2010: Farmer Josh Feeds Cattle

Tools

By Becky Ogann

Story Created: Jun 2, 2010 at 4:17 PM CDT

Story Updated: Jun 3, 2010 at 7:58 AM CDT

The next stop on my tour of eastern Iowa agriculture landed me at a cattle farm in Linn County. Joe Meythaler was kind enough to let me onto to his farm and let me help feed 300 head of cattle. To get the job done in a timely fashion, I had to use more than a 5-gallon bucket. I was taught how to use a large end loader!

After a brief lesson, Joe showed me how to operate the large yellow machine, which consisted of a few levers and two pedals. One lever was for putting it into gear and the others operated the bucket and the arm. The pedals looked like ones you would find in a vehicle with automatic transmission; one for accelerating and the other for brakes.

Once I had the end loader figured out, my job was to fill the feed truck with 3 tons (6,000 pounds) of feed consisting of a combination of dry corn, high-moisture corn, wet corn gluten (this was talked about when I visited Cargill), corn silage and ground dry hay. I filled the truck with different amounts of each, depending on the amount recommended by a nutritionist that Joe uses. There was a scale on the feed truck to help me with that process. By the way, before I loaded the truck, we added 120 pounds of molasses for added protein.

After getting the correct amount of feed in the truck, we headed over to the pens where the cattle were kept. In the one lot, there were three pens, each with cattle of a certain age and size. Different amounts of food were dumped into each pen as we slowly drove alongside the trough.

The feeding of the cattle is done twice per day, every day, no matter what the weather and Joe and his crew feed more than the 300 cattle we fed. He feeds over 1,000 head of cattle, so the feed truck is filled 3-4 times depending on how many cattle he has as it will vary from time to time as he buys and sells his livestock.

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