Time for weigh-in

Time for weigh-in... no, not for Dwayne and me, or for Tabitha, all of whom are on diets, but for the "teenager" cattle who are on the farm across the road, to see where they are on the path to go for finishing feeding-out.

This picture is kind of dark, but Dwayne (center left) is standing between the "teenagers" and the feed that is on the back of the pickup truck. I was wondering who was going to win the face-off. Jimmy used the feed to collect the cattle into a smaller lot from which he could move them into the handling system.

Part of the handling system has a scale, and Jimmy brought the electronics component that reports the weight.

Zeroing the scale - you might notice some electrical tape on the piece hooked in on the bottom left - one of the teenagers was bored (typical teenager) and had chewed the wire end completely off that was left on the scale in the pasture area. Thankfully, he (or she) did not ingest it but left the chewed-off end there on the ground, but it required Jimmy to perform an on-site fix to get it working again.

The first group in the handling system about ready to go onto the scale.

Jimmy would push them up through the handling system, and Ricky would handle the front and back gates to hold them onto the scale.

"The gate is open, you can leave now..."

Standing well for getting weighed

Each animal has an ear-tag that identifies which cow is his/her mother - Ricky would read the ear-tag...

Dwayne recorded the ear-tag number and weight.

This one seems to be checking his/her own weight!

It was interesting to participate in this activity on the farm!