This year it seems to me there are a few more cattle coming to the sale this first month of January and a good share of them are lighter weight cattle.
There is always a big push for grass cattle and wheat the closer we get to March. It makes me wonder if we won’t be a little short come spring on the better conditioned cattle to go to grass. Because a lot of these feedlots are full of lightweight cattle I asked one feedlot manager if he had a lot of 500- and 600-pound cattle in his feedlot, which has a 50,000-head capacity.
He said, “Yes, but we also have some 400-pound cattle in there too.” He said, “I don’t care if they are light as long as they are started when they get here.”
A big commercial feedlot is the worst place to start a bawling calf. If you don’t believe me just try it. Vaccination shots are more important each year. And now on calves off the cow several buyers ask if they had shots. The word shots can vary a lot. Most buyers want more than a blackleg shot to feel comfortable. We have received some rain and little ice and it is supposed to rain this week. That makes me smile as I don’t like snow.
There are a couple of friends of mine that had four little girls. And the dad was determined to get a boy. So when the nurse handed the newborn fifth child to the mom she said, “Finally—a boy.” So when they wrote the name of the birth certificate, it stuck. They named him Finally.
Husband and wife were laying in bed and she whispered to him, “Say something dirty to me.” He said, “OK, the toilet, the kitchen and this bedroom.”
There were two sisters, in fact twins, that worked at the sale barn for years. They were all country gals but very good ole gals. Once a year in the summer they would call it Girls Weekend Out. They would take their horses and plenty of beer and head up to the canyons with friends.
They had been drinking for awhile and all their horses were crossing a creek except the one horse that refused to cross. One of the twins said, “I can get him across.” All the other gals said, “There is no way you can we have tried for 15 minutes.” Finally the one gal said, “I’ll bet you a six-pack of beer I can get him across.” The other gals said, “We will call that bet.”
So the gal raised her shirt, took off her bra and went and put it on the horse’s head and made blinders. She jumped on the horse and rode him across the creek.
Editor’s note: Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman who grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
