Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 Yep,  Gary got COVID again.  For this reason I haven't been on here blogging.  The only time I blog is when I am on the laptop here, and when he is sick this tends to become his domain.  I am quite, quite sure I am going to come down with the beast here in a few days.  This time he had like over a week of mild congestion leading up to it, and that is what I have had the past couple of days.  I am doing everything I can think of to keep Ellen from catching it here at the end of the school year.  I follow Gary around sanitizing everything he has touched or sneezed on; same for myself.  Every door knob, drawer handle, faucet handle, counter food container, door jams...whatever.  I have stayed "quarantined" more or less, in the bedroom.  Last time I caught COVID that seemed to work; no one else caught it.   In any case, in the past few days Gary has sold off all but two of the calves.  One has a sore foot and the other o...

 This little fellow wouldn't cooperate with me for a good photo, but he is the first of our calves to go to a new home.  Gary registered all of our pure bred Angus calves.  This one is going to a place near Elkland, MO to a guy who is raising him to breed his little herd of Angus.   We have two Angus/Holstein cross calves; both heifers I think...one might be a bull, I am not sure.  We are not sure what we are going to do with them, but they will be privately sold.  As in; we will not take them to the sale barn.  Gary listed the calves as for sale on Craig's List yesterday morning and got a call just an hour or two later.  There is also a different guy who was interested in buying all of the registered bulls as he raises and sells them himself.  But he wasn't going to come look about them until the end of the week.  I'm kind of glad the guy got this first bull yesterday.  I like to know they are going straight to their new perma...

 Yesterday Gary had me come out and help him at the new corral.  We set up the new corral a few months ago and now he has added a squeeze chute on to it for the purpose of sorting, vaccinating and what not.  Gary attached a scale to the chute to weigh them as well.  He wanted me to help him set up and calibrate the scale.   It wasn't hard, so it didn't take long.  Then he wanted to test it, so he got some feed and tolled the herd up to the corral.  Most of the calves wouldn't go in...that would be this group here that you see.  A couple of them did though, and we got them in the chute and weighed.  Calf #286 weighed 575 pounds, and calf #284 weighed 560 pounds. Both of those are the calves from the Angus/Holstein cross cows.  They are not registered.  The other calves have been registered with the Angus association. I think they are all so stinking cute!

  A couple of days ago, Gary and I moved the beef herd back into the above field.  It's good for Gary to have them close, so  he doesn't have to be on the road taking hay to them, and he can just walk across the back here to give them feed.  This cuts down on easy long walks for Bella and I though, because it the only flat place on the top of this ridge where I can walk without going up and down difficult hills.  So now I occasionally take Bella out to the dormant big fenced in garden to run some, when I am not up for a longer walk down to the creek bottoms.  I walk around and around in there and let her sniff in the rodent holes and runs in the weeds along the fence.  When the cows and calves are out there though, she assumes the above stance at the fence, ever alert to their presence, and is interested in nothing else. The calves are not used to her, so they will stand fascinated, just watching her.  All bovines are possessed of a large curiosit...

 This seemingly Holstein heifer is fondly called "The Sheep."  She is one of our 4 beef/Holstein cross offspring from a couple of years ago.   The last bull Gary had for the dairy herd was a Beefmaster.  He sired some interesting calves.  Two of the heifers were quite black, and fit in with the Angus heifers we purchased awhile back.  Two of them were black/white like this.   "The Sheep," when she was a calf, did indeed look exactly like a sheep.  She was the cutest little thing.   She had a little heifer calf here a few weeks ago.  I am not sure which calf is hers.  All the calves have been quite black; even from the Holstein cross heifers.  They are so cute to watch out in the field. 

So this past summer in the dairy department has been off and on. We have had two sets of twins born; both either bull/bull or bull/heifer combos...meaning that we had to sell them. The cows all seemed to coordinate births. In early Aug we had two cows go on the same day, and the same on another day in early Sept I believe. I think we have had 9 calves since early Aug, and maybe 2 or 3 in July. (It's hard to concentrate here, I have a pot of pinto beans w/ ham soup on the stove simmering; it smells very distracting.) We don't have a regular calf buyer anymore, but hubby just puts them on Craig's List and we usually have a buyer within 24 hrs. One guy came for two little bulls. He called when hubby wasn't here and asked me how big the calves were. Well, they weren't the biggest bulls we've had but they were fairly average sized Holstein calves. That's what I told him. Well, he shows up with a fairly flimsy dog kennel; the kind where the top lifts off...

We have had a spurt of calves in the past 2 weeks; maybe 5 of them. One little bull died, for no good reason that we could determine, though we didn't autopsy or anything. All of our calf huts are full (we only have 3) so hubby made a temp holding pen in the hay shed. There are 3 of them in this shed. Woe be unto the calfkeeper who has to bottle feed 3 new calves in one pen. It's a messy job. This morning I fed the 2 who'd come to me to get their bottles. Then I had to climb in there with a bottle to feed the newest little bull that has no clue about anything. I got slobbered on and headbutted, but I survived to tell the tale. Hubby called the guy who has been buying our calves...well, he called him on Thursday. No response. Now we have TWO little bulls to get rid of and still no response. He, hubby, went ahead and advertised them on Craigslist. This has been a chronic problem with these folks. They won't respond to our calls for a week or more. Then they...

