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Hi-Line
April 2017
FARM & RANCH
www.havredailynews.com
Cattle: Swanson: 'We try to stick to the basics'
Help for firehit ranchers
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Young calves shelter up in March in a hollow under a grove of trees on the Diamond Bar Ranch in the Bear Paw Mountains. bull for his baldy cross. Most of his Angus bulls are Shipwheelbred, he added. Swanson said, he breeds bulls that will give his customers cow herd improvement. “We truly try to stick to the basics,” he said, “just cattle with a lot of longevity that are going to make our commercial customers money. They’re going to be good mothers, have good flushing ability (for embryo transplant), … have good feet and udders and disposition, and some carcass traits as well. That’s our main focus … not to get too extreme in anyway. Not small, not too big.” Come sale time, the second Wednesday in December every year, Swanson’s focus is on getting his registered bulls sold. He said, they have a feedlot to finish the bulls, a sale barn for the auction right on their place and set up the auction for live, online and telephone bidding. Customers also can preview the bulls via videos on their website. Swanson said they sell a few bred heifers at their sale and retain some registered heifers as replacements, but any heifers beyond those numbers get sold with his commercial cows in October. Shipwheel bulls typically sell across Montana and into Idaho, the Dakotas and Iowa, he said, adding that they deliver the bulls for free to the buyers after the sale and
before their calving season starts again. “We enjoy seeing new country, and we’ve had the opportunity to meet a lot of great people in this business,” he said. Kleinjan said he keeps his sales simple. He said he doesn’t try to speculate on the ups and downs of the market, because it can change quickly, so he just secures a contract for his calves in July, and gives them their preconditioning shots prior to shipment in the fall. Once the calves are gone, the cows go back to winter pasture with a protein supplement, he said, adding straw and hay when a big cold snap hits and in the spring prior to calving. Cowan, who said he did OK on cattle prices last year despite the market, sells his cattle through Northern Livestock Video Auction in August, and said he has had good luck with that system. Bidders purchase weanlings by pot loads which is, depending on weight of the calves, how many will fit in a tractor-trailer load. He said he contracts steer calves for a set weight with an allowable variance. He usually sells only one load of heifers and keeps the rest of the heifers for replacement, he said, adding that if he has extra heifers he just sells those at auction because mixed loads of steers and heifers haven't
Photo Rene Brown
sold well for him in the past. His steers, he said, usually sell at about 560 pounds and the heifers at 520. Years with good grass can bump those numbers up by 20 pounds, he added. “Last year we had all kinds of grass. They should’ve been heavy,” he said, but with an abnormal 25 to 30 inches of rain last summer the grass either didn’t have a chance to mature or the moisture leached nutrition from the plants, so it looked good, but didn’t add weight to his calves. “It’s something that I’ve never saw, and the guys that are older than me say the same thing,” he said, adding that he was luckier than a lot of producers in the area and harvested his crops and hay between wet spells. Some of that hay, though, and other hay that he bought got wet in the bale, but he said he was able to feed it using a processor to knock the mold out and using supplements. “What this year will bring I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “It is a good lifestyle. I’m not going to say it isn’t. It has its drawbacks, it definitely does,” Cowan said, “but you show me something that doesn’t.”
In response to the more than 2 million acres of land burned, homes, buildings and fences destroyed, and countless livestock lost or injured in the March wildland fires that spread in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado, the Montana Angus Association will be donating at least $16,000 for relief efforts. The state organization and the association’s seven regions have committed to donating $2,000 apiece, said Klint Swanson of Shipwheel Cattle Co. in Chinook, president of the north-central region. At least eight people lost their lives in or related to the fire, including two first responders as well as a semitractor-trailer driver who died from smoke inhalation. “Rebuilding will take years, not months, and tens of millions of dollars to rebuild herds, fence and other infrastructure these ranchers rely on for income,” Meagan Cramer with the Kansas Farm Bureau told Fox News. A lot of people in the agriculture industry are frustrated by the disconnect between rural and urban areas, Swanson said, adding that national news hasn’t covered the devastation enough. “If you eat, you are involved in agriculture,” Swanson said. This is one of the ways the ag community comes together to help neighbors out, he said. Amy Van Dyke-Crowder, executive administrator for the state association, said each region is raising money in their own way, but she said she thinks at least some of the money is coming from donations already made to the respective regions to be used for their operations and activities. Van Dyke-Crowder said a fundraising auction will be held during the Midland Bull Test Sale’s Angus Banquet April 6 in Columbus at the Little Metra at 6 p.m. Swanson said letters requesting donations from the north-central region members will have been sent by print deadline. No fundraisers had been set in north-central Montana by print deadline, but Swanson said people can contact him if they want to donate to the relief effort for affected farmers and ranchers. He can be reached at 357-2492 or 9454180, or people can go online to http:// www.mtangus.org for other contact information.
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