I sold calves Sunday and felt really lucky to catch most of them. I thought I got all of the sellable aged ones. But then yesterday (Monday) driving around I find this guy.

[url=http://imgur.com/aG16V0F][/url]

Probably 650 lbs. His silver color reminds me that I saw him when he was younger but had not seen him in months. He is not wild but he is a ghost that sort of keeps to himself. And his mother is tame too. Go figure.

Here is a pic of a group of mesquites that got sprayed in late May.

[url=http://imgur.com/CT0Zo0H][/url]


and the bed of my truck... I am keeping 3 small sprayers for casual use:
Surmount.... mostly for cactus
Sendero.... to catch any re-sprouts or missed mesquites from May/June
Permethrin.... in case I get close enough to cattle. This year some have ticks on their ear tips. Less fire ants = more ticks.

[url=http://imgur.com/tSaUga7][/url]

You never catch them all.

that sendero is good stuff, we just started using it this year and from what I've seen in our pastures it did a good job. Need to get out to and do my third scouting trip to see, but after the first and second checks, it seems to have done a number on the mesquites. However for mesquites that are a little bigger than those in your picture, I usually end up cutting down and spraying the stump with diesel & remedy.

I like the Sendero and have been using it since it came out (4 or 5 years now ?) But I am thinking about the old "Remedy/Reclaim" mixture, 1/2 percent of each...... this also killed cactus fairly well.

So I am thinking about going back in time next year. Still using Sendero, but sometimes using the Remedy/Reclaim mix whenever I am going through an area with a lot of cactus. If I do this, I may note the difference in effectiveness of Sendero vs. Remedy/Reclaim.

Right now, I make a pass with a specific herbicide for a specific target..... Sendero for only mesquite.... then come back through the same area if necessary with Surmount for cactus and mixed brush.

I dont have a master plan to totally nuke everything. I just want to have some clean meadows, and have all of the roads and fencelines cleaned in a wide swath.

You will really appreciate Sendero in a couple of years when you witness zero, or very little re-sprout from treated trees. I like to treat as soon as the soil reaches the recommended temp which is around May 20th here. If I spray early.... before the end of June..... then they have already re-sprouted by now and I can kill them before winter.

If my plans hold up, I am going to be very active this winter with cut-stump, chainsawing, diesel + Remedy. Plans can change, but I have a bunch of larger mesquites targeted. Most of them are growing out of Oak motts, where I want to eliminate the mesquites and their seed production.

So how long do you wait for small mesquites (the stuff that was less than 2 feet tall and really thin "trunks" still) before shredding them? I've heard 6 months and I've also heard a year.

I'm an idiot, should wait for it to cool down, but really been wanting to make progress on our pasture ahead of dove season so I've been cutting down the bigger mesquites and honeylocusts the past few weeks already.

Personally, I dont shred at all. But if I had my tractor & shredder waiting, I would wait until one year is up to be sure everything is dead... waiting until at least enough time has passed to catch any possible re-sprouting. I would test them by pushing on them to be sure they will crack off and are not green and alive before shredding.

As far as the thorns go, I wait three years for the mesquites to rot before I drive the area in my pickup. After three years, the thorns that are left are too rotten (hopefully) to puncture the 10 ply tires. But I try to just avoid the area and stay on the regular roads with the truck.

Allen76 said:

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If my plans hold up, I am going to be very active this winter with cut-stump, chainsawing, diesel + Remedy. .

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You and me both except I'm dealing with honey locusts

Beautiful, glorious, amazing dead mesquites. Use a backpack sprayer as best as I can, when I can. But it's a lot like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the mountain each day, only to see it roll back down. It's a losing proposition in the end and we do the best we can. It's a full time job.

Allen...you don't have to mix Tordon with your Reclaim/Remedy mix to get the cactus ?

Brush Country Ag said:

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Allen...you don't have to mix Tordon with your Reclaim/Remedy mix to get the cactus ?

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No and I really dont remember how well it works. I have never mixed Tordon with it, but I remember being pleasantly surprised that the cactus died. I thought I read somewhere that you can kill cactus with Remedy.... not too sure. I do know that if it is a yucca you have to get it into the whorl.

I am just hoping that I have a mix that I can get mesquite and cactus in one pass without the whole thing being too expensive (as it is already expensive).

I am okay with making two passes, Sendero then Surmount, if the price of a multi-purpose mix gets prohibitive.

Just googled a little...... one of the links tells you to use a pretty high concentration (to me) 1 to 1.5 ounces Remedy per gallon, plus some Oil. That's a lot.

For those that did not know, Tordon contains Picloram, a regulated herbicide that kills cactus. This is the same ingredient in Surmount that I use.

How are cattle prices ...sold,some yesterday, but have not received the check ?

BlueSmoke said:

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Beautiful, glorious, amazing dead mesquites. Use a backpack sprayer as best as I can, when I can. But it's a lot like Sisyphus rolling his rock up the mountain each day, only to see it roll back down. It's a losing proposition in the end and we do the best we can. It's a full time job.

