Here's the sketchy line that you gotta walk. Okay. When we photo these heifers and bulls, we're just gonna torch 'em. And they'll clip their necks and their tail heads and all that stuff. The cattle, I will slick because the cattle are adults. Okay. And they look, they look better slick. The problem is you'll get, if you're not careful when you're preparing for the sale, they will look borderline obese with hair, and then come sail day, everything's slick. I don't keep hair on 'em because hair's starting to fall out anyway. Then you'll, you'll slick 'em and be like, oh my God, I miss my mo You a sack of bones. Oh, sure. A sack of bones. It's so, so hard and then, or you do it too much. Well, that heifer's gonna be skinny when you shear the hair off of her and then she's still pig fat and obese. You know, and then she won't breed or whatever it might be. One year we had some heifers. I mean, they were freaking smoking and they walked in the video pan. When we video 'em, they're slick and they had four inches of navel hanging down there. And when nobody knew it, not a soul knew it until they shaved all that hair off of 'em. The hair kept it covered and we were like, what? What? What is happening here? What is that? Yeah. We had no clue. Nobody knew. So let me ask you another question off of that. Do you feel like your customers have been successful with how you're developing heifers now? Like being able to breed 'em and make cows outta them? I hope so. I hope so. Um, I was trying to reach out to everybody before Christmas and we got, we got on this project with Nate and I just got tied up and I hope to wrap that up this week and maybe finish calling everybody to make sure if you bought a open heifer, you got her bread or you know, the fall cows. Did they all calve when they were supposed to, or the spring cows that you bought a spring pair? Did they breed back? They're she getting ready to drop a calf? Um, I think it's, it's working. I, I do, but it's also hard to know, you know. So how do you develop your sail heifers then? If, if you feel like it's working, what could you tell our listeners that you do, that you think is working? I'll, I'll put a little more body condition on them, um, than the ones that I'm keeping and I just try to keep 'em on a, a slight, very, very, very slight. Upgrade. Do not think that you're gonna get weight on any animal in 30 days. It's not gonna happen. If you do, you're gonna blow their feet out. We will start now. Once I figure it out, they'll get sorted. Mm-hmm. It's harder that way. You can keep it gradual. That way you can keep it gradual. It's a whole lot harder on bread heifers and cows because they're out in a big group with a bull. Mm-hmm. So we try to preg check decently early. Okay, they're bread, let's sort 'em, and then you can go to fentanyl. Right. I mean. Honestly, February, we should, I think we're preg checking February 6th, which should be 60 days bread or 30 days by the bull. We'll pull bulls that day. And I should be able to sort sell cows that day and that still should give me 60 days. So 60 days is, is, I like 90, 60 to 90, you know. Um, so something, it's like taking pictures of 'em is, it's what really makes it so hard for me and it's what really makes it so weird. It's like I'm selling some open heifers for the first time. Mm-hmm. And I wanna picture all of 'em. 'cause they're really good ones. Like I'm trying to sell the best ones I've got. Yeah. To, to showcase a sire. And so, um. But like, we cut all their hair off, like you were saying, and they look thin. I have no doubt in my mind that those, there's only three, those three heifers, they're separate. Those three heifers are gonna look like a million bucks on sale day. And that's the thing, the problem is pictures are in one week. Don't take pictures of 'em. Well, I mean, if it, if it comes to that, I will not, that that's the thing that, that's something else that I think people screw up with and that's more of a sale episode. But, you know, a bad picture is gonna do way, way, way more damage than no picture or a support picture of the mother. And, and it's not necessarily that the animal might be bad all the time. It's maybe they're just not ready for a picture. And it's important to note. Uh, we live in a, in a, in an age where there's videos. Yeah. So we're taking these videos way later than we're taking pictures for the sale book. So we videoed two weeks before the sale. Yeah. Yeah. So, so my, my, that's what I was just getting ready to say, you know, if you are gonna do a video or even sale day, but if you put a bad picture in there, people are not gonna want to come see 'em. You can get 'em 12 o'clock by sale day. You may not have 'em 12. I mean, we're gonna take pictures 60 days out. Do you know what's, um, all, what's interesting to me about pictures too is that it's, and, and it's mainly open heifers. It's so like, I can take a picture with my phone at a certain angle. And the heifer looks amazing. Mm-hmm. But then I get her in the picture pin, I get her prepped, I get her head clipped off, I get her torched and I get her in the picture pin. And we take a picture, a profile picture, you know, which is like, you know, your, your prototypical picture where they're standing, right. And you get their head right and everything and you're like, where's