CHECKING CATTLE

We have been so busy around the ranch.  We have started calving, turned out the commercial herd and have run full head into the many "Fires" that need to be attended to during the summer months, here at the ranch.  Finally summer decided to show up and the grass is growing nicely and our gardens are planted and also are started up well.  Animals look good, the auctions is going well and calving season has started off great.  Lane and Jared have been traveling a lot lately, promoting the Irish Black Cattle and are excited about the interest that is shown in the breed.  On a couple of weekends Jared & Amy's family were able to go and check on the yearlings and the cow/calf herd.  The grass looks good and so do the cattle, they are really enjoying the sunshine as are we.  Our web page is now up and running, so please check it out.  http://www.loganriverranch.com/.

 Yearlings out on mountain ground in Idaho

Commercial Cattle on Summer ground in Idaho

Spring Auburn All Western

One of the many divisions of the ranch is All Western Sales.  This business is the Horse/Bull/Consignment/Etc. Sales, part of the Parker's lives.  We love putting on horse sales and hire on to do many Dispersal and Production Sales around the Intermountain Region.  Our favorite sale is one that grandpa Dean started 49 years ago in Auburn California.  We still put on a Spring and Fall sale there every year.  This Springs sale, considering everything, went very well.  We sold about 60 head of horses, this is an all breed, all age horse sale, but most of the horses were using horses.  Jared always has a few horses to sale, due to all the dude horses that he leases, so this Spring Ty, Virgil and Waylon (Jared & Amy's boys) came out to ride the horses through the ring for him.  They did such a good job on all the horses, but all three of them rode a big, black Percheron gelding through for Jared and each of them showed there stuff with Big Bart.  Bart sold well along with many other great horses at the Auburn All Western.  Here's a video of the boys working hard. 

GREEN GRASS

 We finally have some green grass!!  We turned out most of our cattle this past week.  It has been really nice, not feeding any more hay to the cattle.  We are still being blessed with plenty of moisture but are receiving some SUN!  It is supposed to be sunny for the next 5 days and we welcome it.

Lane, Jared, Ty, Virgil, Waylon moving the cattle last week into a different pasture. 

Waylon, Virgil, Jared & Ty.   Ty is on his 2 year old that he has been working with.  This day is the first day he rode her, moving cattle.  Hanger did well and Ty was just pleased not to get dumped.

 













Here is a picture of the cattle coming out of the underpass.  You can't tell it with this picture but the cattle had to swim through about 2 feet of water.  By using the low stress handling techniques, the cattle just walked right on through it and down into the next pasture.  It was quiet, quick and only took just a few miniutes to move the cattle down the road a mile into the new pasture.

THIS IS WHAT LOGAN RIVER RANCH IS DOING!!

We are very excited, our 1st placement of 1/2 Irish Black, Pasture Raised Yearlings will finish May 1st.  We are in a program, Country Natural Beef (CNB) where we retain ownership of our cattle until they are slaughtered.  The past few years have been successful and quite a learning experience.  We are especially excited because this is the first set if 1/2 Irish Black Cattle that we have had in the feed lot.  Our carcass evaluations in the past have been good, but we are anxiously awaiting the carcass results on our 1/2 Irish Black, Pasture Raised Cattle.  We will post results on the carcass data as soon as we receive them.

The pictures above are of the first set of 1/2 Irish Black yearlings, out on grass last fall, until we moved them to a feed lot in Colorado.

*WE NOW HAVE COMING TWO YEAR OLD, IRISH BLACK BULLS FOR SALE!* 
More information on them later. 

Contact Lane D. Parker (435)757-4643.

Freeze Branding/Preg. Checking

The past few days we have been busy finishing up the freeze branding on the Irish Black Cattle.  While we were running them through the chute we decided to go ahead a draw blood for the pregnancy test.  Lane is really getting the hang of drawing the blood, and it saves us the expense of having the vet come down and do it for us.  Tuesday, is the girls day off of work and the kids also were out of school that day, so everyone got to help.  It sure makes it nice when we don't have to pay any outside hands to work the cattle (which is most of the time).  

 Jared & Lane have taken a few classes on "Low Stress Handling Techniques".  We are trying to incorporate them in all of our livestock adventures and we feel it is paying off.  Our cattle, horses and yes even our sheep,  are under less stress when we gather them, work them or haul them, with these techniques.

 

These last few pictures are of the back pastures and the working pens.  The pictures make it look a lot dryer then it really is.  It is defiantly Spring around here and we are still getting plenty of moisture.  



"Cache Valley Winters"

Well our spring was coming along quiet well, the green grass was starting to grow, the mud was starting to dry up and then we woke up to 4 or 5 inches of fresh snow last Thursday morning.  It snowed for 3 days straight and then finally on Saturday night, we had a birthday dinner for Susan and when she blew the candle out on her cake, she wished it would stop snowing, we all looked out the window and WOW it had stopped and there was some sunshine braking through the clouds.  So thank you Susan.  The moisture really is a blessing, but we were taking advantage of and getting used to the spring weather.  I think the cattle really enjoyed the break from the snow as much as we did. 

"Freeze Branding"

We got all the freeze branding done a few months ago on the registered herd.  We figured it would be easier for us if they were all freeze branded with their registration number.  This makes it easier for identification and record purposes.  It was quite a long process, but they turned out great.  It took Lane, Jared and the girls all day to do the whole registered herd.  We ran them through the squeeze chute, went well but not as fun as roping and dragging them to the fire.

The brands turned out really nice. Here is just a few on the yearling bulls.