Students (all seniors) enrolled in AGRI 610 Beef Cattle Production and Management this past spring semester were asked to choose a topic about beef production and write a short article to share with the public about that topic. The topics could cover anything from a description of their own ranch operations to a specific aspect of beef, such as its nutritional value. These articles are also being shared with each student’s local hometown newspaper.
By Jon Kohlscheen
Up before the crack of dawn, pivots are broken down, cows are out, and the tractor won’t start. Just another day at Kohlscheen Farms.
Kohlscheen Farms is a farming and ranching outfit in Pleasanton, Neb. We grow corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa. All this while taking care of 350 black Angus cows and up to thousand head in the backgrounding feedlot. Kohlscheen Farms is a 105-year-old family-run operation, which started with my great grandfather running 600 head of Herefords.
The cows are bred in June and July in order to calve in the spring. The heifers start to calve March 1, and then the cows start calving around March 20. By the time the cows are to start calving, the heifers are already done or at least towards the tail end of their calving season. When the cows are calving in full swing, they are having 15-20 calves per day. Within the first few hours of the calf’s life, it is tagged and given a shot of Alpha 7 (protection against clostridial diseases). When the calf is up and going, usually within two or three days, they are paired out into a different pasture where they will be fed differently in order to keep weight on the lactating cow.
By May 1, most of the cows are done calving. During that first week, we will have our branding. We do not run the calves through a chute. Each calf is heeled (roped around its back legs) and dragged a short distance by a horse to the fire where they will get hot branded. Calves are branded on the right hip with a T lazy U brand or a 6 lazy T brand if they are owned by my brother. Branding is necessary in order to tell your cow or calf apart from the neighbor’s cattle. Also, we are within a brand inspection area so that means that each head sold needs to be inspected for previous brands before cattle switch owners.
They are also castrated and inoculated against various diseases. All these practices are best done at this young age, as it will cause less stress compared to older ages and will help protect the health of the calf.
Within a week after the branding, all cows and calves are taken to their summer pastures. Our pastures range anywhere from 25-, 45-, to 120-head capacity, which comes out to about 10 acres per pair.
“Taking cows to grass is a better feeling than Christmas morning,” said Don Kohlscheen, father and owner of Kohlscheen Farms.
While the pairs are on grass, they are checked every other day. When going to pastures you have three things to look for:
- Do they have water?
- Are the cows and calves healthy?
- Are they short on salt and mineral?
If you can be on top of these three things, summer with the cattle will go quite smoothly.
Five months later, around Oct. 15, we start weaning – pulling the calves off the cow and take them home to put on feed but leaving the cows in the pasture. The calves are put in receiving pens for 10 days on a dry ration to get them used to eating out of the bunk, but also to get them used to the new environment. Within a week, we will vaccinate again as well as give them a dewormer. Once the calves are eating well from a bunk (called bunk broke) and are accustomed to their new environment, they are moved “up to the hill.”
On the hill, they are switched over to a wet ration consisting of chopped, mixed hay, corn silage, wheatlage, wet corn distillers, whole corn, and protein pellets. Pens will hold up to 160 head, and each pen is equipped with fence-line feed bunks, which makes feeding a lot easier and quicker.
By Nov. 1, cows are moved off grass and onto corn stalks, where they will spend most of the winter. According to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, cattle will select and eat the grain first, followed by the husk and leaf and finally the cob and stalk. If resources become slim, we will roll out alfalfa bales as a protein supplement.
In the middle of November, we will bring the cows in to get pregnancy checked and another round of vaccinations and deworming and delousing. Open (not pregnant) cows and cull cows (cows that are selected to be sold) will be sorted off and sold at the next sale. All bred or pregnant cows will head back to the cornfield until March 1, when they will be brought back to the calving pasture to calve once again.
By the middle of January, we are ready to head to market with the calves that we have been feeding since October. We sell our calves at Kearney Livestock in Kearney, Neb., each and every year. At this time, they weigh anywhere from 700-800 pounds. It is not unusual for us to top the markets each year because we always have returning customers wanting more Kohlscheen Farms stock.
Jon Kohlscheen, a 2014 Pleasanton High School graduate, is a senior majoring in animal science at Fort Hays State University. He is the son of Don and Linda Kohlscheen, Pleasanton, Neb.