February on the Farm

Monday is the day we put our garbage out for pick up about 4:00 am on Tuesday. It's always amazing to me how many Mondays are either raining and windy or just plain windy.  Today is another one of those very windy days and I refuse put out garbage cans and the recycle tub just to have the wind blow them all over the road. But the sun is shining and its a gorgeous day so I  walked to the end of the lane and took some pictures.

February 11, 2013

I think this is a pretty shot of the house and lane. If you look closely you will notice three of the shutters are missing.  The wind took them off and I have them stored flat on the back porch.

The lane doesn't look too bad here. you can see some ruts long the right edge where a truck has maneuvered into the gate opposite to load cattle. This part of the lane drains well but as you go towards the road and it dips and turns through low areas the pot holes begin to look like small lakes.

Cattle chute left, creep feeder right, house center.

Left is a shot of the lane with its current yard ornaments. On the right is a broken down calf creep feeder with a bum leg, but it still works for the purpose of sequestering calves away from the big cows so they can eat their grain in peace. I rarely use the creep feeder on going. I usually just use it as a means to train the calves to eat a little grain. As soon as they get a taste for corn they will push their way into any feed bunk regardless of how big the other cattle may be. 

To the right is my cattle handling chute. The chute is a good 12 years old and looking a little rugged. It needs a lot of rust removal and a good paint job, but it seems I never have time to do more than oil the mechanism just before I need to use it.  We purchased the chute as an all purpose cattle handling chute for calves, heifers and full grown cows, but it has never really been big enough for my full grown girls. I can't remember the last time we could fit a full grown Limousin bull through it. It's good for calves and heifers and we do manage to squeeze some of the smaller full grown cows in it if they aren't too pregnant. The chute and the creep feeder are out along the lane because I needed to move them out of the paddock soa trailer  could pull in there to load cows out of the barn.  Now its too wet and muddy to put them back.


Cattle chute and cattle barn.

CEH Infocus, aka Bobby Burns.  He's been wrestling with Thor.

Here's a picture of CEH Infocus, the bull I affectionately call Bobby Burns because he's a Black Angus bull and Angus come originally from Scotland and Bobby Burns was a famous 19th century poet from Scotland. He wrote such pithy sayings as:  O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us. 

Poor Bob is a mess, mud everywhere. He's licking a protein tub and I think if the mud gets any deeper the tub will disappear. Mud is a fact of life when you raise big, heavy animals. Even the gravel feeding pads are covered in 8 to 10 inches of mud. Poor Bob also has lice.  We treated the whole herd for lice in the fall, but every winter one or two animals get them anyway. I guess they come in on the deer.  As the weather warms up the lice will go away, but in the meantime many of the cows are showing hairless patches where they have scratched at the lice. Bob has a couple of places there on his shoulder. He doesn't seem to mind. Cattle don't rail against too much, but take life as it come.

Lazy cows didn't get out of bed until 9:30 am.

As you can see most of the cows are dirty. The pasture is wet, the barn yard is muddy, even the inside of the barn floor is wet and muddy from cows sleeping there all night.  Once a week or so I take pity on them and pop a round bale over the fence instead of putting it in the round bale feeder. The cows happily tear the bale apart, eat about 70% of it and spread the rest out for a bed.  This gives them, for a few days anyway, a dry place to rest.  Here's Bobby Burns, Jealousy, heifer calf Zooey and soon to be mama cow Bramble, just getting up from sleeping on a spread out round bale.

Buttercup will need a clean dry place to have her calf. Just look at that dirty udder!

Cattle are herd animals, and just like chickens, they have a pecking order. Valentine (who will be 13 years old on the 13th of February and was the first Limousin born on the farm) is the lead cow. Her daughter Violet is second, bringing up the rear is Buttercup. Buttercup is my pet. She was the first bovine I purchased back in 1999. She will be 14 years old this spring and has always been the last cow in the herd.  The second lowest is Sarah, a big white Shorthorn cow. I suspect that the herd politics favor black cows, though the red ones get along pretty well. But the majority of the cattle are black and black seems to dominate. Buttercup also has one of those grumpy, put upon personalities.  Since she is a pet I often single her out and give her a little treat - which I'm sure doesn't endear her to the rest of the herd. She has just spent the night on last week's round bale bed - which has basically been churned into mud. She is patiently waiting for everyone else to have a turn at the round bale feeder before she gets her breakfast.