WHAT ARE YOU DOING TODAY (PICS)
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Today was the start of the 2023/24 Clipper ventures round the world race. We went out on SAKURA to see them off, our very own @ian72 was with us, he skippered Qingdao in the 2011/12 race. Alex Thomson who we were with in the Channel Islands last week, won the 1998/99, and is still the youngest skipper to have won the race. We had a lovely day....
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Watched the same but from the land
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Finished off a great day up at North Conway NH
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Got back last night after 5 days at the ranch. Hot and dusty out there this time of year. A variety of pics of general stuff which was going on.
Cool ladder made here using bamboo for the two sides. Quite long too…about 7 meters.
Closeup of a broom made with dried palm blooms. Great for sweeping over packed dirt as it cleans away leaves/twigs without bring up dust clouds.
Meat drying out covered in salt to avoid bacteria. We usually slaughter a cow every 45 days or so to keep everybody here happy with the red protein.
An electrician sorting out an electrical problem were experiencing with the generator. Turned out the electrical loads (lights, AC, water pump) weren’t balanced out amongst the three transformers in the generator…or so we were told.
It is calving season!
We inseminated 117 cows on Friday using these two bulls from Brazil
I’ll be back there in a month to check for pregnancies and inseminate another group of cows.
The journey is the objective.
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Mukesh is a handsome bull @motojobobo ,
but I would not mess with MNS 3981 Truck
️.
Great inside, thanks for sharing! -
@motojobobo Great looking herd!! How many head do you have and do you raise the calves to size (full size for consumption) or do you sell them as calves to other farmers?
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@Aetas Mukesh is definitely the handsomer of the two…he was used extensively to breed for cattle show purposes (BIG in Brazil) but he also has solid productivity characteristics in him, which is what I look for. Truck is the gentler of the two, hard to pick a fight with him, and produces ‘milkier’ offspring than Mukesh.
@goosehd glad you like my Nelore herd. This time of year, being at the tail end of the dry season (winter), I’m definitely happy to see my cows haven’t lost more weight. Promises to be a good cycle both for raising healthy calves and achieving a high pregnancy rate. My ranch holds between 1000 and 1200 reproductive females with the current infrastructure on it. It can do better but it would require more investment in fences, watering holes and reducing weed proleferation. But we are still a work in progress….after 14 years. This stuff takes more patience than waiting for IH to produce the next batch of caps.
I usually sell males at weaning. I’m more interested in the breeding aspects: choosing bulls and evaluating their offspring characteristcs…stuff like that. -
@motojobobo I’m fascinated by all of this. I grew up around a lot of beef and dairy cattle here in the states and had never heard of the Nelore breed so had to look it up. My grandfather had a small herd (70-100) cows on our farm. He tinkered with different breed combinations like a hobby. Hereford, Angus, Charolais, Jersey, Limousine…we always joked his herd looked like a patchwork quilt. He never used AI but I worked on a dairy farm and helped do it a few times. 117 in a day is a lot of work!!! I really enjoy hearing your stories and seeing the pictures. Thanks for sharing
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Hey @SKT, so glad my random post got some interest from you guys. Cattle breeds originating from India/Pakistan area (Bos indicus, with noticeable humps) are more resistant to heat and drought, hence widely adopted in the tropics of South America. The breeds you are familiar with (Bos taurus) originate from Europe and Britain which adapt better to temperate and colder conditions. The southern bits of South America (Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile) have temperate climes too, and you’ll find there the breeds which you grew up familiar with.
Nelore, with white hair, does particularly well minimizing the radiant heat it absorbs from sun rays.
The bulls have that large ‘flap’ of loose hide hanging from the lower part of the neck. It serves as a radiator. Densely populated by thin blood capillaries, it cools off warm blood as the ‘flap’ swings sideways as the animal walks around. Pretty cool evolutionary trait, I think!Hmmm, I may have misrepresented my usefulness that day. It was a vet doing the AI, I was mostly doing secretarial work jotting down other observations which may help me later find useful statistical trends: which bull semen was more fertile, which cows are more fertile, correlation between cows exhibiting in-heat behaviour vs positive pregnance, etc. But 117 AIs only takes about 4 hours, they average 30/hour.
I could chat endlessly about this…if we continue, we should probably do it privately. Cheers.
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@Matt whats wrong with my F250, boy?
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It may be my birthday, but The Boat Show starts tomorrow, and SAKURA will be here for the duration. It was my job to bring her over (the easy part) and then park her in front of dozens of "will he prang it/will he not" lookers on and boy was that nerve-wracking. No room to turn her in the fairway, so had to reverse from out there......
The stern-to park her here....
Fuck, that was hard.....