the rest of Right. That's where, that's where heifers are really finicky to me. They're really weird. Um, but Well, a lot of that could be hair that you've torched off to. Absolutely. Absolutely. But I have sent pictures to friends of this smoking heifer and I'll, I'll look down to see if I got the picture. I'll look up. And she moved and she looked like a pile of junk just because of the way she moved. And you're like, no one responds to my pictures. Yeah. But, but just because of the way she moved and the way she was standing. Or maybe you see one all the time and you're like, golly, I wish she was better than that. I wish she was better than that. And. You know, then you go out there a few weeks later and, and you start catching her where she's standing correctly, you know, and you're like, you know what, I, I thought I like that heifer now. Yeah. I'll tell you, it's, it, it's interesting because I think we've had this comment where we said camera's supposed to add 15 pounds or whatever, but there's some photos now when I look through a sale book. And I've seen enough pictures because we send so many to each other and we have so many different Snapchat groups and individual group texts and stuff. We see a lot of cattle. I mean, everybody does. Everybody's exposed. I opened some of these catalogs now boys, and I'm like, oh my God, that thing is so fat. Mm-hmm. I mean, we're talking body condition score nine plus on replacement heifers. How about some of these videos of these bulls too? And some of these videos that I'm seeing of the heifers in that, when they get that jiggle and they're an open heifer, I'm just like, holy cats. And, and you know, Vince takes 'em too. When you get these mature cows, a mature cow who's hitting her stride, you know? Yeah. Those cows will jiggle a little bit. Um, especially if you feed 'em anything but these open replacement heifers, boys, I'd say watch 'em. Watch 'em, because especially with these modern genetics that are so big belied and so easy fleshing, all those cattle are doing, if they're piling on exterior fat, is, they're piling on internal fat too, right around their reproductive organs, right inside their stomach. And those are all things that are gonna be required for them to go out and function. Now, if that's your environment. And that's what you have, probably not a bad deal. I mean, if you, right, if you're basically running them like that, and that's what you do. But if you're expecting cows to go out and, and utilize a landscape, um, you better make sure that the cattle have been, um, developed in a fashion that they can then work for you. So, you know, we were, I was talking about this similar thing today, uh, with a friend of mine. Uh, we were talking about, um, a guy that does a really good job and, you know, he's, he's on point with his development of his bulls, but it's almost unrealistic to, for Joe Fisher or Corbin or Vince to go buy one of these bulls and then bring 'em home and the bull stay in their same rig or hit those benchmarks with its calves because he was pushed. And it's really no different with a heifer, a female. I mean, you're gonna, if you get one like that, you're probably not gonna get her bread. So you better get her bread before you get her that fat. But you know how, how we may feed, but we don't feed so hard and we don't have to get 'em up and push 'em to a feed bunk to make sure they eat that day. You know, we try to keep things where they have to travel. It's not like Joe's traveling and it's probably not even like Corbin's traveling. I mean, our average pastors size is only probably about 35 acres, which means they don't get to travel a lot. But it's not a feed lot either. You know, we're not, they're not just standing in a mud pit waiting on somebody to bring 'em some feed they get, they go out and scavenge, they go stand around the hay feeder, they go be lazy. They go do this and go do that. And. I think as long as you give 'em some room and don't feed 'em so much that they don't go out and scavenge or they just lay around all day. I think that's your, that can be somewhat of an indicator along with your body condition. What do you guys think? I, I actually, go ahead, Joe, did you have something good? No, go ahead. Go ahead. So to your point, I, whenever, whenever, um, these open heifers that I'm feeding, I, I really could have them on some hay. I've got dry forwards though, so I'm feeding them, but I'm also, um, encouraging them to go eat that dry forage still, even though it's just forward, it's just nothing. Right. I'm encouraging that exercise. But you're get, you're pro supplementing with feed. Yeah, but I'm feeding them. Yeah. But then I, I'll get 'em in and feed 'em and then, and then, you know, and I'll give 'em hay. I'll enroll 'em Hay. Two or three times a week. But the rest of the time I want those. I want 'em moving. I want you moving. Yeah. Um, now when we're talk about, uh, there's really not anything, I don't want to keep moving, but if, if I've got a group of cows, it's like 20 cows or something that are older cows, uh, I don't mind using a hay ringing for cows like that and, and keeping it full. Mm-hmm. Uh, but for those, for those young heifers where I've got dry grass and, and, and this is something that I haven't been able to do every year because I haven't had grass