# Culling Cows

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** How Farms Work
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIyTaElasvE
- **Дата:** 25.01.2026
- **Длительность:** 15:40
- **Просмотры:** 17,498

## Описание

Culling cows keeps the herd productive and gets rid of wild, open cows. This improves your herd over time and makes working with your cattle a much better experience.
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How Farms Work by Ryan Kuster is a YouTube channel based in rural Potosi, Wisconsin. Our mission is to teach those who didn't grow up on a farm what the farming life is like. These videos show the Kuster family working together raising cattle and crops. We believe everyone who wants to know more about farming should be able to share the farming experience with us and we look to educate the world on many essential agriculture topics.

How Farms Work takes place on ~1,100 acres with around 200 cow-calf pairs. Four John Deere tractors are currently used on the farm, which are a 4020, 4640, 7600, and 8235R.

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIyTaElasvE) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Hey everybody, it's Ryan. Welcome back to How Farms Work. So, today we're going to talk cows. So, I've got my shoot set up behind me. I've actually made a couple changes to this in the last year. Let's cover those quick. So, we've got our arrow clip set up. We've got our shoot, our scale and alley. We have an alleyway section that was um pretty much just kind of made out of two panels with walk-throughs. And then rolling doors on each end. And then we've also got this triangle section using more plus a bow gate. And the new addition is this additional length of runway that gives me more time to get down here after I chase the cows into the shoot set up to slam the door closed behind them. I was able to do it work the cows through this set up without this extra section. But you can never have it long enough because the longer it is, the easier it is to just shut the gate behind them and then you can progressively shut the gates behind them and move them up. I'm finding that as I progress and start culling out cows that this is becoming more and more unnecessary I would say. But you're always going to have that bottom 10% of the herd that will want to spin around and mess you up. So, just for safety's sake I decided to put another section on this. I would go probably one more section if I had the room for it which would involve sliding everything forward. But for now this has been working fantastic. I'm able to run all the cows through by myself very efficiently and effectively. So, it's been challenged multiple times by the cows. Never had an issue. But that brings me back to the fact that I've been culling out all of the crazy members of the herd. And we're going to be running some of those through today because I have the cows that were open on the last preg check at the end of October Oh no, they were ran through early November. And I'm running them through again because I want to double check to make sure that they are open I'm not culling out cows that are going to have a calf. Now, some of these aren't you know wild cattle by any means, but there are a couple in here that I would really love to just get rid of and might still do so. But I've pretty much already culled out the majority of the dangerous cows of the herd this last year. I pretty much you know drew a line and stuck with it regardless of whether or not they were open or not. So, working cattle is a lot safer nowadays and a lot easier. We're going to be weighing the cows in the shoot today. There's only I think eight of them I need to run through. I got a couple bulls in here that'll probably get run through just to check their weights. Now, I can probably guess within I would say at least 75% accuracy whether or not a cow is bred just going off of their weights year over year. But we're doing the blood test to double check because there are those cattle that surprise me and 25% is a big number to guess wrong when you're trying to guess those numbers. But it's a pretty effective tool for you know monitoring cattle health, seeing how they're progressing and the more data entries that I have with you know what cattle weigh at different points of the year will help me look forward and see you know how my management strategies, how the feed that I'm feeding them is affecting them or getting them through the winter, how it's affecting their body condition. Just more information is more important. So, uh we're going to get the cows up here by myself. It's kind of a pain, I put some gates up to help me get them in this back lot. Once they're in the back lots, they really can't go much of anywhere. But shouldn't take me too long. I've been putting it off long enough. It needs to get done so I can either send these guys down the road or throw them back down in the lot with the rest of the cows and have a lot free. So, you can see when I was loading out my last second to last group of fats, one of the fats had an abscess on his side and it wasn't that big, but it was just big enough to catch the door and it blew out the side of the milk house. Now, that's never been my preferred way to load out. So, I took my panels and set them up in an effective manner and I'm really satisfied with how I was able to load the trailer by myself using just these free standing panels. There's only four panels here and they're angled up into the yard. Now, I can take these down and move them around, but for now they're really not hurting much of anything. I'd like to leave them last

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIyTaElasvE&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

