ALMOST HERE: Ichthys Cattle Enterprise, ICE Cattle sale Saturday, March 11! The bulls and heifers are home to view at your leisure. We plan to let them have access to about 30 acres of dormant cover crop regrowth, and they will have access to hay in the big pen. They will be here until sale day when we will sort them by breed and gender and put them in the small pens.
CRAZY FOR YOU: No person in their right mind would sell seedstock with them looking the way they do after treating them the way we have. All of our animals (sale animals and cows/calves/herd bulls) look their absolute WORST of the year right now. The 2022 spring calves are still on their mommas (if you want to see the herd, they are grazing a quarter of stalks 2 miles south of our house at the intersection of 1900 and K, east side). We require all our animals to make it with nothing but grazing forage (corn stalks through the winter), salt, mineral, and water. HOWEVER, once they get onto stockpiled grass in April and God brings the new grass soon after, they compensate…very well. Actually, as tough as they look right now, relatively speaking, I think they already look GREAT! PRESSURE is one of two main aspects of our program (genetics the other). We put pressure on our cattle to get the ones that shouldn’t produce seedstock out of the program. This refines them. It takes pressure to create diamonds.
Bred Heifer Due Dates: Our A.I. project is the first week of August. Any heifers that conceived during that week should calve the last part of April or in the first half of May. After A.I. we wait about 10 days and put the clean up bulls in. Any heifers bred natural service will calve the last half of May through June and maybe even into the first part of July. We have listed the most likely sire in the sale catalog. If you want a most likely due date on a specific heifer, please email Ashley at [email protected]
CHECK ON YOUR HEIFERS DURING CALVING: We offer a calving ease guarantee for all our heifers and many bulls. This means that if a heifer needs assistance at calving, we will pay for a vet call. However, I urge you to check heifers morning, noon and before night when they are close to calving. Genetics sometimes don’t pan out the way you expect, most especially for an individual animal.
SHARED LOADS: We will have a clear understanding of where things need to go after the sale and will start working with customers to see if loads can be combined. We have it confirmed that on sale day a trailer will be coming from Kilgore, NE. PLEASE, if you ask someone to haul your cattle, be generous, compensate them well for their trouble. I think they are doing you a huge favor.
Ashley is still taking SUS (sight unseen) bids. You can bid in person, SUS or through DVAuction. Please ask about any of those options if you have questions.
James 1:2-4 “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” Counting it all joy in the midst of trial is a tough one for me, ranks up there with loving my enemies…both reveal the genuineness of my faith. My faith is pretty weak.
