- DATE: September 18, 2014
- MANAGEMENT UNIT: Shepherd note: Sep 18, 2014
Shepherds Notes September 18th
Glen Ellen: Well we received cattle yesterday September 17th at our Glen Ellen Management location. We received 36 head weighing in at 44,000 pounds. So we have about 44 animal units. We estimated a few days ago that we have around 1400 animal days on the property. So with 44 AU’s we should have the cattle around 31 days. Yesterday when we set up the corrals for receiving we squared up all pen angles to try and facilitate better movement for the cattle in the pens. We did this after having gone to a stockmanship workshop with Tina Williams down in Pescadero. All their working pens had right angles and we decided that we could square up our pens a little better. This seemed to have a great effect on the movement of the cattle.
The cattle overall were pretty calm on arrival. We settled them down even further in the pens before we worked them. We pretty much got through the weighing without incident however our alley and scale platform still leave something to be desired. We hope to improve that situation this off season. When I arrived this morning the cattle had consumed just about what we expected them to or at a rate of 30 animal days per acre in pasture 5. We will have to see as the cattle often eat a lot in the first 24 hours and then slow down as they become full after compensating for the losses they incur in calories when traveling. It rained maybe 1/10th of an inch last night and this morning as well, which was truly appreciated. We will take whatever we can get. It was nice to smell the moisture on the landscape.