set up permanently for how often I'm load find myself loading cattle anymore. Something else new that I'm trying today is I have a single standing self or self standing panel with a gate on the end. And I'm hoping to use this as kind of like a deflection gate because all too often after I let the cows out, they run around into there and then they end up coming back and trying to run through where I'm standing on the other side of the shoot. So, by putting that gate there I'm hoping that it deflects them, gives them incentive to go the other way and then they can come back here and then hopefully run back through the lot. I need to make some adjustments. I plan on moving those around moving that feeder, putting a lane in on the other side of those self standing panels on the left there by it and then have a lane that runs back into these lots. And for me that would be the ideal way to do it. But uh just working with what I got for now and just kind of slowly figuring things out. I just hit my first big hurdle of the day. Nobody's designed a better gate latch. Cuz these things don't give. Come on, brother. Come on, buddy. Let's go. Come on. Come on. They're a little runny cuz they've been on pretty much free choice hay for the last couple weeks. Doing stuff in the winter's always extra fun because we had a ton of rain and then it proceeded to go into the negatives. So, pretty much everything is frozen and the ground is more water than dirt at this point. So, lots of fun things. Latches don't work. Um honestly, if I just put my hand on this it'll probably open. But equally annoying across the board. It's not only this latch, it's literally every gate latch everywhere on the farm. Yep, there you go. Now we've got one of my lesser favorable heifers. Um she was right at the cutoff for how tame she was. Not really crazy about her docility level. But I'm trying to keep a higher number of heifers back to hopefully kick out some of the really dangerous older ones. And um she came back as open on the last test. However, I preg checked a month earlier than I did last year. So, with heifers, they might come in to heat later than it like once they're cycling regularly. So, I might give her a second chance even if she comes back as open again. Not totally sure. I'll have to just kind of look at it and just decide what my options are. Give [snorts] her you know even till next year if she does come back as open. I'm not going to do that all the time, but as long as her weight's good, that would actually concern me a little bit more. So, I'm kind of expecting that she'll come back as bred. But if she's not, that could be an indicator that she's also not capable of being bred at the same time. So, this is why we're doing these checks so that we can keep a history on all these cows just to make sure that we aren't keeping any back that are being unproductive to the herd and I can have a higher turnover rate. So, let's go ahead and pull her blood and we'll send it off with the rest of them. But I'm going to do this once for you guys and then I'm just going to finish up what I'm doing cuz I got more things that I want to get done today. So, they've had unlimited access to hay for the last 2 weeks. So, they are a little bit more runny. I usually like to wear gloves for this exact reason. So, it's keeping things a little bit cleaner. So, let's close the camera up. All right. So, we're going to grab a firm hold of her tail cuz it is dirty. She's not letting me get her tail all the way vertical. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to try to clean off a portion of the tail that's facing me. So, we've got a pretty clean spot right there. Now, what I'm going to do is try to insert the needle at an upward angle about 45° into the tail when it is at a perpendicular angle to the way she's facing. So, um

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIyTaElasvE&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

since she's facing that way, I want to enter the tail where it's pretty much almost vertical. It's off the side, like I said, this might cause some complications, but uh you can actually do this at any point on the tail, but the vein is uh thicker down at the bottom. So, that is where I expect the vein's going to be. We insert the needle and then we insert the test tube and it'll gradually fill with blood. Now, she's full. We'll go ahead and pull that off there. Now, she's good to go. So, I'm going to write her number on there. We're going to collect all the vials. Uh we'll send them up and we should have the results back within uh t- Usually they're really good, but I would say within two business days from when they arrive is, you know, when we're guaranteed to have them back. So, um really quick return on these. The funny thing is, every animal is supplied with your own washcloth. So, return to sender. All right. I'll get back to you guys as soon as I get the results back and uh we'll pick out which, if not all or some, of the cows uh we're going to haul out and cull out of the herd. It's now come time to haul out the cull cows. So, uh I got the results back. Uh I still have to check one that I haven't been able to get up out of the steer lot yet with the rest of the cows, but the results came back on all the other ones. Um Ultimate decision was that there was a heifer um in with the group that's open. Um she have hasn't started cycling yet. So, she's going to go into the lot with the calves, with the feeders, and I'm going to finish her out. Um she's going to consume a lot of grain, but I think that's probably more economical than just selling her right now. And then, I also have five cows that are open. Um One of them I'm not too crazy about getting rid of just because she's a good cow. Um but equal opposite, there's one in there that I'm, you know, really giddy about getting rid of because she's crazy. So, um I'm just going to load them all out. Um since they're going for culls, they're going to go to the slaughter plant and pretty much just probably be ground up for meat because there's not going to be uh a lot of, you know, high-quality meat there. Um but it's quick way to just kind of dump them and move on with our lives. So, here's our loadout setup. Uh I've reinforced it with some bales just to make sure that it doesn't move long-term. If I was going to do something permanent here, um even just to leave these here, I'd put posts up to just give it reinforcement, but bales work pretty good for the temporary setup and I've got the trailer backed up to it. So, we are ready to load out. I've got the five that we're taking down already in the uh Arrowquip pen. So, I'm going to run them through the chute and they're going to be out ahead of it. I have that deflection gate that I'm going to shut after I get them all through. And then, once they come back on this side of the chute, I'll swing that back around how it is and the last two times I've loaded, they've been pretty easy to load compared to uh what it used to be. So, let's try it out. Come on, girls. Come on. Come on, girls. Attagirl. Come on. A below-average stress level is extremely important. Come on, girls.

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIyTaElasvE&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 15:00)

Well, that sums up this video. We want to make sure that we get rid of any cows that aren't being productive on the farm. And that's a pretty big task done for the winter, but uh not totally sure uh what my posting schedule's going to look like going forward here, mostly because I've been spending a lot of time working on the room. I'm making a video of that, but it's taking quite long. So, uh I'll just kind of post as I get the videos, but every day's pretty much the same. I'm keeping an eye out for any exploding trees cuz they're calling for pretty cold weather here over this weekend, but I haven't seen anything yet. But, I'll keep my eyes peeled. Anyway, that's pretty much it for this video, guys. I'll see you next time.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52660*