TC Diary

APRIL AWARENESS

A beautiful Easter night

Snow on Easter

Sunday and rain when we are ready to plant corn. But we are not turning down any moisture. The six inches of snow on Easter night was a big surprise but was all gone by Monday night. Also we have had about 1.5 inches of rain this month. The rains all came real slow and easy. First we just wanted rain — now we want a downpour to fill some ponds as we cannot go to some pastures till the ponds have water.

We have all the sale cattle delivered and had good trips. Even got to spend a couple of days with our son, Ty, while delivering cattle. Then too we attended a University Nebraska basketball game in Lincoln — bet the campus police wondered why a cattle trailer was there. Certainly do appreciate all the time the buyers spent with us and we were glad to see their cattle.

Just to give you a little inside to Husker football — we ain’t dead yet! As there were over 61,000 in attendance at the annual spring game — this is more than most colleges get to a real game. Out-of-state people do not realize that we have football year-round in Nebraska — every day there is at least one article on the front page of the sports section — not just during the regular season.


A unique fence we saw when delivering the sale cattle in northwest Nebraska.


No, this is not a new breed of cattle — just a new “trick” tried at TC Ranch. I’ll let you know next month if it works.

The guys synchronized the heifers and bred them. With so many numbers to consider as well as phenotype — making breeding decisions is not simple. It takes lots of thought. This year we are using TC Freedom and Sitz Tradition fairly heavy. We have “Tradition” home and people who have stopped sure do like him. Vance talked to Bob Sitz and they are more than pleased with their Tradition calves that are averaging 78 pounds at birth.

The semen season is always busy — as most “men” call the day after the semen is needed — thus far I haven’t had any women do that!!! We have been able to keep the tanks moving and I think UPS is doing a better job than they did a few years past. If it is within the state, we ship by USPS as it is considerably lower priced and moves faster.

Trying to make breeding decisions with so much information available, I leave you this month with . . .

“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” – Gertrude Stein, American author (1874-1946)