in the wintertime the last few years, but I have been trying to utilize what's there and try to make 'em eat it. And also putting out hay costs money. It's expensive. Now you're, for our listeners, you're talking about stockpile grass. Correct. It's just stockpiled grass. Yeah, it's just leftover grass. That's just grass. It's just brown. It's dormant. Dormant. It's, it's got, it's not gonna test anything. It's just filler. That's all it is. I still want out chasing your. That's, it's appropriate to put out a protein supplementation so those cattle can digest that. Correct? They're on tubs. Yes. I remember, uh, some friends being really critical of me one time and they're like, oh, we don't use lick tubs. I'm like, well, but when you would use lick tubs is your winter, which is so extreme that you're feeding with ATM R. Mixer. Ration. Yeah. Lick tubs don't make sense. Right. When you get to May in California, there's no more green grass if you aren't on irrigated pasture, if you're out on dormant grass, you've gotta give them protein supplementation to utilize that stockpiled forage. And so a lot of times that quote harder country that we give our replacement heifers, we make sure to distribute protein across the landscape because they're eating like it's like 4% protein in spots. I mean, it's right and, and yeah, there's some clover and some other stuff in there that's dry. That's a little higher quality on some of these spots. But usually the heifers don't get the luscious of fields. We save that for pears or something like that, but. I wanted to go back to what Vince said, um, Corbin, when you, you encouraged me to go and I said, no, I, I wouldn't forget what Vince talked about. The 35 acre pasture and then the big pastures like I have and the one acre pastures and the ability to move. I don't know if it fits in this podcast, but I'm gonna say it. That's my draw to the Angus Cow. Joe Fisher's personal draw to the Angus Cow is that there are so many diverse ways to skin this cat. Um, and I think that I've probably done a poorer job of articulating, because I don't believe that my big range is the only way to raise cattle. I believe it works for me and for my sediment management scenarios, and Vince's 35 acre pastures work for him and his environment and his customers, and that's the coolest part about the Angus Cow is there's a place for all of those. It's just. If I do get critical of stuff is when, when folks are, are, are, uh, assertive enough is the word I'll use. I'm thinking of other words, but I'll, I'll use assertive to just claim that their cattle can do it all everywhere. And I say, boy, this is an awfully wide array of environments in this country to make that Oh yeah. Or in this world, you know, go ahead. There's cattle that, that fit different scenarios and we should try to find ways to incorporate genetics that we think will meet our scenarios. Right. So you, you know, you touched on a minute ago, the guy that said, we don't use lick tubs, but they have a TMR mixer. So that's where people, before they really comment, should think about why you're using a lick tub. Absolutely. Why they don't have to use a lick tub. Instead of just pointing a finger and saying, well, I'm better than you because I don't use look tubs. Well, you're doing it differently. That's all the same goal is you're both achieving the same goal. He's using a TMR mixer to get his protein out. You're using a tub and a bunch of dormant grass. What's, it's the same principle. He's just going about it differently. That ties a bow on exactly what Corbin said earlier too, about, you know, I can't remember how Corbin said it, but this podcast, uh, I feel like I had a pretty open mind before I started podcasting. But the podcast has been wonderful at opening my eyes with all these Me too listeners reaching out. Me, me too. 'cause there were different terms. You know, I think a lot of people were really, that I talked to really, really down on irrigated pasture. I'm like, wait a minute, but we go to irrigated pasture, we go to Mountain Meadows. Well why do you do that? And I'd say, well, because our grass is dormant in May. What do you mean it doesn't rain there in May anymore? And I'm like, no, it never does. It's not that we're in a drought, it's the climate that we have. And what these people were talking about was in an area which would be equivalent to my march, April, may, where things are lush and awesome that there are some management scenarios where people are still putting out protein then. Right. And they are still putting 'em on irrigated pasture then. And I went, oh, so what you've been exposed to is people truly just slaving over these cattle. We really need to take the time to learn our fellow producers management strategies because a lot of them have a reason. Most of them have some sort of reason why they do things, honestly. Um, and some of 'em may not, especially when it comes to management. And some do. Especially when it, you know, if we talk about, you know, developing bulls Yeah. You might, could poke holes and, but when we talk about developing heifers, I think the, uh, each of us all have the same goal in mind, and that's what's unique. Yeah. That's what's, that's what's great about, you know, that's where this, this conversation can be, um, relevant to a broader