The planning cycle for our 2006 Production Sale has switched into high gear. I have a very firm idea what bulls will be offered after we wean the spring calves and take the yearling data on the fall 2004 calves.

I've been in the process of taking notes on every female in the herd for the past three weeks. Normally in mid-December we sort these cows out of the wintering pastures and put them together in the holding pasture where we AI and keep the sale cows.

This year we are going to move that sift and sort day up a few weeks to the day after Thanksgiving. That also made us move the fall AI period up about a week, which we completed last Saturday.

I've still got a few final decisions to make on some sale cows. It really gets down to splitting hairs on some of the cows.