I’ve often wondered if farming had its own language. A special kind of vocabulary you either grew up with or learned fast as it infiltrated your everyday speech. Phrases like “grazing stalks”, “feeding cubes”, “pounding posts”, “stringing hot wire”, “chopping ice”, “midnight checks” and “hauling pairs” are all phrases we use around our cattle farm during the winter months. For this edition of “A Day in the Life of…” I’ll be explaining what these everyday phrases mean in the life of a cattle farmer.
Grazing stalks: In Iowa, farmers grow an awful lot of corn. Over 2 billion bushels per year. In fact, Iowa grows more corn than most countries! In the fall, farmers harvest those long rows of corn by removing the kernels from the cobs. This process is called combining which requires a huge machine. It leaves the stalks, leaves, and corn husks in the field. It can also leave full ears of corn in the field. This corn can be a problem in the spring because the kernels on the cobs can sprout in places you don’t want them to. This is called volunteer corn. (And is very inconvenient in a bean field as the corn will take sunlight, water, and nutrients from the bean plants you are trying to grow.) The cows eat these “leftover” corn stalks.
In the winter months, we rent stalks from a neighboring farmer for our cows to graze – when the grass in the pastures is no longer growing – they get to be the cleanup crew for corn fields. Sometimes we pay a certain amount per acre for the use of their fields, other times farmers are happy to have us bring our cows to “clean up” the farm that we get the use of the stalks for free. Our cows will walk miles each day finding and eating the delicious, nutritious field corn.
Feeding cubes: Because farms in Iowa are very large, averaging 355 acres per farm, it would be impossible to find and check your cows each day unless you had a way to call them to come to you. To help “call” our cows we feed high protein range cubes (feeding cubes) once or twice a week. (photo of cubes) The animals enjoy the treats, and it makes it easier to count each cow – and then know you have to go looking for any that didn’t come in. We also feed extra ear corn as a way to get our livestock familiar with people, making them easier to handle when it’s calving, pregnancy checking, or vaccinating vaccination time.
Pounding posts: Not every farmer has livestock, so not every farm has fences. When we rent stalks we sometimes need to add additional boundaries to the farm to keep the livestock in. This involves pounding steel fence posts into the ground. We usually use our side-by-side U.T.V. to haul supplies: posts, hot wire and insulators. Then one of us walks the entire length of the fence using a hammer to “pound posts”. The insulators are placed over the steel posts and screwed tight. Then the wire is attached, so that the wire may be “hot” or electrified (stringing hot wire) to keep the 1,200-pound animals from pushing right past the fence. This helps to keep the cows safe.
Chopping ice: If the farm we move our cattle to in the winter does not have a fountain or piped water supply then we need to make sure the creek (pronounced “crick” in parts of Harrison Co. Iowa) is open for the cows to drink. A hatchet or ax is usually carried around in each of our trucks for this purpose. A small opening is made in the ice to allow the cows to get their daily supply of water. Cows can drink up to one gallon of water for every hundred pounds of body weight.
Midnight checks: No, this is not money that magically appears in the middle of the night. This is the routine for a cattle farmer from January through March. It is where they will get up in the middle of the night, and monitor the livestock to see if any animal needs assistance with calving. This isn’t always midnight, but it is approximately three hours from the last check. When a cow begins to calve, or give birth, the calf is enveloped inside a water bag, called the amnion, a clear white membrane immediately surrounding the calf. If that bag breaks, the famer only has about an hour to pull the calf – or the calf could suffocate inside the cow. It is important to stay vigilant to the needs of cattle during calving season.
Hauling pairs: Success! Once a calf has been born, it is important that cow and calf “pair up” and get familiar with one another. When the pair up occurs, the cow accepts the calf as hers, and the calf figures out that mom means milk! A calf is able to stand within a few minutes of being born and can walk within an hour. After a few days, and once the calf is moving around fine, we haul the pair out to a field where the sunshine and open areas are good for the calf. An animal can develop scours if it lays in wet conditions which is why we haul pairs often.
So no matter where you were born, you’ll now know exactly WHAT that cattle farmer is talking about as he or she works with their livestock through the winter.
-Melanie
Iowa Agriculture Literacy 