Jedidiah remains productive with the Ladder Ranch

We had another productive week here at the Ladder Ranch!! We started out by branding another little bunch near the home ranch. The next big project we accomplished was getting the whole pivot planted with Triticale. I had never run a planter previously, so it was great to learn! It is a little tricky to know what the application rate is because the drill is an older build. I think we got most of it seeded around 80 pounds to the acre at least. We turned the pivot on this week and laid down 1” of water all around the pasture. After the first pass, the soil just soaked it all up. One problem that we had was that the drain pipe on the end got blown by the wind one day and hooked on the fence. It worked out just so and the pivot arm got bent because of it. We were all surprised because it hadn’t happened last year when the pivot was running. We all decided that the solution (besides mending the pipe) is to cut the spigots shorter on that section so that it will go over fences without problems. Also as part of irrigating the pivot pasture, we laid out some gated pipe to get where the pivot does not reach. The pipe was a little challenging to fit in, but we got it finally! Although there is a lot of dirt work left to be done around the concrete dam, we have been running water for a several days on the pasture. The results should be exciting!!! One of the ranch dogs also had 8 puppies under the porch of the house. A few of the crew dug them out and we put them on our porch. The ranch uses the border collies as an additional source of income for the ranch. The puppies are sold when they are old enough or some are trained and sold for more later on. Things are really getting busy around here now, with cattle to go to the forest and lambs to dock. The rest of June is almost completely planned out!!!