Jake's Family

Ropes for Less

2009-03-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since our last post, mostly due to the fact that my time has been dedicated to our latest site developed. For a while now we have wanted to offer some form of online shopping which has now become a reality. As of Yesterday our first online store kicked off selling lariat ropes. The site is called Ropes for Less and exists for the sole purpose of selling ropes at a great price. I am sure that those of you who have come in the store recently have noticed an increase in our rope inventory. If you get a chance you should stop on by.

-chase

The Importance of Minerals

2008-12-30T08:18:00.000-08:00

One of the most important things when it comes to feeding our animals is something that not many feed tags will show you. A balance of minerals in any livestock's diet can produce many advantages. Some of these advantages are a healthier immune system, better reproduction, and better grain digestion efficiency. Due to this, one of the best things you can do for your cattle and horses is to place them on a mineral program in order to maximize the efficiency of whatever grain products and hay that you are feeding. Here are some things to think about:

You may add a mineral supplement to your existing program. There are many products out there that can add good mineral content to any feeding program. The most important thing to remember when selecting a supplement is that it is a balance of minerals. Minerals function in a combined effort to promote the health of an animal, and any excess cannot be used and is simply passed through as waste.
Natural forage usually does not supply all of the mineral requirements of livestock. Using a balanced mineral diet can often reduce hay consumption because of an increase in digestion efficiency. Even if you choose not to feed grain products to your herd, a good mineral source can make a drastic difference in their health and your profit.
There are grain products out there that contain a balanced mineral package, though they are few. Some Purina Horse Products such as Strategy contain the necessary vitamins and minerals needed for a horse's health. Feeding the recommended amounts of these feeds often prove to be less expensive on a daily basis by having to only buy one product instead of playing the mixing game.

Pet Photos

2008-12-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

Hey if you happen to be in Longview, Tx this weekend make sure you stop on by and get your Christmas photo taken with your furry friend. On Saturday December 13 from 10:00-2:00 our photographer friend, Stefanie Yoder, is coming over to team up with us in order to raise supplies to benefit the Humane Society. Just come in with your pet, and for 5 lbs. of dry dog food, you can have your Christmas Portrait taken. For more info:

http://acsjakesfeed.com/events.htm

Thanksgiving Barrel Race

2008-12-03T06:29:00.000-08:00

We would like to thank everyone who came out this past weekend to the barrel race. It was a great success. We ended up having 327 runners. Overall we ended up paying out over $12,000. Thanks to our sponsors Professionals Choice, Equibrand, Courts Saddlery, and Wigwam Halters we gave out some great prizes. Overall everything went great and we look foward to putting on another great barrel race in the future. Congratulations to Abby Pursifull who won the 1D.

Colder Weather

2008-11-18T12:19:00.000-08:00

It is definitely getting colder now and with that the forage grasses for our horses and livestock have shut down. To compensate for the loss of grass for cattle it is fairly easy to simply increase the amount during feedings, and as we all know feed more hay. For horses there are a number of ways to help maintain their fiber source throughout the winter months. As we all know, maintaining consistency and good quality in the Horses fiber source are the the keys to preventing colic. This is not always an attainable goal with hay. Not only this, but hay is not always attainable due to travel, availability, etc... To help solve this problem, Purina Mills has created a line of Horse feeds that they refer to as complete feeds. These feeds include Horse Chow 100 and 200, Equine Junior, Equine Adult, Equine Senior, and Horseman's Edge Complete. These feeds are designed so that if the recommended feeding rations are given to a horse, there is no need for an additional source of fiber or roughage. Not only do these allow for a more consistent fiber source, but with hay prices continuing to climb, they can also prove to save more dollars per day by eliminating the cost of roughage. Feel free to stop in or give us a call, and let us help you see if a complete feed would be a good idea for you and your horse.

