Ask Steve Dave Farm And Cow And Ranch And Tractor And Truck Related Questions

[ben ji]

Tom, come in here and tell everyone how rough ridin' incredible it is that my slack ass who hated cow farming my entire life retained all this critical cow farm knowledge, WOW!

I am just sitting back and enjoying SD.  Not so fond memories of the "buller pen" for the steers that had been gang rode in the main pen. Extra work getting them their own hay and silage.


Tom

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wait what???

Feedlot cattle feeding is analogous to man prison.  Same sex animals in confined space. Eventually some of the steers become everyone else's bitch.  You have to isolate them to avoid getting rode to death.


Tom

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So this afternoon I noticed a cow by the water tank that was barely standing, then later it was down and couldn't stand up. I texted my uncle to let him know and he said "Yup I walker her in, we'll put her in the corral tomorrow. Bulls were a little hard on her!"

 

[ben ji]

I had no idea what silage/ensilage was until I learned about it in the farm thread and its not something they do on the cat ranch so I'm going to sit this one out.

[michigancat]

nothing for generic silage or "feed"? I had never heard ensilage until someone posted it in the farming thread.

what a stupid poll

[ben ji]

How much would it suck to be a cow? If your a male then there is a 90% chance they cut your balls off and you are dead within a year. If you are a female you get knocked up, give birth then a couple months later your kid is taken away and your thrown back to the bulls.

I guess the 10% or whatever the percentage of male calfs that turn into bulls have it pretty good for a while.

[sys]

nothing for generic silage or "feed"? I had never heard ensilage until someone posted it in the farming thread.

what a stupid poll

to clarify, the raging linguistics debate being polled is silage v ensilage.  the bonus embedded question, which is unrelated to the linguistics, is whether the respondent prefers to see cows eating corn or sorghum based silage/ensilage.

[sys]

gotta be the highest quality of life of any mainstream farm animal, tbh.  unless you include horses, maybe.

[sys]

maybe sheep have it better, actually.  i'm not aware of sheep feedlots.

[sys]

well eff.

https://www.theland.com.au/story/5210003/automated-feedlots-the-next-big-thing-in-sheep/

[steve dave]

Tom, come in here and tell everyone how rough ridin' incredible it is that my slack ass who hated cow farming my entire life retained all this critical cow farm knowledge, WOW!

I am just sitting back and enjoying SD.  Not so fond memories of the "buller pen" for the steers that had been gang rode in the main pen. Extra work getting them their own hay and silage.


Tom

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

wait what???

Feedlot cattle feeding is analogous to man prison.  Same sex animals in confined space. Eventually some of the steers become everyone else's bitch.  You have to isolate them to avoid getting rode to death.


Tom

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

So this afternoon I noticed a cow by the water tank that was barely standing, then later it was down and couldn't stand up. I texted my uncle to let him know and he said "Yup I walker her in, we'll put her in the corral tomorrow. Bulls were a little hard on her!"

 

I’m not sure I’d accept the word of someone with warm weather calves just dying left and right


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[pissclams]

goats seem to party pretty hard

[michigancat]

sys, no one ever says ensilage. I don't know why you think that is debateable. I have heard lots of folks call something like sileage "feed" however. I don't know what it is, it just looks like grassy corn and it's really tall but it doesn't have any corn. maybe it is corn just cut way early but I don't think that's what it is

[steve dave]

I have heard people say ensilage. but rarely. like, my dad knows for a fact it's ensilage but just calls it silage 95% of the time. and tbh I think he may have just given up on ensilage all together decades ago. obviously I'm not around but lil sd goes on the feed truck to feed cows 24/7/365 and we talk A LOT about what the cows eat.

[michigancat]

maybe it was sorghum? but it was always taller than the milo that was harvested for grain.

something like this:

[steve dave]

I think ours was mostly milo. though we'd occasionally plant fields of some other weird feed crop that would get chopped up and gross. we'd also do "stalks" which was like the leftover of corn or some crap.  It was nasty crap and even cows had to have it mixed with alfalfa to eat the trash.

[michigancat]

this was from "sorghumcheckoff.com"

[steve dave]

yeah, that looks like the gross-out stuff we'd ferment over the course of a year to shove down cow throats.

[michigancat]

Your dad sounds like a fancy cow farmer with his five dollars words and whatnot. "Ensilage? Ok professor cow farmer"

[steve dave]

I remember ensilage from before silage though. we had an "ensilage pit". it was a giant cutout thing in the side of a hill where like 50 yards of ensilage about 20 feet deep was kept. it smelled like barf and had barf runoff 24/7/365. we had a loader tractor that we'd dump it into the feed trucks to mix with actual good cow food and mix it up. also a pile of corn or something that they'd get a scoop of. we'd also dump molasses in there sometimes. and "protein" whatever the eff that means. also brewers grains which is the leftover crap from ethanol plants. it makes a fine cow slop mix from what I understand.

[Kat Kid]

I like those big smelly silage bags

[sys]

sys, no one ever says ensilage.

my family is an ensilage family, you sonofabitch.  btw, silage/ensilage is the chopped up, fermented product that cows love, it's not the name of the type of plant that gets chopped up to make ensilage.

[sys]

maybe it was sorghum? but it was always taller than the milo that was harvested for grain.

yeah, a strain of sorghum that grows big and has lots of leaf matter and crap instead of staying small and putting all its energy into producing grain like milo.

in california all the central valley dairy farms make their ensilage out of corn, not sorghum.  it's also a corn variety that grows ridiculously tall, dunno how much grain it churns out.  they all call it silage here, like idiots.

[sys]

i think you can probably figure out the derivation of ensilage/silage from here.


https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ensile

[Kat Kid]

I think they use corn silage at the KSU beef research and dairy farms, but it may have been that stupid tall sorghum

[ben ji]

Glad to see SD agrees with my dad that ben ji's dad would be a better farmer than my uncle.

#GoatRanch2021?

[WillieWatanabe]

growing up we just called it Silage, which i now see is apparently Forage Sorghum Silage. As i got older, Corn Silage became more popular for whatever reason.