Yet more randomness

1. We have only 3 dry cows up the road; all three are "fluffing up" (their udders that is) so they will be calving within a couple of weeks.

2. Husband did some dehorning on Saturday, so there are a bunch of soreheads up the road. But they are all doing fine. There are a few more to do but we have to wait until we can get them caught in the corral. They are the ones that don't normally go in when we feed them because the older ones chase them out. Do cows have pecking orders? Oh, yes they do. I was going to blog on the dehorning and take a few pics, but I guess not. It's not fun anyway.

3. There is one heifer that is down in the open heifer lot. That is, she has a hoof problem and won't/can't get up and walk. Husband carts her food, water and what grass he can get every morning. I hope she recovers.

4. We moved all 15 calves from the weaner pen into the ummm...bigger calf lot this past weekend. You should have seen them cavorting around, all excited about something new. Then as time goes on they realize that things are different and they stand around and bawl off and on for a couple of hours. They seem to have settled in pretty well by now though.

5. This morning various members of the milking herd went over and stood by the gate to go down into the bottoms. They looked so anxious; they are tired of hay and want some grass. Husband said he saw them there, but since he had tried it last week and there wasn't any grass down there yet for them to get they'd have to tough it out and eat hay for another week or two until the weather warms up. It was 19 degrees yesterday morning when I went out to do chores. Ugh.

Comments

JO said…
Boy I don't know who I feel bad for the most you all for having to deal with the crummy weather or the cows who need some variety to their diets :(

I hope things start to look up - i will think good thoughts on your poor hiefer witht he hoof problem :(

Thanks for stopping by my blog - come back and visit some time.
Anonymous said…
Is dehorning as gruesome as it sounds?
Calfkeeper said…
jo, thanks for visiting and commenting.

Solomon-yes, it's pretty nasty any way you have to do it. There are a couple of ways; you can dehorn when they are little, but you have to scrub it raw and put this acid like stuff on it, or you can whack them off when they get bigger. It's all nasty.
Unknown said…
I just experienced dehorning for the first time (not me...at least I don't think I've got horns!). I knew that there was going to be blood, but Hubby didn't tell me just how much blood there would be!!!

I'm telling you, it' looked like something out of Kill Bill or some other kind of gruesome movie!! We've got a good handling facility and I know the animals are fine. It's just that there was soooooooooo much blood spurting out like a waterfall!!!

We also did vaccinations that day. Wow! What a long day!
Calfkeeper said…
c-yes, the spurting is nasty. You have to be able to duck really fast. But not all of them are spurters; some just bubble.

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