Remote roundup

Here's a link a reader sent about a unique way to round up cattle. As a cattle owner, I found this hilarious!

Who needs a cattle dog when you could have such FUN with a radio-controlled car??

I'm baaaAAAAAaaackkk....

Hi everyone:

I woke up this morning not only feeling better physically, but mentally as well. It's like my mind finally cleared itself of the fog it's been wrapped in for almost two weeks. Man oh man, I hope I don't get that sick for another decade or two. I'm so thankful this flu bypassed Don and the kids.

I felt so good this morning, in fact, that I went out and did my usual barn chores, specifically telling Don to sleep in for once. It took me almost twice as long as usual - and I skipped cleaning Matilda's pen until the afternoon because I was too wiped out - but I did them.

Got treated to a pretty sunrise for my efforts.

Nebuchadnezzar, who managed to hop the fence yesterday evening, somehow got a loop of hay bale twine over him. Fortunately it was a simple matter to cut the twine.

Any physical labor tuckers me out, but as Don points out, effectively I haven't eaten anything but yogurt since last Sunday night. I just have no energy reserves left. On the plus side, I managed to lose ten pounds. Don says I should write another book, this one called "The Yogurt-and-Influenza Diet," but I told him I wouldn't wish that on my worse enemies.

On a brighter note, a couple of milestones I wanted to point out: My Google followers are now at 375!!

And my RSS Feed topped 900 for the first time! RSS Feed varies from day to day, but this is the first time it's been this high:

I gotta admit, I'm a hopeless number-watcher, so these statistics please me immensely.

A couple of random things I wanted to clear up. Last week a reader inquired as to why I had banished her from posting comments on the blog. Had she offended me, she wanted to know?

Of course not. I reassured her that this blogger program won't let me banish anyone, even if I wanted to, and certainly I had no reason to banish her. However she isn't the first reader to ask. What it comes down to, I believe, is your browser. If you suddenly find yourself unable to post a comment, it could be because you've either changed browsers or changed the settings on your browser. I'm not tech-savvy enough to suggest anything beyond that, but please be assured I don't (because I can't) banish anyone from posting.

Ah now comments, that's a different issue. While Don was moderating all comments during my absence with the flu, he told me he deleted a couple for very specific reasons I'll get into.

Please understand we cannot edit your comments from our end. If you drop in a bad word, we'll delete the comment even though it's otherwise interesting, simply because we're trying to keep a family-friendly blog here.

Here are some of the reasons a comment might be deleted:

• Bad language. If I don't want my kids reading it (and yes, they read my blog) then I won't post it. Yes I've been known to drop a salty word or two on the blog as well as at home (cough), but that's my decision and I prefer mild language in all comments. We received a very interesting comment from a 16-year-old young man relating an incident at his high school in which he was relating the attitude of his schoolmates in some **'d out four-letter words. Obviously the bad language he referred to came from his schoolmate; nonetheless, we felt we couldn't post the comment. (If the young man is reading this, I urge you to post again; we really did enjoy your perspective.)

• Racist language. Another post came in which expressed an opinion using some derogatory terms easily interpreted as racist. I'm sure everyone understands we are not racist and prefer not to have such expressions on the comment archive.

• Language suggesting violence. Yes, there are times I'd like to set fire to some people, but I can get into a boat-load of trouble for "encouraging" or "inciting" such feelings by posting comments to that effect. So if you're suggesting a violent solution, don't be surprised to find your comment deleted. I have no way of knowing how many government goons are trolling this blog, and any hint of violence could be seriously misinterpreted. Savvy?

• Dirty jokes or links. In response to a post, a dear reader sent a link to a dirty website as something of a joke. I immediately deleted it. My kids read this blog and they sure as heck didn't need to follow that link. I know this reader's email address, so I sent him a note explaining my reasoning. He apologized for the momentary lapse in judgment and all is well, but it serves as a warning for future comments.

• Personal attacks. Oh my goodness, there have been times I've come thiiiiis close to deleteing comments from some readers who start slinging personal attacks directed at other readers. I tend to be a little more lenient with these comments, but only up to a point.  I welcome politely-expressed opinions from all ends of the political spectrum and would rather not have those opinions attacked. Polite disagreement is fine, attacks are not.