swath of people because we all have the same goal in mind with developing our heifers. And that's for them to breed and that's for them to breed back again. And I think beyond that, um, everything else is, even when, when you're selling heifers Corbin, I think the ramifications are steeper than an overdeveloped bull think. When you're developing heifers, your main goal still needs to be for them to breed as a heifer. Yeah. For them to breed as a wet too. And, and that should be your goal with bulls. But I think a lot of bulls sell into commercial markets and people don't even, you never even know, you don't know how many a bulls breeding, how many is not whatever. But when you sell these heifers, you're gonna know if she doesn't breed because she's going to someone that has, those don't go out into commercial herds that just get lost. Right. And they become part of the percentages, the ramifications are such that folks are gonna call back and they're gonna say, Hey, I need a credit. Your heifer didn't breed. Absolutely. Or, you know, she didn't meet the, she missed the mark on this or that. Um, and so I, I think you're right. I think that there's a lot more similarities in developing heifers correctly than probably bulls. And I, I'll go back to, to where I sort mine, you know, if, if everybody saw those, they'd probably be like, you're keeping these and you're selling these, because I do keep 'em thinner. But it's by design. So they'll breed a little easier. The other thing too is, you know, everybody wants the cattle that they buy to AI breed. I get that. I want my cattle to AI breed too, but just because she doesn't AI breed doesn't mean she's a piece of garbage, you know? Right. That's where you need to have good bulls. I think it's, uh, you know, and this is an advice, but I think it's smart for, if you're an open heifer buyer, to be open to turning that open heifer out with a bull and getting a red, absolutely Don't fart with AI iner. Um, I, I know I bought a couple open heifers last year, which normally I really don't. Um, well, I turned 'em out with holy water quick as I could. Well, you got a good bull. I got a good bull. Yeah. And so, and I know that when they come in heat, when it's time, he's gonna breed 'em. And I'm not gonna try to manipulate anything because let's be honest, those heifers are a little bit are managed. Better than what mine are. And so they're gonna be a little tougher to get bred. So it's like, yeah, um, AI's great, but let's, let's buy Good Bulls, let's get 'em bread Vince early and let's get 'em bred. Right? Let's get 'em quick in the season because you just do the math. 283 days, 365 in a year. She's got 82 days to breed to stay with her contemporaries. So what I, even on this show, heifer, it's really funny. It was said, um, they asked me, what if we used this bull? And I said, yeah, that's great. And they said, well, what's the best advice you could provide? I said, start early and get her with a bull as soon as possible because you've been showing her and you've been feeding her. And a lot of that is abnormal. Just get her bread. That's the best shot you can give a heifer is get her bread. We used to try to, sorry Corbin, we used to try to AI two or three times AI once, put a bull out. Yeah. Yeah. And so what happens is with these open heifers is we're pulling the rug out from 'em right? When we bring 'em home. Yep. And then you want 'em to breed too, even though they're on a decline. Um, how about some of these people, have you guys heard of people, um, just saying with their heifers, they're gonna turn out bulls lately or no? No, I haven't, but I've heard, I've heard some of that lately. Um, just disappointment with synchronization protocols or whatever, and they're like, you know what? I'm not gonna monkey with it for their first calf. I'm turning out heifer bulls that I know that I could trust. Kicking 'em out on 'em, getting 'em bread and we will have 'em raise, you know, big strapping calves with their second calf. I think that holds some water and some merit. I mean, if you want to have an AI program, the hard part is, is your easiest ones to breed are the heifers. 'cause you don't have to monkey with calves and all that. Um, but I, I think that it's interesting to think about for sure. Um, and, and on our heifers, we, this last year even we, uh, we time AI bred those. So if they don't have an AI calf, it's, you know, it's just part of the collateral damage that happens in the numbers game. They were time AI bred. And what about these people that say they're a hundred percent ai? I say they don't breed enough of them, but when you ask how many times they had the ai, 'em, it's numerous times. It's times, uh, it's, I'm sorry if you are a hundred percent ai, I love you. Well, it's, it's still not, it's not, it, it's not first of all feasible. It's not. That's right. It's not realistic. It's not feasible. And if, but here's the thing. If, if Corbin, if you said, I don't want anything that will not ai and I'm gonna ai, I'm three times or four times or six times, and after that, if they don't breed, they're gone. Okay. You would eventually, you would eventually have if you, if you stayed with that and that's your own, but that's, you would end up with it. But that's up to you. That's right. But that's also your choice. Didn't, because with AI breed though, right? That's also your choice. Correct. Yeah. And I'm gonna cu anything that done AI breed. Well you, you can't say that she's a non breeder 'cause you really didn't give her a good chance. Maybe you gave her a quarter CC straw. