Ebersole Cattle Company

Just thought you might enjoy a dusk shot of next year's Grass-Fed Beef out on pasture with their cows.  When it snows we roll out grass on top of the snow so they have some fresh food.

We have about 2 feet of snow right now, so we are feeding quite a bit of hay.  We haven't had this much snow for about 8 years. 

We are thankful for the beautiful gift of CHRISTmas and all of our families.

We hope you and yours are all safe and sound, with full bellies.

Merry CHRISTmas!!

Shanen - Momma to the Mama cows at the Ebersole Cattle Co

ps - Our beef will be cut this week, so we will be delivering 100% Grass-fed beef to those that have purchased.  We do have some 100% Grass-fed GROUND BEEF available in our store.  This will be ground and delivered this week also!  THANK YOU!

Wow! What a day! Yesterday, we pregnancy checked our cows.  What this means is that we worked them through the chute and our veterinarian checked if they were pregnant, and thier estimated due date.

WELL, the news was great!  We checked 65 of our spring calving cows and only had 4 open cows!  That is pretty good!  Especially considering that 2 of the open cows were 14 and 12 years old.

This means that Lenny, IS a great bull, he bred all of the cows possible, and made them pregnant!!  We did try to Artifically Inseminate about 45 of these cows, but the rate of conception with AI is usally about 70-80% so Lenny had the opportunity to breed lots of cows this summer.

This also means that our cows were healthy and happy, so they were ready to breed, while nursing large calves.

So, I'm glad to say that we won't have too much extra hamburger, and we will have ots of beef calves growing for next year.

If you think you might be interested in beef next summer and fall, drop me a line, and we'll save a calf to finish just for you!

You can get pictures or stories about your calf.

Hope you have a day as happy as mine is!  (I don't have to sell too many cows because they're open!!)  I'm still trying to find a little pasture to keep our old cows, and let them live out their life because they've been so productive and helpful for the Ebersole Cattle Co and our family!

Shanen - Momma to the Mama cows at the Ebersole Cattle Co

Our new website is almost done, so if you'd like take a look, but remember, I'm still working on it!!

www.ebersolecattleco.com

WOW!! Mother Nature sure hit us good this week!! It was really hard to get an accurate measure with all the wind and blowing, but I believe that we had just over 12 inches of snow on Tuesday.   Then Mother Nature had fun blowing it around and dropping temperatures on Wednesday and Thursday.

The calves that were weaned this last weekend all made it through ok.  We rolled out hay & put some soy-hull pellets in a creep feeder for them to eat.  The cows weaned pretty good too, they've all stopped bawling and moo-ing!  That makes the nights a little easier to sleep!  Because, I'm always nervous during weaning that a cow will make a hole in the fence and everyone will follow her out of the hole and run loose in our road.  (Nevermind that we couldn't get any traffic because we were snowed in!)

Beau tried to make it to town on Wednesday & was stuck two times in 3 miles.  Needless to say, he turned right around and came home!  He did make it in to town on Thursday and bought new batteries for our truck.   It was gelled with dead batteries in the driveway.

Some of our pipes froze in the house on Thursday and we had the cow-waterer freeze up too.  Our high temp on Thursday was 12.  With a 25 mile an hour wind. BRRRRR!

All the water is thawed and we now have new heat tapes installed, so we hopefull won't be repeating our experience.

But, the world IS beautiful with this fresh coat of snow, and all of the cows and calves made it through healthy and happy!

We do take two beef to be harvested on Tuesday too!

I hope you are all safe and warm!

Shanen, Mama to the Momma cows at the Ebersole Cattle Co

Yes, the cows came home!

They had a little encouragement, with me honking (calling) them in the Jeep & leading the way.  Beau & Chilli (the dog) followed and brought up the stragglers.  They followed me the mile to the corral nicely.

We held them in a portable corral while we sorted & hauled them the 7 miles home.

Once we had them in the corrals at home, we sorted the spring calves off and weaned them.

The late fall pairs will be sorted off tomorrow and turned out on grass with Lenny (the bull).  He'll be happy to have a couple more girlfriends for a while & it will keep him busy and out on pasture.

Next week we'll take all the spring calving cows to some rented corn stalks for a couple of months.

I hope y'all had a great weekend.  We did!  It might be work, but we enjoy working with our family!

Beef goes to town next tuesday, if you would like any fresh beef, drop me a line & I'll you know what we have available.

Merry Christmas!

Shanen, Momma to the Mama cows at the Ebersole Cattle Co

ebersolecattleco@yahoo.com

Life on the ranch is good if you're an Ebersole Bull.  Lenny is our top herdsire (Bull).  He is 6 years old this year.

Lenny was born here on the Ranch.  Lenny was actually a bottle calf.  He was the first calf for a very good looking heifer.  He was delivered without any problems, but sadly, the heifer hemmoraged & died.  So, we had a little bottle calf.  Lenny was a great little calf & drank from a bottle right away.  He thrived & would follow us anywhere.  When the time came to sell him, I couldn't.  I was too attached!  My husband tried and tried to convince me that keeping this calf for a bull would not be good, because he was a pet & could be too aggressive as a full grown bull.  But, he was my calf & he was a GOOD calf.  He grew amazingly well for being a bottle calf & he was bred great too!

Since we didn't sell him, and another sire died, he was turned out into the pasture with some girls (cows).  He was out back up bull until 2 years ago and our oldest sire died.  WOW!! We missed the boat with Lenny.  Our first calf crop out of just him were amazing!!  So far we have had 2 State Fair Champions AND  2 American Royal Champions!  In addition, the rest of his calves have grown great and increased our weaning and yearling weights.

Lenny is still a pet.  One of our favorite Lenny stories is the day we were 20 acres from the house & saw that Lenny had a sore eye.  We had taken a the truck out to fix fence and check cows that day.  Of course when we checked the truck we didn't have a halter OR a rope. UH OH!  Wait....we do have an electrical cord!  Think it will work??  Welllll, it IS Lenny.  Lets try it.  Walked back to the bull.  Beau rigged u the cord like a rope and took two swings & caught him with a hoolihan (backwards swing)!  WOW!  The cord held when he tried to walk away too!  So we walked up to him & looped it around to make a halter.  Then the fun part.  Did I mention that at this time he was 4 years old & hadn't had a halter since he was weaned at 6 months??  And that we were down in a big gully?  Well, Lenny did great!  We led him out of the ditch and up the big hill and over the next 20 acres I walked him while Beau went the 4 miles to the house and grabbed the trailer.

Needless to say, Lenny is MY favorite bull!

Right now, Lenny is 20 feet from my window in the pasture, and has been pretty close all day.  Poor guy is bored.  All the spring calving cows have been bred for a while.  He was turned out with a group of Fall calving cows 2 months ago.  Now, he's ready to go the barn.  His hanging around the house is telling me that all the cows are bred.  I bet he's right. 

So, tomorrow morning, I will open the gate & Lenny will follow me (and my bucket) to the barn.  There he'll stay this winter with a nice warm shelter & as much hay as he wants. 

Yes, it is nice to be Lenny the Bull at the Ebersole Ranch!

If you are interested in some great beef, we are now taking reservations for summer harvested beef.  Send me a note to ebersolecattleco@yahoo.com

THANKS!! And I hope you enjoyed my Lenny story!

Shanen, Momma to the Mama cows at the Ebersole Cattle Co