Limousin Calves Grow Fast

The view from my back porch about 7:00 am. ZZ Tom on the right.

Most mornings I get this view of my cattle herd from my back porch.  They come up from the creek at the bottom of this hill to a salt feeder.  From here somehow they decide where they will spend the day.  Sometimes they go east to pasture, sometimes south.

The last week or so the weather has been hot and humid and the flies are very bad.  Many of the cows and calves, and the bulls too for that matter, crowd into the barn where they stand side by side head to tail and tail to head so they can swish the flies off each other. 

I have a large handheld garden sprayer full of fly spray and I try to sneak in the barn and give them all a good soaking but they hate the smell and don't understand what I'm trying to do for them, so they leave in a huff. The picture below is of Bobby with his ears back slogging out of the barn to escape me and the sprayer.

Bobby the bull, also known as HSF InFocus. He's purebred Angus

Bob is having a great summer breeding the cows.  We decided not to AI this year - the calving is just too strung out from March to whenever. Here it is the end of June and we still have two cows to calve.  So, Bob gets the run of the herd until the last calf is at least three months old.  He has to share the pasture with ZZ Tom, my nice yearling Limi bull out of Violet by Tommy Boy. I notice that Tom is checking out the ladies and Bob lets him sniff around a bit, but then knocks Tom out of the way if things begin to get busy.  I have Tom for sale and hopefully soon he will have a herd of his own. He's very calm and sweet tempered and looks so much like his brother Thor that I know he will make someone a great herd bull.


Calves by BTAP Thor

Speaking of BTAP Thor, he was purchased earlier this spring by a farm near Akron, Ohio. Most of this year's calf crop are by Thor and we are very pleased with the results. In the picture at right the calf on the far left is by Thor out of Sarah, a big white Shorthorn cow. The bull in the center is by Thor out of a registered Angus cow.  The calf on the right is purebred Angus.  They were all born in mid March.  The Limis come small (we only pulled one calf and that was Violets stillborn bull) and grow very fast. The Angus may catch up with them around two years of age but generally the Limousin influenced cattle are bigger than the Angus - that's why they are known as the carcass breed - lots of pounds of meat. 

Fawn Killed on My Road

Photo by Paul Sundberg Photography

As I drove home this afternoon I could see ahead some small animal had been killed almost in front of my driveway.  My first thought was that it was a squirrel because of the red color, but as I came nearer I realized it was much too big to be a squirrel. Then I feared it might be one of my red tabby cats.  But no, as I finally came to a stand still in front of the little body I could clearly see that it was a tiny fawn. My stomach flip flopped and my heart did the same. This was such a sad sight, the poor little innocent body lying in the road with hardly a scratch on it. Left there for the buzzards to clean up or another car to further mangle its tiny body. Careless driver!

I parked in my driveway and walked back the 50 feet or so to the poor little body. The fawn couldn't have been more than a day or two old and looked so much like the one pictured here by Paul Sundberg Photography. For a minute I thought it might just be stunned. But then I noticed the belly was torn. It hadn't been dead maybe half an hour, no blood and just a little fluid.  Rigor mortis had not set in.
I picked up the tiny body and took it to my car where I had a garbage bag.  A storm was coming up and has been blowing all evening so I will have to wait until morning to bury it.  It's little body will be buried next to Violets still born calf from last month.

Come fall I'll be anxious to have my hunting buddies thin out the white tailed deer population on the farm. It's not good for the deer to become too numerous. Several young bucks are hanging around the place eating my roses and the tops off the raspberry bushes.  But my heart goes out to this tiny baby who didn't even get one good summer of life before one of the cars that roar down our little country road snuffed out its existence. 

My Bees Thought I was a Bear!

My bee experience has not been good. When I received my bees in April the weather turned bad and I had to keep them in the kitchen in their "package" box for four days until the rain stopped and the temperature warmed. Then when I "installed" them in their hive they were aggressive and stung me. 

Last night was my garden club meeting and member Patti Harrington who is a naturalist for Green Acres near Cincinnati, gave us the program on raising bees. It was basically the bee lecture she gives to school kids.

It was all very interesting and toward the end she told some little anecdotal stories. One of them was about the fact the bees seem to see brown color and if you are wearing brown clothing they think you are a bear and will attack you. 

Honey bee enjoying a clover flower. Photo found on Bing photos.

Well, when I installed my bees I was wearing brown stretch corduroy pants and I was surprised that several bees landed on my pants and stung me through them. They also chased me and even when I was some distance from the hive and pulled off my hat and vail, they still chased me and stung me on top of my head and on my neck.

The next time I worked with the bees I was wearing an old white cotton oxford shirt left behind by my ex-husband and a pair of blue cotton pants with a tight weave. The bees didn't bother with me at all.

Yesterday morning I went to work on the hive wearing a cream and brown plaid hoody type jacket. A bee got into my sleeve and stung my wrist.  When I came into the house one was still on my coat.

I was to the point of thinking I would call another bee keeper and ask them to take the blanky blank hive away. Then I went to garden club.  It all makes sense now.

 I still have a lot to learn about the bees and a lot of work to do with them, but  I will be careful to wear the white shirt and NO BROWN CLOTHING and hope they will be less aggressive toward me.  They have had wonderful flowers for the last month - honey locust, honeysuckle bushes, multi-floral roses, blackberries, elderberries, true vining honeysuckle and now white and red clover, lots of clover. Patti says the clover has lots of nectar and will bloom all summer so they should have plenty to eat.  I've noticed some of the blackberries are already setting fruit and hope that is the result of having bees near by.

Noxious Weeds or Healing Herbs?