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. And we all know those blow out the back of the Colorado. Do you know if still if it up to me? If it was up to me, I would implement a one CC Straw. That way we can all grab a hold of 'em. Ampules. There's the fake commercial. There's commercial. There it is. One cc straw ampules. No, I think let's go back to amps. I think that's, I think that's all good stuff. I think that's all a good point. Um, I think, you know, keeping the center of what your goals really are and it's getting those heifers to have a live calf and be in the herd for a long time. I think that whether you're selling them or you're keeping 'em, those are the goals I really liked. Uh, Vince, I liked how you laid out about how you develop your heifers because I think you're always towing that line. You might even said that between trying to make sure that they're marketable. Um, we just did the same thing with our bulls. I talked that on our bulls where I was like, man, I was thinking, boy, they're light, boy, they're light. Well now bet they held up these things. Uh, so far people have been very, very pleased and they haven't seen the fall off. Um, they weren't as greasy when we dropped 'em off, but they were ready to breed everything, including the barn cats. I mean, those things are ready to breed cattle and so heifers should kind of be the same way. But, you know, on the flip side, when I told you guys before, you can't starve a pro profit into a cow either. Correct. You can't starve a profit into a cow. So what about, one thing we didn't talk about, do you, I thought we were gonna talk about in the beginning when you said your criteria. Do you have criteria and do you cu heifers at weaning if they don't meet the certain criteria? Usually I'll answer first. Um, the criteria would be. Structural flaws. Mm-hmm. First of all, um, and, and I'm not just simply saying a high tailhead or something, but like goofy lage, like they can't walk. There's something, some sort of structural flaw that would be one, uh, dangerous disposition. If there was something like that, that would be two noticeable foot issues would fall under, uh, under structural, which we don't develop to the point of, uh, giving 'em enough tr nutrition to really actually see that, to be honest with you. Um, so structural would also include really, really masculine headed or something that looks out of balance or outta whack with that. Mm-hmm. And then the severely young, the severely young. Other than that, I try to keep You mean young as in too small? Are you talking about like cleanup bull 60 days behind everybody else? Correct. Okay. That's what I'm talking about. Because usually we've seen that those heifers don't end up making it anyways, and they're later. And so, you know, and I'll tell you, um, I used to get rid of the extreme bigs too. The extreme outliers on the big end, the extreme outliers on the small end. Lately we've been trying to just let the bull sort 'em, the quote unquote bull, which would be just fertility and just letting it be, just seeing what, yeah. Animals will stay and keeping as many as we can. Now, when we get to a spot where all these ranches are filled, the criteria is going to change. Um, but we don't, aren't in a spot where the ranches are all filled. We're kind of in a grow mode right now. What, what do you do Corbin, with that same. Question prompt. Uh, it's, it's, it's eerily similar. It's almost gross how similar I, I mean, um, I don't, as I've kind of started honing in on genetics and, and being really stringent. I, the, the really big ones kind of, uh, we have less variance. So there's not as many of those outliers that are just extremely huge and like big frame eight frame heifers that they just don't really, we don't crop many of those out anymore. Um, as far as the small ones, they just, they sort themselves. And if, and if, and if I do decide, oh, um, I'm gonna try to keep the, you know, a few of these younger heifers, um, generally by breeding, they sort of themselves, and I'm like, yeah, she's too small. I'm just not even gonna screw with it. Um, and they, a lot of times they don't cycle anyway. What about you, Vince? What about you, Vince? So very similar. I mean, if their feet are that bad at weaning, they gotta go. Um, structure. Yeah, we don't see a lot of that. Um, generally I like to try to just say and, and disposition as well, but we don't see a whole lot of that either. Generally I'll say, okay, if my heifers are averaging 600 pounds at weaning, um, I'll say, okay, anything that's stupid outta line, like a 400 pounder. Okay, well she's probably never gonna catch up. Then I need to go back and look at her mama. Did she not milk, you know, hard enough for this calf? Or is it a just a bad bru mating? Or, or what? Um, generally we don't call too many heifers because they can always be a reset. You know, if something, what of, uh, what do, what of heifers that are out of a bad reset? Um, was it inappropriate? Because I always, I had one this year and I'm gonna tell you what I did. She