Stirring Everyone Again

The last March calf arrived last night.  I have an abundance of bull calves it seems at this point.  While we were milking we were also making a plan on where everyone would go.  I did a recheck of the cattle due dates and YIKES...not only do we have 4 to dry up again but I realized that in April we have 13 due!  I knew April was going to be a challenge with 8 heifers due but really hadn't thought about the rest.  February chaos was only 11 calves out of experienced cows.  I don't even want to think about April again until its over! LOL

Cows have some special talents.  One of those talents is being able to step on their own teats.  The cow that freshened with the huge udder did just that a few years ago.  When that happens Bruce ends up milking that teat by hand, if it's not destroyed, until its healed.  This can take days or weeks depending on severity.  If they really mangle them we must abandon that quarter and dry it up.  To avoid this worst case scenario, Bruce put an udder support on her this morning.  This is the cow version of a bra and keeps her from injuring herself.  While an udder support serves a helpful purpose they are just one more thing to deal with, having to take it off and on every milking. Bruce calls them "Victoria's Secret" for cows : )

Victoria's Secret for cows  aka  udder support

While Bruce did a road trip and picked up some things he had ordered, I got all the cattle records up to date and also paid the bills. After dinner I managed to get 6 calves in.  I will start weaning them in about a week, giving them time to figure out their new surroundings and learning where to eat and how to use a drinking cup.  I always take their coats off before I lead them in with a bottle and it's always neat to see how shiny and warm they are when the coats come off.  We keep a photo record of all the heifer calves so I took pictures of both sides of each of the 4 heifers I got in.  These pictures get put in a book with their pedigree information and have come in handy when someone loses a tag.  Pictures of calves look identical when they are cows since their markings never change. Bruce replaced a worn out mattress and when I got done moving calves we moved cows all over the barn.  We now will have the heifers in 2 groups of 5, and 7 dry cows in their group again.  That means there will be 5 different batches of feed to mix for the animals in the main barn. (cows, dry cows, calves, steers, heifers) It's no wonder it seems like Bruce spends so much time mixing feed!  In theory we could have cattle on pasture in a month.  Sounds too far off....or too close depending on what list we look at.

Hutch graduates need to learn their feed is on the other side of the stanchions and stick their heads through

New cow mattress installed

To drink, everyone needs to learn to push the silver paddle down so the water will come in the drinking cup

Today we had a Hispanic family stop in looking for a goat to butcher.  They picked out a bigger one and will come and get it on Monday.  We do not speak Spanish, and for me especially, communication is a challenge.  This time their daughter, maybe 5 years old and very shy, was the translator. Bruce thought she was extremely helpful as shy as she was.

One of the perks of having calves outside in hutches showed up tonight when I got to watch the biggest full moon in 18 years come and go between the clouds while I was feeding.  That almost makes up for the mud!