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That's how I started in the mid 80's. Backpack sprayer, and count the number of sprayers-full that I would spray in a summer. I remember it being in the 20's. So if you did 25 x 4 gallon backpack sprayers, you have only sprayed 100 gallons, but at least it was very efficiently applied.

Then I graduated to a ATV mounted sprayer, battery powered. The biggest problem I had there was keeping the four-wheeler running good and not overheating.

Then came the little John Deere tractor, model 990, with a PTO powered spot sprayer. In one summer with this I have sprayed around 10 gallons of Sendero, which is 20 sprayers full (x 50 gallons) which is 1000 gallons of Sendero, and probably 250 gallons of Surmount. I finish this step before the fourth of July and spend the rest of the summer "cleaning up" mostly with a small hand pump sprayer and doing something besides herbicide spraying, like fencing.

It was not until I started using the tractor that I started seeing some significant change in the pasture. The PTO powered sprayer powers through the mesquite tree, which helps a lot when you are unable to get to the other side of a mesquite tree.

Brush Country Ag said:

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How are cattle prices ...sold,some yesterday, but have not received the check ?

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Dont know. Union Commission in Hondo used to send the check really fast. The Auction was Monday, and I no longer get a check on Tuesday. It is usually Wednesday and sometimes Thursday now.

I will post it. It was one of those "special" sales. Union encourages the ranchers to bring their feeder calves and encourages more buyers to show up on this particular date. I am hoping to catch that one calf in the picture very soon and sell him just to see if there is any difference between their "special sale" and any other regular day.

Yeah. We paid some time back for a guy with a Cat to come out and clear out some land and it worked well. But it needs to be a recurring process. The Cat driver was able to pop them out of the ground, getting the roots, so once out, it's done. Just such a process to go through it year after year. So to date, it's a sprayer and chainsaw work.

Sounds like someone needs a new drone to find the missing cattle!

Do you spray anything for burrs?? Those damn things can get everywhere

Our-turn-to-rule said:

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Do you spray anything for burrs?? Those damn things can get everywhere

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I dont know what that is. If its cockleburrs, I use 2,4-D but only when I have an infestation. Most years I only have a handful of cockleburrs that I pull out by hand.

If its grassburrs, luckily I dont have a problem. I have heard people use Pastora (expensive), and some people still have access to MSMA which kills grassburrs but I believe is now illegal to apply in home yards.

Premium said:

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Sounds like someone needs a new drone to find the missing cattle!

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heck yeah! A friend came over with his and the thing I found is that you cannot see through the oak trees which line a long dry creek here. This, of course, is where the cattle like to stay on hot summer days.... in the shade of an oak, so you still cannot find them even with a drone.

I got that picture of that calf right at sundown, so I am pretty sure he is a night grazer right now.

Also, the cattle started running. The drone wasn't that loud so I am not sure if they were running from it or from something else. We were following them with the drone (pretty high up) and lost them as soon as they went under the oak trees.

Quote:

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Just such a process to go through it year after year.

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Once you get control of an area, you should go back there with a small sprayer every year or every two years.. You can put 2 ounces of Sendero in a 1-1/2 gallon sprayer and spray 200 or more sprouts. At $142.10 per gallon for Sendero, that one sprayer costs you $2.22 plus surfactant. So its cheap but does take time.

I know - but driving from the DFW area to the Coleman/Valera/Talpa area isn't an every weekend thing. It's a time thing with wife/work/kids. Wish I was closer, but I also know there are those that would chop off a finger to have their own place to tend - so I zip it, and invite friends a-plenty who want to shoot guns and do a little work.

The life of a suburban outlaw isn't for everyone.....

Brush Country Ag said:

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How are cattle prices ...sold,some yesterday, but have not received the check ?

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The latest from Agrilife...
Beef Fax

I have sprayed cactus with Remedy/diesel before when I was out doing basal...that mix will kill the heck out of cactus (and every thing else) , but pretty expensive. I have used the Remedy/Reclaim/Tordon mix before on mixed brush and cactus with some degree of success. May be just me, but seemed like I got a better kill on mesquite etc when I had the Tordon mixed in with the Remedy/Reclaim.

GSS said:

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Brush Country Ag said:

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How are cattle prices ...sold,some yesterday, but have not received the check ?

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The latest from Agrilife...
Beef Fax

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Well of course they dropped when I sell !!! Thanks for the info !

Allen76 said:

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Our-turn-to-rule said:

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Do you spray anything for burrs?? Those damn things can get everywhere

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I dont know what that is. If its cockleburrs, I use 2,4-D but only when I have an infestation. Most years I only have a handful of cockleburrs that I pull out by hand.

If its grassburrs, luckily I dont have a problem. I have heard people use Pastora (expensive), and some people still have access to MSMA which kills grassburrs but I believe is now illegal to apply in home yards.

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Grass / sand burrs are such a pain, literally and figuratively. I don't think MSMA was ever pasture rated, due to Arsenic content. But it does live on in availability, primarily for the row crop guys.