weighed like three 50 outta average. In what though? What's the rest of your average? Five 50. So she, she was pretty, I would prob I would maybe give her a chance, but if she didn't breathe, she didn't breathe. Okay. I rolled her though to the fall and I'll see what happens. I mean, it's just one, it's one, it's one. Yeah. You can't do pretty royally bred. You can't do 50 that way. Right. No. No. And, and, and luckily we don't have bad resets on that many of 'em, but this one happened to be one that was, I can't make any more of 'em. So it was like, right. Give her a chance. Yeah. Well, I'll roll her to the fall and if she turns into a good cow that way, I'm not gonna hold it against you. So some, we, this whole thing has been after winning, correct. Post winging. Mm-hmm. Pretty much. Well, I mean, what about pre-weaning development? Not that I just want to turn into another three hour pod, but what about pre-weaning development real quick? I mean, you're not creeping right Joe? Your environment the way you're at, you can't, your, you don't need to. No, I'm not. Um, but I will tell you, if I had access to commodities that made it cost effective. Mm-hmm. For October, November, December, I would probably find a way to help those cattle along just a little bit. There's, there's times, there have been times in the past. I mean, if it doesn't come from a pickup of ours, there's no nutrition coming to those cattle during that timeframe. And the most effective dollars and cents way would be to feed those calves a little bit separate from the cows. Mm-hmm. Um, so I definitely understand why people would use those resources. We're just so far from anything, it's not cost effective. It's just not, it doesn't work. Um, but I try pre-weaning to make sure I, I wanna make sure that those cattle have ample feed in front of 'em, you know? Right. And so we've reduced stocking rates in places. We try to make sure you alfalfa too, right. As a, instead of creep maybe like when you wean and pre wean. Well, no, no, when, when I say pre wean, I mean like maybe a week or two ahead of time to get them, get 'em used to it. Like when we, when we legit wean, like we, we will gather cattle and we will separate, we will put 'em in trailers and we'll haul 'em to where they're going and they have not been fed previously. Okay. And I'm not saying that that's the right thing. That's what we do. That's your situation. And then on the heifers, generally though, Vince, when they actually get separated from their mothers, there's a fence line and there's probably no feed with those heifers ever. And they're just, it's just grass. And that would be in May when we have really, really good feed for those heifers oftentimes, and they're moving to good rangeland conditions. Then as that feed starts to diminish into July, that's when we'd start supplement 'em a little bit. Um. But no, we don't. Uh, but that's kind of the California way too. Uh, if you went out to most commercial cattlemen, it would be the same. And you go to different parts of the world. Uh, a lot of those, the bad drought years we had, um, and we started creep feeding bulls. We would always do that like 45 days before we wean. Then boom, those bulls transition right on to feed and they took off like gangbusters And some respects, I think, um, if the widget we sell is a bull, that'd probably be. Better for us and cheaper and more effective. Now, when I talk about just longevity and bottom line and how we do it, I, I, I like how we do it now. I think it works well, um, provided our customers understand what we're doing. But don't compare to other contemporaries when I say contemporaries like my contemporaries of bull producers and how else they manage cattle, I mean mm-hmm. God bless. I I got a text the other day of a 2 0 5 day wait that was like 1115 or something like that. Mm-hmm. And we've, we've been down that road before. Um, and I know where it leads and I, I've chose that. We don't want to go back there. Corman. Um, a lot of, a lot of the reason why I don't really creep feed is, is mainly maintenance as time. Um, so I've got creep feeders, I've got like four of them, but throughout the summertime I rotate pastures. We, we rotational graze and so. Whenever I know a group of cows is gonna be somewhere for a while. Yeah. I'll take a creek feeder out there and let those calves eat. But there's just really no way for me to, I mean, I would have to quit to putting up hay and, and getting ready for the winter and doing all the things we have to do to get ready for the feeding time. If I was gonna keep, I just don't have time to keep Creek Feeders full. I don't have time to move them. I don't have time to do all that. Right. So I kind of, and I think a lot of us Western guys, um, which I'll lump Corbin in there, we don't have the equipment to do it. Right, right. No. Like when we were creep feeding, we're using a 42 horse tractor and snow shovels to snow shovel feed into the bucket of a tractor that was, you know, washed out and bleached. And then we dump it up in the creep feeder. Then we haul the creep feeder three miles out. Like it was a disaster. We have, uh, we have these little 400 pound creep feeders that you lift up and then you just dump the feed in 'em with the feed truck. Oh. It's just, it's just, um, it's expensive. It's not very