I've been studying medicinal herbs for an herb garden presentation at Glendower Historic Mansion.  With the help of our local Master Gardeners program we have planted an herb garden of medicinal herbs popular in home herb gardens during the American Civil War. The plantings include well known plants like Lavender and Foxgloves as well as lessor known ones such as borage and soapwort.  It's an interesting study and we are very pleased with the garden, but along the way I've found some amazing information about plants that I consider noxious weeds!

Poison Hemlock, related to parsley, carrot and fennel.



Over the last three years I've been plagued by two weeds, namely poison hemlock and common burdock.

The poison hemlock is toxic to humans and animals. A drink made from the juice of poison hemlock was used to execute Socrates.

Last year when I spotted the plant I cut it down to the ground before it could flower and set seeds. This year it came back ten fold. The plant has been so prevalent on my property that I broke my organic only rule and hit it with Round Up herbicide.

A Modern Herbal gives it these medicinal properties: As a medicine, Conium (made from the dried leaves) is sedative and antispasmodic, and in sufficient doses acts as a paralyser to the centres of motion. In its action it is, therefore, directly antagonistic to that of Strychnine, and hence it has been recommended as an antidote to Strychnine poisoning, and in other poisons of the same class, and in tetanus, hydrophobia, etc. (In mediaeval days, Hemlock mixed with betony and fennel seed was considered a cure for the bite of a mad dog.)

On account of its peculiar sedative action on the motor centres, Hemlock juice (Succus conii) is prescribed as a remedy in cases of undue nervous motor excitability, such as teething in children, epilepsy from dentition. cramp, in the early stages of paralysis agitans, in spasms of the larynx and gullet, in acute mania, etc. As an inhalation it is said to relieve cough in bronchitis, whooping-cough, asthma, etc. The drug has to be administered with care, as narcotic poisoning may result from internal use, and overdoses produce paralysis.
                                                                                                                                                                  

Dry woods taken over by burdock.

The other noxious weed that's taking over everything, but mostly wooded areas, is the common burdock.  Burdock gets really tall, with huge leaves, has  pretty purple thistle like flowers that turn into very sticky large burrs. Over the years it has turned up here and there on the farm, but this year it is taking over a couple of the wood lots.  The picture above for example is a loafing area for the cows - or I should say was a loafing area. The ground is normally leaf covered and the tree canopy keeps out all but the hardest rains so its a high dry spot for the cows to rest, sleep, keep cool, etc.
On one of my travels through the fields checking fences after a storm I was amazed to find this patch of woods taken over by burdock!  These plants look big now but soon they will be over six feet tall!  I am seriously considering spraying them with Round up as well.

Botanical.com the web site for A Modern Herbal tells us the following about Burdock:

Culpepper gives the following uses for the Burdock: (the famous herbalist)

'The Burdock leaves are cooling and moderately drying, whereby good for old ulcers and sores.... The leaves applied to the places troubled with the shrinking in the sinews or arteries give much ease: a juice of the leaves or rather the roots themselves given to drink with old wine, doth wonderfully help the biting of any serpents- the root beaten with a little salt and laid on the place suddenly easeth the pain thereof, and helpeth those that are bit by a mad dog:... the seed being drunk in wine 40 days together doth wonderfully help the sciatica: the leaves bruised with the white of an egg and applied to any place burnt with fire, taketh out the fire, gives sudden ease and heals it up afterwards.... The root may be preserved with sugar for consumption, stone and the lax. The seed is much commended to break the stone, and is often used with other seeds and things for that purpose.'

It was regarded as a valuable remedy for stone in the Middle Ages, and called Bardona. As a rule, the recipes for stone contained some seeds or 'fruits' of a 'stony' character, as gromel seed, ivy berries, and nearly always saxifrage, i.e. 'stone-breaker.' Even date-stones had to be pounded and taken; the idea being that what is naturally 'stony' would cure it; that 'like cures like' (Henslow).

OK fine. But I'm still going to kill them as noxious weeds!

Tarps from those chicken feed bags

Tote made from a Purina Layena chicken feed bag.

You may remember back in March I wrote about turning those woven poly chicken feed bags from Purina's feed into tote bags.  They make great shopping and tote bags because they are plastic, water proof and very sturdy. I can sew one up on my handy sewing machine in about 20 minutes.

My collection of poly feed bags was growing however.   Rumpke wouldn't take them for recycle and my green self hated to put them in the trash. 

Then my good cow Violet had a still born calf and I wrapped the body in the tarp I was intending to loan to my mother as a base for her couple of yards of mulch that was to be delivered this coming week. The calf had been dead in the cow about 24 hours (and that's another story!) and stunk to high heavens!  So I left it in the tarp and had my excavating friend bury it all together.

That left me with no tarp. And that's when I decided the collection of poly feed bags might come in handy.

Hen inspects tarp made from various woven poly feed bags.

With a pair of scissors and a role of duct tape I was able to fashion a roughly 10 x 10 foot tarp that should work just fine as a base for loose  mulch.   I simply cut the bottoms off the bags and slit them down one side. Then I opened them up, laid them out on the driveway and "stitched" them together with duct tape. That is, I overlapped the edges and taped them together. I also turned the whole thing over and added some reinforcing tape on the back side.  As you can see I have quite a collection of poly bags - and more coming every day. 

My next project is to make smaller tarps to lay on the clean chicken house floor, especially under the roosts.  I am pretty sure I can just pick up the edges of the tarps and bundle the chicken litter out the door and over to the compost pile.  It should save time and keep the litter dust at a minimum.  I'll keep you posted.

Folded tarp ready to deliver to Mom.