The other day my oldest son asked me if I could pay him for the cattle he had hauled for me and also some other work done for me. It had been a couple of months since I had paid him.
When he texted me the amount my response was “Geez” meaning that’s quite a bit. I left his check on the table when I got back two days later, I texted him and said, “You never picked up your check on the table at my house.” He said, “Well when you, said ‘Geez’ I thought that meant maybe you needed to wait a few days to pay me.” I said, “Well then I think I will start saying Geez more often.”
What on earth made fat cattle go up $10 per hundredweight in the matter of four or five days? Were the packers slow bidding the week before? The $246.00 per hundredweight didn’t seem that bad to me as that is what I received on a grid basis. However, my cattle yielded and graded well enough even with three marked cows, I guess, and 13 marked over 30 months and they still picked up $10 per hundredweight more as the grade and yield was great.
I hate to tell you that there was an end of longhorn cross on them. It’s a lot more fun feeding cattle than a few times I remember. One man told me last week he sold some in Nebraska for $256 and I heard there were some at $258.
The drought is the biggest obstacle for us in our area. I had some wheat field that never got over 2 inches tall. I’m sure there are some cows being sold because of the drought in other areas too. But this is the first time I have ever seen all the thin to medium flesh cows going to the feedlot. At least the sales I have seen the cripples and fleshy cows are going to slaughter plus bulls that have some yield to them.
Otherwise all the 2-year-old cows are being bred or going to the feedlot. The 3- to 5-year-old and open are going back to try to breed them. I saw a string of fat cows that were bred going back to have another calf. If I had taken them to my grass they would have thought they died and went to hell.
At Sunday school one man said, “I learned a valuable lesson when I got married. I told my new wife her chicken was dry not like Mom’s.” He said it was four years before she cooked chicken again. If I get married, I’m just going to tell my wife I like dry chicken.
Editor’s note: The views expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the view of High Plains Journal. Jerry Nine, Woodward, Oklahoma, is a lifetime cattleman and grew up on his family’s ranch near Slapout, Oklahoma.