efficient. Uh, and then another thing I have to worry about is just feeding the pigs. You know what I mean? Because those pigs will, oh, that's the other one I would've said too, Corbin, I would've been feeding, I was feeding pigs like Yeah, a ton. Like, and all you're doing is drawing 'em in and they're tearing up your pastures and making things worse. So tearing up feeders about disease vectors too. Yeah. And disease. All kinds of stuff. Everything. So, yeah. Uh, creek feeders are greats. They require a lot more than just dumping. Feeding. I have weaned, really big bulls. I really have. And it just, um, well, and to your point, Corbin, about. Like commodities and things. Right now in California, the almond commodities are in the tank. I should be feeding almond holes to some thin stalker cattle that I got bought somewhere. Like the value and the cost of gain is there. It's just not what we do. It's not right. Yeah. In our normal production cycle. But I think savvy people are doing that. I think commercial cattlemen that are closer to some of these commodities are probably leaving some potential and money on the table, to be honest. I think and, and honestly, um, it makes sense for commercial cattlemen to, uh, implant calves. I mean, why does it not? Why would it not? I mean, there's certain scenarios where a lot of that stuff makes sense, but the thing about it is, is you can't compare what you're doing developing a calf to a commercial outfit because theirs are going to the feed yard. Unless they're keeping 'em back. But consistency is key in all of it. Yeah, you can't use almond holes this year, this month, and then next month. Well, the almond holes got too expensive, so we're gonna use this. And that's one reason why I quit buying some of the feed that I used to use, because every time we got a load of it, it was different because the commodities were a little cheaper over here, and commodities were cheaper over there. So we changed it up and I didn't feel that the feed, the feed was consistent, even though they were guaranteeing me. It was, I wasn't pulling samples on it and checking it, but I just didn't like it. Um, and we do creep feed. We're fortunate enough to be able to do it, and we grow a lot of our own commodities and it works for us. Um, there's lots of times that I think about not doing it, but I don't know what my calves would look like. Yeah, there's definitely a, it's scary, you know, you've done it so much this long this way. It's scary to try to change it. And you asked me a question about alfalfa that I probably, I addressed it for this year, but not on the normal. This year's been exceptionally warm. I mean, I just, I just turned cattle loose. I'm embarrassed to say this, but the, the center of my calf is how deep the green grass was. I was dumping cattle into, we're talking like march, mid-March, April. Levels of, of forage and quality of forage for these cattle, which is incredible for us. And so the cow herd as a whole has not had one lick of alfalfa, not one single flake. The first calf heifers, we fed a little bit, and so, but on a normal year, we would feed two to five pounds of alfalfa per cow, especially through AI breeding season. I was asking a nutritionist one time about feeding cabs a pellet or something like that, and he said, honestly, he said, with the price of alfalfa and the nutritional value, you'd be better off to just put a little creep panel and five panels around a big bale of alfalfa, leave the twines on and let those babies just get in there where they can munch on some of that hay because their mothers, when you're only feeding two to five pounds, there's nothing for the calves. Right. The mo, the mothers are eating it all, and those calves have transitioned in their stomach to where they need something to get into them. And so, um, we've tried that before we have. Um, and I wouldn't say that we wouldn't do it again if the commodity prices would fit. Well, the reason why I asked you about that is 'cause I thought you had mentioned before when you weaned, you kicked them out in this big pen and you had, you had filled the bunks full of alfalfa. That's the bulls, yeah. Okay. Just the bulls. I didn't know if you had leading up to it. A couple weeks out, try to train them, Hey, this is for you to eat. That's what I probably should do, Vince. Yes, I should. But it's a lot of work. It's time. Uh, and the cattle are an hour away from headquarters. Far away. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying. Everybody's so different and, and the field they're in is the smallest field's, 800 acres. And here the problem is it's, yeah, it doesn't work's 300 degrees, like literally. There's a lot of years where I'm just waiting on the heat to break before I wean, isn't it? Well, fascinating though to really listen to other producers talk about their scenarios and how absolutely different it is. We're all different. And what would that a alpha, let's say you fed some alfalfa, Corbin, what would that afa, I don't know. That's why I'm saying what would that bring body temperature up? Yeah, I don't know. With that high protein feed, I, I don't know either. I know it blows, absolutely blows my mind that people can feed silage year round around here. I know some, some guys not far from here that feed it 365 days a year. And I got