New Farm Logo and Website

We are excitied to have a new farm logo designed by Stacey at Final Drive Designs. We are also very excitied to launch our new website.

Check them out here: http://www.tristarstockfarm.com/

Winter Pastures

As fall nears we are over-seeding some winter annuals into our Bermuda grass pastures to provide our cattle with winter forages. Our goal is to provide grazing opportunities while our bermudagrass is  dormant and unproductive. Plus we'd like to reduce our hay consumption and the amount of feed we feed during the winter months. Additionally adding winter annuals to our pastures reduces erosion and helps keep the ground firm and provides good footing to the cattle during the winter. 

To accomplish this goal we drilled annual Ryegrass at a rate of 30 lbs per acre at a depth of  1/2 inch. We chose the Fria variety of ryegrass because of its hardiness. 

For a small farm like ours we would not use a seed drill often enough to justify the cost of owning one. Fortunately, our local NRCS office offers the rental of a drill. We rented this drill and paid per acre to use it to drill some of our pastures. 

A few of our pastures are too small to get the drill into and for those we used a small seed spreader mounted on the back of our gator to spread the seed in these areas. 

When we began over-seeding we needed to make sure that the summer forage was short enough, but luckily for me the cows had eaten it down and I didn't have to mow it. Otherwise I would have had to clip this pasture off to within a couple of inches of the ground. 

We ended up planting these pastures the last week of October. That would be ordinarily have been too late, but we have had an exceptionally dry fall here in West Tennessee so the seed probably wouldn't have germinated had I gotten it in the ground a month ago like I should have.   

Our Sheep

This past spring we made the decision to diversify our farm and begin raising sheep. We did our research on different breeds of sheep and decided on Tunis. We set out to incorporate some of the best Tunis genetics we could find into our new, small flock. We purchased some ewes in sales and private treaty off farms. We traveled to the Schambow's Cass Hollow Tunis to purchase our ram. We purchased ewes from Wooly Hollow Farm, Garey Tunis, RQL farm, and JET Tunis.

We are quite proud of our little Tunis flock, are excited to show at fairs and NAILE this fall, and are anxious to see some little red lambs running around the farm next spring!

Our plan is to raise and market spring lambs next year, and in hopes of having January and February   lambs we turned our ram in with the ewes last month.

BioPRYN blood pregnancy test

Today we collected blood samples from cows and heifers that were artificially inseminated in December. We are sending the samples off to Bio Preg Check to see if these cattle are bred or open. This pregnancy checking method uses the BioPRYN blood pregnancy test for cattle.

We collect a 2cc sample of blood from each animal, label it, and send it off the the Bio Preg Check lab. We draw this blood from the tail vein in cattle. I left up the tail and use a syringe and needle to draw the blood about 3 to 6 inches down the vein. The tail vein runs down the underside of the animal's tail, and is the easiest place to draw the blood in cattle.

Once the folks at Bio Preg Check get our samples the are testing for the presence of Pregnancy-Specific Protein B (PSPB). This protein is produced by the placenta of the growing fetus inside the cow. The presence of PSPB indicates that the animal has a fetus inside of her, and is obiviously bred. If PSPB is not detected then the animal is open.

The procedure can be preformed as little as 28 days post breeding, and 34 days after an embryo has been implanted into a female. The Bio Preg Check folks provide 4 options for results, you can have them delivered in the mail, by fax, over the phone, or emailed to you.

 The test itself takes 27 hours to preform. We get results the next day if the lab receives our samples before noon, and the day after if the samples arrive after noon.

The test is 97% accurate and cost us $2.75 per animal. We choose to pregnancy test animals using the Bio Preg Check test as opposed to palpating them because the blood test (1) is far more accurate, (2) the test can be preformed much earlier in the pregnancy and open animals can be detected sooner, and (3) has a much lower risk of causing the animal to abort.


You can learn more about the Bio Preg Check test by visiting their website: http://www.biopregcheck.com/

Welcome to Tri-Star Stock Farm

Welcome to our blog. Tri-Star Stock Farm is the long-time dream and goal of my Peyton and I. Showing cattle through 4-H and FFA and growing up on cattle operations, we both had goals and aspirations of one day owning our own operation. We are a small operation raising Red Angus and Hereford cattle in West Tennessee. We work hard to breed functional and eye appealing cattle that are also real world cattle. We raise the kind of cattle that fit into our breeding program and we feel like they'll fit in yours too!

We invite you to come see us in Gilt Edge, and hope that you will check back in on our blog to see what is going on and to learn more about our cattle.

-Jeremy