-chase

Winter Pasture and Lawns

2008-11-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

The motive behind the planting of winter pasture and the over seeding of lawns varies greatly from person to person. Finding the landowners goals is the initial step taken when choosing a seed variety to fit their needs. I run across many different goals including erosion control, growing calves, wintering cows, or simply a more eye appealing green look throughout the winter. Since these goals vary greatly so do the recommendations. For guidelines I normally give the the following advice:

Fall Grazing - Bob oats do a great job giving fall grazing for calves or cattle. Some problems that can arise can include too much rain, causing rust, too little rain causing poor tonage, or an early hard frost which can shut down a great oat crop. Many are tempted to plant ryegrass for fall grazing but end up dissapointed. Although ryegrass is best planted in the fall and will germinate it lacks vigor in the fall and winter but a good established ryegrass will flourish in the early spring through early summer in many parts.

Winter Grazing - Winter grazing can consist of many months depending on your area. In our area, east Texas, our winters can vary greatly. A well planned winter grazing season can last up to six months with adequate rainfall. A mix of Oats, Wheat or Rye, and Ryegrass can feed cattle all winter long. A common misconception of this planting method is not planting the full rate of each variety of seed. The proper rates are Oats - 80lbs/acre, Wheat/Rye - 80lbs/acre, Ryegrass - 25lbs/acre. Although you will be mixing these seed and they will be germinating close to the same time, their most active growing times are much different; therefore, you must plant each of them ate their full recommended rate.

Aesthetics - If you are simply going for a green look throughout the winter months, ryegrass is a great choice. When planted in the fall it will germinate fast and grow until it becomes too dry or the temperatures become too warm the next spring. There are many varieties of rygrass but the main difference between lawn and pasture ryegrass is the rate at which they grow. Because perinial ryegrasses tend to have finer leaves and do not grow as tall the are a great choice for lawns. In a pasture situation the differences and the leaf size, cold tolerance, and heat tolerence. Choosing the right variety can sometimes depend on the weather in your area.

-Burge

The Fall Farmer

2008-10-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it is that time of year when all of the spring and summer plants begin to go dormant and for the winter plants and pastures to start growing. To prepare for this it is important to both take care of your warm climate plants for the cold weather, and to also make sure that if you have plans to plant winter pasture you have given the plants the best chance they can have.

Right now is the time that you should be putting down fertilizer with more phosphorous and potash in order to strengthen the root system so that they can have a good start next spring. Practically, this means when selecting a fall fertilizer for your lawn or pasture you choose one with a larger second and third number in the description. When fertilizer is described it is given in the description of three numbers (eg. 13-13-13, 15-5-10, etc...). These numbers correspond to the percentages of nitrogen-phosphorous-potash in the fertilizer. So when looking for a fall fertilizer make sure you select something such as a 10-20-10, 8-24-24, etc... Doing this will greatly help your lawn/pasture to establish well in the spring.

Check with us in a few days to read more about cold weather plants.

-chase

The Atfermath

2008-09-26T08:01:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone around here has finally seemed to get things going again after Hurricane Ike came through, although I know it will take much longer for those further south. We are finally getting to bail our last hay cutting as the rain has let up for a little while. I didn't quite think we would be doing it in the end of September into early October but that is how it is working out. The guys hauling the hay sure haven't been complaining about the temperature in the sixties at night.

Deer season kicks off this weekend for the bow hunters in our area. A lot of people are planting more food plots this year due to the price of corn and protein. Hopefully they were able to get it planted before all of that good rain, although now is the time to plant for all of you gun hunters.

-chase

Rain Scare

2008-09-02T08:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I never thought that I would be wishing for it not to rain in August but Gustav had me thinking just that. It has been raining so much this month that we have not been able to cut our hay fields. This in addition to the fact that one of our hay fields flood during extremely heavy rains had us dreading the possible foot of rain the weather man was describing. Luckily it does not look like that will be the case, and as soon it is dry enough we will be getting in our last cut.

-chase

A long time away.

2008-08-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

Well it has been awhile since we have posted anything largely due to the problem of out network being down. We have been fighting a few different computer problems that are finally getting squared away.

Our hay fields are looking great right now after a dose of fertilizer and some good, slow soaking rains that have come here in the middle of august. We have been fighting a nutsedge and johnson grass problem that came about after we killed out all of the bahaigrass last year. We did this by spraying the fields with a chemical called Maverick. It has done wonders on the Nutsedge and has even seemed to hinder the dallisgrass a little. We may actually be able to square bale those fields coming soon, but whoever thought we would be getting too much rain to be able to bale in the month of august. Oh well, we are still glad to have it.

