How'd it go today?

Cool post, Jim. Can you splain a bit more (again:|:) about the 'sold them at 640, ended up weighing 690+...'? Thanks.
 
Well, we sell calves on a video sale. The stock agent comes out and takes a short video of the calves and cows. Usually you pick your best calves and take a video of them on your best pasture.

Nothing too fancy, a short video of them walking past the camera.

This short video is shown to potential buyers on a web cast, along with maybe 500 other lots. The buyers can bid over the internet or call in when your video is shown.

All the lots are put together into a catalog that is sent out to all the buyers that are registered. Included is a description of each lot.

When you agree to to sell your calves you must tell the potential buyers what they will weigh when they are delivered. So, at the beginning of the summer you must take into account all the future weather, grass, pasture, water, and nutritional questions.

Basically you take an educated guess as to what they will weigh. Generally, you try to sell calves on the light end. Say I think they might weigh 550 pounds, you sell at 500 to make sure that they will make weight. Plus, a smaller calf brings a higher dollar per pound. If you sell too heavy and you calves come in light, it costs you a lot of money. You are selling calves that are already bringing a lower dollar per pound price, and they weigh less than you anticipated.

So, this spring we figured because we had good rain and good grass that the calves should weigh 650 to 700 pounds. To build a buffer we sold at 640.

Its a little sneaky, but if you are WAY off the buyer can back out of the contract.

So the weight of the calves you intend to deliver must be agreed upon when they are quite small, and everybody hopes that they actually weigh that number when you deliver.

For anyone interested, the two other ways of buying calves are to take them into a sale barn and auction them off. The highest bidder takes them home.

Another way is selling them to an order buyer. An order buyer buys calves for other people. You call the order buyer, tell them what you have and the order buyer calls people and they call you back with offers.
 
So about the week before shipping you start to feel bad for the cows. Once you wean calves the cows really get sad.

Then the sunsabitches get out at 2:30 in the morning and you go full murder mode. Mentioning how you are going to forcefeed their rotting carcasses to one legged vegan Ethiopians.

I fooking hate cows.
 
Jim- that's a white oak my friend.
Cory- that first picture made me think of your avatar picture. If I flush cut it and shoveled out all the shit I bet just my head would be poking out
 
Did that oak get used for anything? With a hollow center like that, it's a perfect candidate for quarter sawing.

Jim, that's a retarded way to sell cattle, no offense intended. Over here, they get scaled and you pay by the pound.
 
Dave, I'm saving the hollow log for a torch log. The bigger oak unfortunately was getting punky in the core so it got bucked up for firewood. The log truck was struggling to pick up 8' pieces. (Smaller log truck. )
 
Cory- that first picture made me think of your avatar picture. If I flush cut it and shoveled out all the shit I bet just my head would be poking out

:thumbup: :lol:

Awesome pic of a ridiculous tree!
 
Oh good. I am glad you liked it.

I feel that I dont do the best job explaining myself sometimes.


Dave, what do you mean? Are those sales between two parties or is it an auction?

We do that too, take cows or cows to town and they get "pounded" out. Typically they would be smaller lots though.

When we sold on the video in July, we got a price of 1.40 at 640 pounds. Today, across the scale that same calf would be be 1.00.

Last year in June they were worth 2.65.

Is there as much volatility in the slaughter dairy market/replacement market?
 
Big tree by anyone's reckoning. Nicely scored Page. Last one we did like that shook the neighbourhood when the last 20 feet hit the ground. Bet they felt that one!
Too bad about the punk. We about cried when the solid log we took down we had to cut into 14" rounds :(
 
Yesterday the hot spring hotel down the lane hired me to remove a bunch of limbs from a tree line that hung over or close to a nursery school fence. My wife accompanied. All finished cutting by about three thirty, Tired, I wanted to wimp out and go home. She said we should stay and make neat piles of the brush, another hour plus. The boss ruled of course. Glad we did what she said, it made clean up and hauling the brush go a lot quicker today. She said her back was a little sore last night from dragging brush, but fine today. Made a nice lunch to take with us yesterday as well, and the hotel has a little outdoor covered pavilion by a pond next to where we were working. Sat there and had our lunch, nobody around. Sunday, the nursery school was quiet too.
 
Nice! Wish I had help like that.

Been crappy past two days for tree work, yesterday rain, today very warm but very windy. Have a few shop jobs. I seem to have a hard time getting motivated. Took a drive to see my dad, dumped some brush for him.
 
Crappy day here. Rained most of the day. Did truck inventories this morning. Today I realized how many guys don't organize or even clean trash out of their trucks. Oh and one 200T is missing. Seems someone remembers picking one up in a box and forgot to mark it as permanently out of service. Problem is no one knows where the box is so I can't check the serial number. After that I did a lot of maintainence and went over stuff with the mechanic. We had some good talk time as well. We're both on the same page as far as what needs to be worked on to make the place better.
 
Today we held our annual North Dakota Urban and Community Forestry Association's field demonstration and service workshop. City foresters from all over North Dakota made the trip to Cando for a pruning class and service day. We spent three hours in the classroom learning how to properly prune trees, then spent two hours performing a climbing and rigging demonstration, followed by an additional three hours of volunteer pruning work at the local cemetery.

18 members were in attendance. Tree crews from Minot Parks, Bismarck Public Works, Wahpeton, Fargo, Mandan, Bottineau, and me here in Cando were on hand.

Some 40 hours of volunteer man-hours were spent working in the cemetery. Some 30 trees were properly pruned. Two trees were marked as condemned for removal.

I had a chance to demonstrate the Wraptor motorized ascender, the GRCS, portawrap, Pinto Rig pulley, various saddles, lanyards, pruning tools, and saws. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. Several people took the trip to the top of the tree on the Wraptor. One female climber was the first to give it a try. They followed all safety instructions exactly, and did everything just as I would expect them to.

The Bismarck City Forester presented me with my Certified Arborist License, which allows me to operate within the City of Bismarck. I have also been added to the official Conractors list for the City, which is sort of like receiving free advertising from the City.

I would like to extend a special thanks to Lezlee Johnson for her efforts in helping make this whole thing a successful event. She provided the lunch for all attendees, then took it upon herself to clean up the meeting hall following the classroom time this morning. Lezlee works for the North Dakota Forest Service, and is stationed in Bottineau.

Many of the climbers mentioned that they would like to do this again, possibly in conjunction with a TreeStuff.com party. I'll have to look into that for them.

Joel
 
Crappy day here. Rained most of the day. Did truck inventories this morning. Today I realized how many guys don't organize or even clean trash out of their trucks. Oh and one 200T is missing. Seems someone remembers picking one up in a box and forgot to mark it as permanently out of service. Problem is no one knows where the box is so I can't check the serial number. After that I did a lot of maintainence and went over stuff with the mechanic. We had some good talk time as well. We're both on the same page as far as what needs to be worked on to make the place better.

Trash in the truck is an issue.

My old boss used to berate me about the rubbish that piled up, I thought he was being a wanker about it.

These days I collect the rubbish that the guys leave, food packaging etc. And ostentatiously place it in their personal vehicles.

I've been doing it for a while now and they're starting to get the message and empty the rubbish themselves.
 
Ha...I totally approve. I hate seeing people flick cigarette butts out a car window. I've thought about collecting some and walk up to their window and throw a bunch back in. Could probably start a great fight that way...wankers.
 
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