Stick around after the video for two very special announcements.
Hi there, I’m Mike and this is Our Wyoming Life
When I told Erin that I was going to be doing an episode called Shit Happens the first thing
she said was, you aren’t going to be vulgar and disgusting are you? Of course not, was
my reply, emphasizing that the entire episode would be tastefully done and very educational
as well as entertaining. But in reality, no cow wants to take a crap
on camera, I’ve followed these cows around for days and nothing, not a toot. Oh well…actually
no…you have to know, this became like my holy grail…every day I would drive around
the cows and a quarter of a mile away, I’d see a tail go up....zoom over there… and
I’d be too late. Ok I’m done…. Needless to say, a lot of raising cattle revolves
around their manure. Every cow poops, and they poop and pee a lot. An angus cow will
make over 65 pound of manure per day and they pee around 3 ½ gallons per day. But who cares
right? Well, I kind of have to because besides calves, manure is the most valuable thing
my cows produce, in addition you can tell a lot about a cows well-being and health from
their manure in fact you can even identify some ailments.
On top of that, it can be a hazard, cows can trip or roll their ankles on frozen cow pies
and when calves are born in a dirty pasture, their umbilical cords can suck up bacteria
from the ground and make them very sick or possibly even dead.
So we need to get it out of the field before we start having baby calves. Lucky for us,
the weather has been nice for the last week, most of the snow has melted and the pies are
thawed, ready for the picking. A hundred years ago, I imagine my great grandfather
used these tools to deal with manure….now we work not by the shovel, but by the horse
power…sure, a shovel works for a corral or a stall, but when you are dealing with
acres, you need to get bigger and that we do.
Using these tractors and implements we will scoop the manure and put it into windrows,which
is basically just a long pile, then we can decide if it’s going to be manure we save
for the gardens or manure that we are going to spread over hay fields to help fertilize
the soil. Each tool or implement has its job to do,
This is a cart harrow, its pulled behind a tractor and its used to bust up cow pies,
turning them into a million pieces. Its 36 feet wide and makes the job go fast. This
cart harrow is used in areas where there just isn’t enough manure to spend the time and
fuel to pick it up and save it. We also have a smaller version called a drag harrow that
does the same thing, we just drag it behind the gator and it allows us to get into tighter
spaces. But we need to save as much of the manure
if we can, so we use the bobcat and we can lightly shave the ground, and pile it up,
this is done in areas where the cows tend to congregate, and just like in politics its
where the poop piles up. We are also trying out a new implement this
year for gathering manure, its called a box blade and I borrowed it from a neighbor and
it should work perfect for cleaning out some of our bigger barns.
After we gather the manure, we can then transfer it to another pile where it will be allowed
to age. Manure is a prime source of nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus, but fresh manure
is also rich in bacteria and pathogens like E.Coli and salmonella. So we age any manure
that is going to be used in gardens and compost it so the heat from composting kills any bad
stuff and leave us with all the good stuff. Plus composting it gets rid of all the smell…so
yay! Manure that we scoop up that we have decided
is not suitable for the garden, maybe it came out of an area that has a lot of rocks mixed
up with it, we spread over our hay fields, using this.. a manure spreader. This a pretty
fancy one, as manure spreaders go. It has a push bar that moves the manure through the
box toward the paddles, which turn and fling the crap like two monkeys fighting at the
zoo. Its not pretty, but it gets the job done. We load it by tractor, it holds a lot of poo
and we take it to where we want to spread it and fire it up.
Who says monkeys have all the fun. As far as poo goes, that’s my day today.
Rinse and repeat. We still need to tackle our big cow shed, its 100 feet long and 40
feet wide and it needs some attention, but it’s still a little bit too wet from the
melting snow, and the last thing we want to do is get stuck in there.
Thanks for joining me today, its not always glamourous, pretty or even clean but these
are the jobs that need done and I’m the one to do them. If we don’t clean up these
heavily used areas of pasture we could end up with sick or injured cows and calves and
we don’t need that. We are the stewards of the land and animals and out here it’s
our responsibility to take care of both, no matter how much it stinks.
I promised a couple of announcements after the video, and here they are…
Starting this week we will have a new series debuting on our channel. It’s a series of
shorts called the eight second ride. Basically they are 8 seconds of a cute, funny, or interesting
something from around here or the ranch. Just long enough to get your fix without your boss
catching you. So keep an eye out for those. Also, next Sunday, the 26th of February we
have been invited to take part in an AMA on Reddit. AMA stands for ask me anything and
Erin and I will be answering questions live starting at noon eastern and going all day
or until the questions run out. We will be posting another video that morning with a
link in the description and if you don’t have a reddit account, they are super easy
to sign up for and you can become a member of our subreddit there as well, where we post
exclusive content, you can’t find anywhere else.
As always thanks for watching and subscribing, and as spring gets closer you can expect a
lot more cool stuff, we are all looking forward to calving where we will watch and even help
calves get born. We are going to learn how to evaluate and medicate fresh calves, and
get them the best possible start to life. So that’s coming up soon. We are very excited
to have you join us in Our Wyoming Life.