Another First

Joe was here yesterday morning and milked. He always eats breakfast here and then he and Bruce continued out to do the routine barn chores like feeding the calves and steers and scraping all the feed alleys by the cows.  This gets done every day and when its hot, twice a day.  As a general rule Bruce's dad still cleans the alleys but Joe gave him opportunity for a day off.  When they were through with that Bruce decided to take advantage of the help and clean up around the silo bags.  We have a love/hate relationship with these bags.  They are relatively convenient to fill, but that includes buying  the bag and bagger rental.  They are much faster to feed out of since you use the skid steer instead of an unloader.  No unloader maintenance required.  There can be problems with spoiled feed, especially when rodents chew a hole in the bag, or once years ago, a raccoon walked around on top and poked holes. The biggest challenge with the bags is dealing with the plastic.  As you remove feed you cut away plastic.  Over winter with all the snow the plastic was burried, then plowed around and mixed in piles of snow and spoiled feed.  When everything thawed there was a huge mess to clean up.  We have a dumpster so Bruce took the skid steer and started by digging plastic loose with the pallet forks.  Then he bucketed the refuse around, and Joe picked out any plastic that showed up. They only worked less than 2 hours but they managed to get the area pretty much cleaned up.  The spoiled feed is now in a pile and ready to go into the manure pile for spreading in fall.  There has been no new sighting of the beef cow that is assumed to still be roaming our corn field.  With this particular area planted alternating tilled and no till, it's a solid block of 23.5 acres, and the chances of randomly finding this cow are pretty slim.  We do know that she was picked up at a farm only a couple miles from here and she happened to get off the trailer and proceed to push her way through a small opening between the trailer and the barn.  It is good to know she is not mean and aggressive, but she still doesn't need to live in our corn.

Bruce had an interesting start to his day.  The steers live in the same yard that the cows go through between the barn and pasture.  To make this work we have a corral of gates along the barn wall and whenever the cows are traveling the steers are herded by Mike into this corralled area, and once the cows are on pasture they are let out to continue resting, eating and drinking in the yard.  I was warned when this group was put out there that we had a stag steer in the group and I needed to be aware.  A stag steer is one that has been castrated, in this case with a band, and one of the testicles wasn't in the band correctly. When this happens the testicle stays up in the body cavity.  This keeps it too warm for fertility so they aren't able to create a pregnancy but they do have hormones like a bull and can be a problem. Sometime during the night, the steers who have nothing better to do but find trouble, managed to get the gate that closes their pen away from the barn wall. When Bruce and Mike were putting the steers in their pen one of them got behind the gate.  When Bruce was trying to put that one in the pen the stag steer kept pushing him back out so Bruce kicked him in the nose. The stag steer decided he did not approve and he put his head down and chased Bruce into the corner by the barn and the bunk. It was lucky Bruce could climb up high enough that all the steer/bull could push at was his legs. Somewhere in this process Bruce touched the hot (electric) wire around the bunk and the steer got a shock also. This caused him to back off for an instant so Bruce had a chance to get over the gate into the barn. He then got his "attitude adjuster/pick handle"  and went back out to continue putting the steers in their pen.  The steer put his head down to come after him again Bruce hit him very, very, very, very hard up side the head. He said it would have been a home run in any ballpark. The steer now has respect and an appointment with "THE truck" on Monday morning.  This is the first time in Bruce's life that an animal has threatened him, with the exception of newborn calves who sometimes do the same thing.  A former neighbor had a similar incident happen and he was killed.  I am no longer allowed to let the steers out for now (usually I do it) and Bruce will carry his stick just in case.  Until today he never gave us cause for concern, but there are no second chances.  The good news is the steer has a head ache and Bruce is perfectly fine. Monday can't come soon enough.  Tonight Bruce just said "hello" to the steer and he turned and walked into their pen.  It seems they have come to an understanding as to exactly who is boss.

The rest of the day has been a non event.  Now that Bruce has "nothing to do" he has the option to pick and choose what he accomplishes between the feeding, milking & misc. barn necessities. Actually today he didn't really get to chose since the manure pit was full to the door again.  He hauled 7 loads and piled them on the back of the other place where they will be easy to reload and spread after the corn is harvested.