Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

Last Tuesday, the 5th, Gary got this bizarre call from the in-laws down the road.  "Come down here and see what you can do, there's a calf with a bucket on her head!" Gary came up to the house from the barn to ask me to go see about her.  So I did. Um, yes.  There she was in the field next to the in-laws place; with a bucket on her head in very truth. How in heaven's name did she get a bucket on her head? Well you may ask.  We only have a faint idea of where said bucket came from. Many years ago, like maybe 7-9 yrs, we had a calf out in that pasture that had some sort of problem.  I vaguely remember toting water or feed to her in bucket.  All I can figure is that one of those water buckets must have been abandoned out there.  Heifer 231 found it and apparently did more exploring than was strictly necessary.  She could see a bit over the rim if she held her head just right so she wasn't easy to approach. But I followed her r...

(*ahem...we begin this post with a sincere apology for the month long absence...the month of August was too hot and dry for blogging, all my words turned to dust before my fingers could type them out. Thank you for your continued patience...) Really I need to bring my camera with me in the mornings when I go up the road to feed and check on the stock. Last week there was a doe and her twins out feeding by the road. Today...well, today was another story. It began yesterday actually. Since it has been so dry hubby has had to put out hay for the bull and heifer group up the road. Yesterday morning they had finished their hay, and for some reason their hay ring was up on its side a ways away from where it had been around the hay bale. Hubby went up there and put out another bale (these are the big round bales, by the way...maybe 4'x5'.). Then this morning I go up there and notice that not only is the hay ring no longer around what's left of the bale of hay, but it is abou...

Once again I haven't had much time on the computer lately. But here are a couple of pics I took last week of our open heifer herd. These are the gals who haven't been bred yet. Usually I go feed them in the AM when it is still quite dark, but on this trip last week I went during the daylight hours because we had to get 2 of them to take to the bull. There were 30 of them in this herd at the time, now, of course, there are 28. Here they are just coming around the pond: Almost here: Gotcha! The big ones we needed are in the corral. It's always touch and go to see if they will go in.

The past few days have been busy. On Thursday we had to move our heifer herd from Windyville back here to the farm...well, just up the road from the farm here, so husband can take them hay with the tractor. We have a winter pasture we put them in; they still had plenty of grass in the summer pasture in Windyville, but weatherfolks are predicting possible 6 inches of snow this weekend; it's not fun driving a bale of hay 5 or 7 miles or so every couple of days-especially on icy steep roads. So we spent a couple of hours driving back and forth transporting 18 beasts to their new winter home. Two of them were bred so we put them back in with the bull and his heifers. The rest went into the winter pasture. It is funny to watch them react when you put new critters in with an established herd. They get all huffed up and posture and headbutt to establish who will be boss cow-or heifer. They duck their heads, headbutt and go round and round kicking up mud and grass until someone gives ...

When you live on a dairy for very long the first thing you learn NOT to do is to name the critters. You never know when one is going to croak, or when you will have to get rid of them; either BEFORE they croak on you, or because they have some kind of problem. However, there are times when a name or a nickname just happens. This one calf came along back when I first started my calfkeeping gig here. My husband went by her house one morning and said, "That calf in the last house is sure fat and fluffy looking." And that is how Fluffy got her name. Fluffy just had her first calf this Monday. My husband was out there at 9 PM, stripped to the waist because he had to pull the calf. Fluffy was in no mood to cooperate, so it was quite the ordeal. He got her in the trailer, but she decided she didn't want to be messed with so she went after him and he had to climb the side of the trailer to get away from her. Anyway, he finally got a live heifer calf out of he. But she w...