The calves on the ground look really good. We continue to have Calculator calves in abundance along with 602C's and 6595's. This year we also have some US Premium Beefs, Retail Products, New Frontiers and Right Time 24J's. There are some smaller samples of other bulls too. Our clean up sired calves look as good as the AI's. We should have some really nice bulls, steers and heifers coming up from this calf crop, both commercial and registered.
We've got heifers on MGA and have completed their pre-breeding shots and examinations. Found one free-martin heifer we didn't know about, but the rest checked out fine. We will synchronize them for calving February 1, 2006.
Joe & I took a spring break getaway with our kids down through Oklahoma, Texas and a corner of New Mexico. For the past 3 years we've rented a camper and had a blast. It fits really nice with kids and lets us be very flexible to rearrange if the weather isn't working in one place or if another turns out to be really interesting and we want to stay another day. They've got to make the beds in these campers a little better though. I still have a hip pointer! Anyways, we spent quite a bit of our trip in the Palo Duro Canyon of Texas. This was a real surprise. You're out in the high plains of the Texas Panhandle (read "flat") and all of a sudden, the 2nd largest canyon in the US opens up before you. It's a dramatic one too with lots of color. The whole shooting match was once part of the JA Ranch, started by Charles Goodnight and John Adair back in the 1800's. At one time, it comprised 1.3 million acres. Today's King Ranch owns about 800,000 for comparison. We stopped at the JA headquarters and tried out a couple of ranch geldings. Pretty impressive operation. They're trying to figure out how to beat back the cedars and mesquite and they readily admit it appears to be a losing battle. The general public does not even have a CLUE as to what us farmers & ranchers go through to maintain our ecosystems at great expense of time & dollars. It is an awesome responsibility.