-chase

HOT!!!

2008-07-28T13:30:00.000-07:00

It looks like it will be 100 again today. Did not get much done this weekend just went to a roping Friday night up at the cowboy church just north of Gilmer. Didn't do much good. Been so busy with the store and hay fields we haven't gotten to practice roping in two weeks. My wife did win a little money at a barrel race in Mt. Vernon on Saturday night. Her winnings almost covered our diesel for the weekend. We will start baling more square bales later this week so it looks like I won't get to practice again for another couple of weeks. It's so hot even at night we can't rope to many off of each horse anyway. On the bright side we have gotten a couple of showers and the grass is still growing strong.

-burge

Hay Fields

2008-07-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Been a busy summer so far we have been getting plenty of rain. We got our first round bale cutting in May and have just finished our first round of square baling. We have some beautiful coastal pastures and one tifton coastal mix. We have been getting good rain but one storm got us when we did not need it. We lost about 250 bales in that storm. Luckily we started hauling as soon as we started baling that day and were able to get the rest of the hay up and in the barn. We have had some trouble cleaning up a couple of fields where we killed bahaigrass this spring. It was looking good until the nutsedge started coming up. Between nutsedge and dallisgrass I think I would rather have the bahaigrass. Anyway looking forward to the start of our next cutting the grass is greening up fast so it should be another great cutting. One field, one of the tifton coastal mix fields, wasn't even mature but was so thick it made 66 good size bales per acre I was tickled..

-burge

Spraying

2008-07-10T08:28:00.001-07:00

Right now we are waiting no our sprayer to get out of the shop. At first we were having a little trouble with it losing pressure when it got hot. We tried to fix this by rebuilding the pump, but this only resulted in the pump no longer wanting to engage. We took it to the shop yesterday, and will hopefully get it out soon. There are plenty of fields to spray.

Well if you have been in the store lately I am sure that you have noticed a lot of changes going on. We have been brain storming and trying to think of what the best way is to make the store easier to get around in. If you had pushed a cart through the pet section a month ago it would have felt more like an obstacle course. I think that moving the shelves like we did should help make it easier for everybody. Let us know if you have any ideas how to make it better.

-chase

Pet Day Results.

2008-06-30T13:11:00.000-07:00

We had a great time last thursday night at our Pet Owners Workshop. We had a pretty good turn of people who learned some good things about their furry family members. I thought I would post a few highlight pics for you guys to see. Enjoy!

-chase

Pet Day is Here!!!

2008-06-26T12:36:00.001-07:00

Well, we are all getting ready for our Pet Owners Workshop that is happening tonight from 5 to eight. We are having another "Best Dressed Pet" contest tonight along with the many experts we will have here to answer everybody's questions. I will put pictures of some of the contestants on later, but for now here are some from last year.

Big Saddle Sale

2008-06-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

Right now we are having what has probably been the biggest saddle and tack sale we have ever had. We started with over sixty saddles in stock and offered some great prices on all of them as well as our tack selection. We will be wrapping it up this Saturday (June 21st), so make sure you come check out the big sale.

-burge

Watermelon Rescue.

2008-06-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

We recently have been having some pretty strong winds in our part of the country which turned tragic for some of our watermelon plants on our front display. Friday afternoon I went out to the front porch to discover the tray of watermelon plants had been blown off of the rack and skid across the concrete breaking most of them at the stem. Normally I leave all of the plant ordeals to Ann, but since she was on vacation I decided I would try to plant a watermelon garden this year. Though all of the plants looked like they had gotten into a fight with a weed-eater, I took them home and planted them. I thought that I would be lucky if I even got one plant to grow after all had happened to them, but to my surprise this morning I came to find that most of them have already begun to sprout new leaves. By the looks of things I may have a good watermelon supply later this year, and probably more than enough to share. Till next time,

-chase

Pet Day!!!

2008-06-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

We are excited to announce that the upcoming pet day will be held on June 26th at our store. It is going to kick off around 5 pm and go until 8 o'clock. Bring all of your non-human friends with fur or without. All kinds of stuff will be happening like a dog wash to benefit Hallsville's FFA and other fun events. We'll will also have people here to to help teach you about animal nutrition, grooming, etc... Come out and see us!!!