1-23 IAT Winter Feeding
Along the Payette River, near New Plymouth, you can hear cattle rancher Luke Pierce and his three daughters calling out to their cows. It is the middle of winter and grazing is getting thin so the girls have brought them teff hay for breakfast. “It's cold but it is not bad, the water is flowing. As long as you keep your cows full they stay content and happy. You don’t ever want to let them slip in this cold weather, you got to keep them full otherwise it's hard to get back on top again.” The Pierce family ranch runs black and red cattle. “We run about 300 head of Black Angus cows and about 120 red Angus cows. We sell between 150 and 180 bulls a year.” And they raise horses for commercial sale. “We also run a band of quarter horse mares. We have 80 to 90 mares and six studs. We have a production sale every other year. This last year we sold about 40 broke geldings.” Herd and pasture management is keeping Pearce busy as he prepares for the calving season. “We had some cows out on winter pasture and we just brought them home last night and we were just processing them through the chute, getting them wormed so they are ready to go back on the pasture and not have to mess with them until the day we start calving.” So far it has been a constant and cold winter, and the Valley is about to break a winter record. “I think the record is 42 days with snow on the ground. We are getting awfully close to that right now.” But appears is ever optimistic. “I expect a good calf crop and healthy calves and not any problems at all.”