Pastora works, but only on such a small window of grassbur plant growth, with minimal residual action. So if you're unlucky like I was this year, I killed round one (April plants), to be met with many more when we received good May and June rains.

Nice charts. Most of the time I just don't pay any attention to that sort of information because I figure I cant do anything about it anyway, and I have to sell when its time to sell. Sometimes I feel like I hit every low spot in those graphs.

But that Packer Cow chart is very applicable.. Every small cow/calf operator gets old cows and has to decide when is the time to get rid of them. The cows health, energy, pasture conditions, and price all are major factors in the decision. Sometimes we just keep an old cow indefinitely because it just keeps on having calves and wont bring much at the market. (We are talking about small time ranchers like me who have another real job.)

But its good to know that I will probably get between 50 cents and 80 cents for an old packer cow.

I took one to the market Sunday. Every time I take one that old, they cannot make the trip without laying down in the trailer, and then they are hard to get up when you get there to unload. This poor cow has been healthy all her life, and now she is laying in the back of my trailer, unable to get up in the slick cow dung. We pushed her out of the back of the trailer onto the ground. We unloaded the eight calves we had, right over her. Then she got up and slowly walked as the auction workers directed her. She is between 15 and 20 years old. I have had older ones. Since 2006 I ear tag with birth date included in the number. She came way before that.

There is more to this story... she was my last red cow, and the last trackable decendent of some cows my wife purchased many years ago. Everyone in the family wanted to keep her except me (mostly because she is red). When I tell them the story above, they have to admit it was her time.

Allen - I think you've posted some picks of the John Deere sprayer set-up. Would you mind re-posting or linking to that thread? We are in ATV sprayer mode and have been doing so for years, interested in upping the game to the next level and would appreciate some advice on your tractor set-up.

You mentioned in one of your posts on this thread that you were going to use Remedy on cut stumps under oak trees. I have had bad luck doing basal spray of remedy/diesel on mesquites that are within the drip line/root zone of live oaks. We tested a small area and although we didn't spray the oak (and we chose a small grove of oaks) it walloped the live oaks. That's one of the many reasons we switched to Sendero, safer around Live Oaks and we are blessed with a lot of them. Interested in your thoughts/experience.

I searched TexAgs and I guess that pic was last year. I also switched from photobucket to Imgur, so I dont have the pic there either. I will take another one when I remember to do so.

I experiment a little around my live oaks, and still haven't killed one. If I ever kill one accidentally I will be sad, but if I ever kill that huge oak that is just across my fence in the neighbors land, I would be in trouble! I stay WAY away from that tree, and i chop out the little bushes around it on my side of the fence with a grubbing hoe instead of using chemicals.

I have sprayed Sendero on mesquites with live oak leaves in the background. All that has happened so far is that I have killed the leaves that got soaked only in that immediate area.

With Surmount, there is a lot more danger of movement through the soil. I think my biggest friend is that it doesn't rain much so not much chance of moving the herbicide to an unexpected place.

So I was planning on cutting off some large mesquites near the ground and soaking them in 75% diesel and 25% Remedy right to the point of runoff. These mesquites are between 5 inches and 14 inches in diameter. Is this a possible danger to live oaks that are probably within 5 yards ?

I believe that Remedy does interact with oaks. I would stay away from oaks with Remedy

In regards to shredding, in pastures that I'ved recovered (or tried to that is) from mesquite, I've found that spraying and burning after good and dead works best. Some of those tines are as long as your fingers and 1/8" diameter. After several tire plugs for the tractor tires, I'm done driving over mesquite, no matter how long it's been dead.

BlueSmoke said:

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I know - but driving from the DFW area to the Coleman/Valera/Talpa area isn't an every weekend thing. It's a time thing with wife/work/kids. Wish I was closer, but I also know there are those that would chop off a finger to have their own place to tend - so I zip it, and invite friends a-plenty who want to shoot guns and do a little work.

The life of a suburban outlaw isn't for everyone.....

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With you on that...save my drive is to Valera from Austin area. For us its been a discussion of time it takes to do it ourselves vs. the cost to have it done.

Its my dad's place and as he gets older and my wife/kids piece gets bigger and weekends free disappear, I lean more heavily on having it done.

What do you use to kill smut grass?

AH, Valera. Home of Big O's, their gut-busting "Big O's Special", and my new favorite sammich - the "Big Mitch". Love that place. Knew Nonnie Smith (from Odessa) who had that big diesel yard down the road. Used to be full of old army crap. Trucks. Even a half-track once. Tons of old Mutt jeeps (Best ATV ever made). Re-siped airplane tires, you can drive anywhere. Straight through the worst pear/mesquite patches without a care in the world.

You should check out Rancho Loma. Right down the road from Big O's. Amazingly out of place. High end Dallas money created an amazing B&B and vineyard out there. Friends of the Goree family from Midland (who got them out there). They also opened Rancho Pizzeria on Coleman and a new wine bar across the street.

http://rancholoma.com/

I'm with you. Transitioning family land from pops to me. Really need to find a guy out there with a small tractor and a brush hog to clear lanes with all the broomweed that popped up. It's everywhere.