Here is something I have often wanted to capture on film over the past few years. Finally I actually had my camera in my pocket and managed to snap this a shot a few days ago. When it is so hot during the summer months we often put our bottle calves in the bigger pen with the weaners (ummm...those are the calves who've been weaned off of the bottle). But in this enclosure there are no bottle holders for them, so you (meaning *I*) have to hold the bottles. Feeding one at a time is a joke because it'd take forever and you'd have to beat the others off with a stick. So your best bet is to feed them all at once; then it's over with. However this requires a special talent. Three calves, three bottles, two hands and one camera=dairy sleight of hand. In a still shot like this it would seem easy, but actually these little buggers are in constant motion; pulling on the bottle or "punching" at it with their noses, so you are constantly trying to juggle them to kee...

Yesterday we got two new calves. (To go with the new calf we got Saturday) They were both from first calf heifers down with the bull, which necesitates some tricky working to get them and their mothers out of there. I waited 'til daylight to go down and do the feed and capture thing. I got all the extraneous animals, including the bull, trapped in the corral so hubby could come down later and try and lead the new moms across the road into a different field. He did manage to find the calves, but one cow wouldn't follow and the other one only followed part way, he had to leave her in the open field. So I find myself going BACK up there (the 2nd trip with the 4-wheeler) and catching one cow in the corral. After that we take the truck and the 2 calves back up there. We get the cow that's in the corral with no trouble. Even the bull was tired of the whole thing by then. We shove the other calf under the fence to be with her mother (who was back at the fence looking for h...

Such is life. My rechargeable batteries for the camera went kaput; or else it's the charger that won't work, I don't have any AA batteries on hand. So, there goes posting any more recent pics for awhile...at least until I can get to the store and get some. Oh, well. What has been going on here? It's icy. Well, yesterday we had a day of sleet, which partially melted and refroze, leaving a sheet of cement/ice that requires great care to walk on; especially if you are carrying a child. It-the sleet-didn't start 'til mid-morning, so husband and I were able to do some fetching and hauling. On Wed evening hubby came home and noticed a calf up to the dry cow pen. Then when he put hay out Thur (yest) AM he saw another cow up there calving. So we waited a while then went up and checked out the situation. Yep. Two healthy calves. Unfortunately the first calf was a bull. Why "unfortunately?" He was another little red calf. I think his mom came from the ...

The two days that hubby was gone went smoothly. Neighbor did a really good job, and had fun I think. The cows seemed to like him. This isn't always the case. Sometimes they don't like new people and won't let down their milk for them. Cows are funny that way; funny-weird, not funny-haha. So of course on Tues we have a cow who has a calf. Another heifer. That makes 61 heifers for us, in a total herd, including two bulls, of 101. I think hubby said he was milking 38 cows now. So anyway. We got a new calf on Tues AM. Today we went down and got cow and calf. And, lo and behold, there is another cow in labor. So we brought her up too. Dunno if she's calved or not. Hubby will check on her later. That's it for today.

(OK. I joined NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month)-meaning I am supposed to post every day for November, but I haven't been doing a very good job of it. I joined late so I guess it doesn't matter for this year anyway.) Yesterday my husband had one of those Mondays. On Sun evening at milking time he noticed that our expectant heifer was acting funny, so he rounded her up and got her in a pen by the corral. At 2:30 AM he dons his boots and heads out to check up on her. Sure enough, she's got a calf, but somehow it has slipped UNDER the corral and Mama Cow is having a fit to get to it. So he has to drag the calf around, in the dirt and whatnot, and rearrange portable cattle panels so cow and calf can be reunited and not mix with the rest of the herd. In the process one of the panels falls down on the back of his leg. He comes back to bed and tells me nothing of what's gone on. At breakfast a couple hours later he tells me we have a healthy heifer calf, but, he says, ...

Yesterday was pretty typical. After I got my husband his cornflakes at 4 AM, I took another nap on the sofa until 5:30 AM. Then I got up, got the baby up, gave her a bottle, bundled her up and went out to do chores. I fed the calves...etc. Then I came in, got ready and went grocery shopping. Grocery shopping...I hate it. I would rather go to the dentist. Since I still have no cavities at age 39, I really WOULD rather go to the dentist than go grocery shopping. My husband doesn't quite understand why I hate grocery shopping, but he has never gone in his whole life so how could he? After I came home, put everything away, ate lunch and was resting, in came husband with a request; go see if you can get that cow into the corral so we can get her and her calf. So somewhere along the line I find myself up in the dry cow pasture ACROSS the fence on the neighbor's property hanging on to the leg of a bull calf that is trying to kick the liver out of me, with my husband on the walkie talk...

Here's a cute picture; a nice break from all the stories. Ellen and the calves were fascinated with each other while I did my little walk along the fence line.