Never Clean Enough

It never seems to matter how much cleaning up we do, the animals can still find that loose bit of wire that is inevitable on a farm.

J went to check the cattle and found that the Hereford bull had a piece of barb wire wrapped around his hind leg.
J got his calf catching pole thinking he might be able to hook the wire and pull it off. Unfortunately, it was twisted on itself and wouldn't come off that easily.
He ended up having to get the cattle in the barn and catch the bull in the chute to remove the wire. No harm done. It is nice that the Herefords are so calm and easy to handle.

On a different note, I am surprised at how clear these zoom pictures were. I balanced the camera on a fence post and all of the pictures were taken in the same spot.

Happy Sweet 16

V asked me not to put her on the blog today because she didn't think she looked good after doing farm work all afternoon. She decided later it was OK.

Happy Birthday V.

Seeing Double

Apparently today was twinning day.

Two sets of goat twins were born late this morning.
The one from yesterday is still doing fine. Sometimes Bea goes over to it and nudges him with her nose. So far the dogs have not been to rough on the baby goats but these two nanny goats today have been pretty rough on the dogs.
J had to work at the market today so it was up to me to check the cattle. I found a bull calf that had not been cleaned off wandering by himself and a new heifer calf clean and dry being hovered over by the cow. I tried to get the cow to stand still for the bull calf to nurse but she wouldn't have any part of it. I ended up having to put him in the front floor board of the truck to bring him to the house. I guess we have a bottle calf for the time being.

Kidding

Our goal for the goats this year was to kidd a little later than last year. This way maybe we could avoid the bad weather and let them stay outside. I put up the temporary fence about 10 days ago in hopes of getting a little more grass to grow.
Saturday when I went to feed the dogs, the goats all came up to get salt. It was the perfect opportunity to get them in with very little work. The next part of the plan is to sort out all of the ones that aborted earlier and turn them back out. We might get to that tomorrow.

We had our first one born this afternoon. The puppies seem very interested but have left it alone for now. I guess the test will be if he is still here in the morning. Bumble looks like she could be licking her lips.

Happy Easter

He is risen. Christ has risen indeed.

Spring Cattle Work

We worked the first bunch of cows today. The hay is almost gone and we are trying to get the cattle out to new pastures.

First, it involved getting the cattle up. V and E were out of school for Easter break so they very kindly helped.
V did and excellent job on the head gate.
E tried her hand at a variety of jobs. She drew up the vaccine and used the spray gun dewormer.
We had to haul the cattle to the new field. It is a farm we rent across the road. We took the cows first.
Then we hauled the calves over. There was a lot of frantic bawling and running around until all of the pairs got matched back up.

16K Update

16K is doing much better. She is eating and acting normal. However, she never really started milking well. Therefore, we a have been supplementing her calf with a bottle daily. At first J had to run after him the catch him, now he comes running when he sees us.

It's a good thing she is a calm cow.

V participated in the Block and Bridle Stockman's and Livestock judging contests last weekend.

She was 4th overall in Stockman's and 4th in Stockman's judging out of 290 contestants. She didn't place in the Livestock judging in the top 10 but when we got the scores she was 17th out of 93. No one else on her team placed in anything.