news when April rolls around, usually end of March, April 1st, and we start getting that little one inch tall grass. They will not come to the bunk. They would rather go eat that one inch tall piece of grass than come to the bunk and eat what I have prepared for 'em. So we just stop. So yesterday we gained, we gathered, uh, these 30 pair and put 'em in a little field. And when I'm talking little, it's like a 25 acre field, but it hadn't had cattle in it since we AIed and we've had such a moderate year, it had. Six inches of regrowth and miles. And Paxton had, um, because I, it was just us, I sent them ahead with the hay rig and they went around and some cows are kind of munching on it and following 'em and things. And I'm going out into the tougher spots on a four wheeler finding cattle and they f flaked out that one 1300 pound bale to those 30 pair. And about five of them were eating that alfalfa. The rest were in that fresh field just hammering that grass. Just like you said, Vince. I mean it's, they would rather eat that than that feed your hauling to 'em. And something else here, I don't know about there, but here, this fess real washy. Yeah. And along with that comes, uh, issues in the spring because, um, oh, I'm drawing a blank. Um. Like endotoxemia or something. Yeah. Toxicity. Um, God, I just, I can't think, oh, the words I can, I, I know what you're talking about. What is it? I can't think of the name of it. He does not know what you're talking about. Anyway, that, that, I'll think of it in a minute. I'll think of it in a minute. That heats up their core body temperature, the number one. Number two, it's real washy. So, um, end of fight. End of fight. End of fight. Yes. There it is. End of fight. Look, he knew, he knew, so, but my point is my nutrition is like, set a roll hay out. I don't mind setting a marola hay out, but they're not gonna eat it. They're not gonna look at it. They don't touch it. So then you end up having a bale of hay that you can't ever, that you gotta set on fire at some point in three years. But my, my point to it is that slows everything down in their gut. It lets them get more out of it than just shooting straight through. Because if they could get some dry forage in their gut, and it also helps offset the end of fight. Yeah. So it, it's, man, it's so tricky. And then during all this, you're trying to breed 'em. Right. Yeah. You wouldn't, you wouldn't think it, but my, my grass finishing guru friend, he grass finishes a lot of animals. Like he calls it like driving a Ferrari on a two-lane country road. With his level of rotation and the forges they've introduced, I mean, to do a good job with grass fed beef, it's gotta be, we aren't talking about stuff that smells like game, like this stuff is incredible to eat and he's rotating those cattle lots and lots of times a day. He learned, just like you're saying, it wasn't end of fight, but cattle were getting ketotic just like they were in a feedlot on straight corn and it was burning up their guts and they were having all these issues and he just went and bought a bunch of cheap hay. It wasn't moldy, but it was cheap. And he said it didn't look like they were eating it. They put it out in these portable hay racks that you drag along as you rotated the, the, the hot wire fence. Mm-hmm. And he said, and you just turn around one day and sure enough it'd be low, then it'd be gone. And so they were eating it. It just didn't look like they were, he was basically feeding them straw. Yeah. And they needed that to slow the rate of passage and cut back on the keto ketosis that they were creating. It's almost like, um, like when you're developing bulls, like when you put that hay out, you start noticing, so like at a certain point we run outta grass, so we'll put the hay out and the hay's pretty close and it's really easy for them to get to. And I'll notice that the bulls will start doing better. Almost immediately, you'll, you kind of call it, you might call it hay belly, but you know, you notice that they're more full. I think that just, it just makes their digestive tract work better. Everything just kind of gels better as long as, you know, with them having that dry forage to go along with what they're taking in. So, absolutely, I it's all interesting for sure. Cows need to ruminate. Yes. I mean, that's one thing in all this development stuff that we need to remember. Um, you know, and I'm not talking bad about anybody who uses concentrates, if that's a, if that's a, uh, resource that you have and you want to utilize that resource, but cows need to ruminate, they need to chew cu, they need to do those things to operate as a functioning cow in terms of longevity in her environment. And, um, I'm now the host, Vince is gone. Um, so what do we do now? He's back. Hey there. I'm hey. Whoa. There he is. That's interesting. I don't know what happened, guys. I'm sorry. Um, now you're back in control though. But I tell you what needs to happen is Amy is gonna freaking kill us 'cause this thing is two hours long. Um, so we probably just need to wrap it up. I'm hungry anyways. You already said take it away. Tumor Corbin. Oh, I did say take it away. Tumor. But is that gonna be edited out or no? I don't know. Take it away. Tumor. Take it away. Take it away. Tumor. We will see you next time around the shoot.