Phew. Hope this covers the basics!

Cutting up

This is Jet.

Jet is one of our Dexter herd matrons. She's about nine months pregnant but we no idea of exactly when she was bred, so we've been keeping a sharp eye on her. For Dexters, I've learned that when their udders suddenly go turgid, birth is a couple hours away.

So anyway yesterday evening while Don was feeding the critters, I walked over to peer at her udder and noticed... a nasty wound. A piece of skin about an inch across had been torn off. How? No clue. Perhaps Ruby caught her with her horns. Perhaps Jet caught herself on a nail or tree branch. We'll never know.

At any rate I'm not too worried about it. Cows have an astounding ability to recover from some seriously ugly wounds. One time a calf tore a four-inch strip of skin from her leg. We snipped off the dangling skin and she recovered just fine.

Nonetheless I hopped the fence and, by pretending I was scratching her, I managed to smear some triple antibiotic ointment over the wound.

Such is country life.

Milking questions

A reader sent the following email which I'm posting for everyone's benefit:

I am writing about milking cows. We live on 12 acres is East Texas. We moved here about a year ago. I always said I would never milk anything, but things change. I have Nubian milk goats and I am just not satisfied. Milking two gets me less than three quarts a day. You can not easily separate it and my husband thinks the cheese tastes goaty. I agree on the soft cheese. So my question for you is do you milk once or twice a day? If you milk once a day, how do you get to that point with the calf? How long til you can separate the calf from the mom for the night? Cows are much larger than goats, hence I didn't get one to start with. A little nervous. But I really like making cheese. Excellent article in Backwoods Home Magazine on cheese making by the way. So I think I am going to need to upgrade to a cow. Also any suggestions on buying one? Should I go to a dairy or buy one from someone on Craigslist?

My reply:

Regarding milk cows: I think it depends on what breed you get. For years and years we had only Dexters, which are a small dual-purpose (milk and meat) breed and I milked two cows. But then our neighbor got a Jersey and I fell in love with the breed, so we got Matilda. With the Dexters, because their milk output is not huge, I felt comfortable milking just once a day (I'd separate the calf at night and milk in the morning). But when we got Matilda and since she came off a commercial dairy, she had no calf on her and I was forced into a twice-a-day milking schedule. The rewards were tremendous - huge amounts of creamy milk, so I made butter and cheese like mad - but the schedule was rather unforgiving. It's not like I could skip a milking, after all, or the poor girl would burst.

But an interesting thing happened after Matilda had her calf last year - the calf took a lot of the cream and a lot of the milk, and though I was still milking twice a day, her output was FAR less (actually, this was a blessing - who needs five gallons of milk a day?). So I dropped to milking once a day (evenings) and that worked fine. Then as Matilda adjusted her output, I actually got lazy and stopped milking altogether. (Frankly it was a nice break.) I certainly could have continued milking but as I said, I just got lazy.

So to answer your question, a lot will depend on whether you get a heavy milk-producing breed or not, and whether you keep a calf on the cow or not. A cow will adjust her milk production to the demand. If both you and a calf are taking milk, she'll adjust her output higher. If you forego milking and just leave the calf on her, she'll adjust to that.

Frankly I like the once-a-day schedule and sharing the cow with her calf. I think it's healthier for the calf to be raised by its mama (and I think it's beneficial for a cow to raise her own calf), and a once-a-day schedule means you're not a slave to your cow. You can occasionally skip a milking by keeping the calf with the mother at night, for instance.

I like to keep a calf exclusively on the mother for two weeks. This bonds the animals and insures the calf gets all the colostrum it needs. Then if you plan to separate the calf at night, make sure you do so in such a way that the animals can still see and smell each other, such as a pen for the calf. If you just spirit the calf away at night and the mother has no idea where her baby has gone, she'll break the barn down in a frantic effort to find her calf. But if they can see/smell each other but are just physically unable to touch, there will be a lot of loud complaining but at least the cow knows where her baby is. It takes about two or three weeks for them to stop complaining and get used to the idea of being apart at night.

If I were to recommend a breed to a new milker, I would recommend a hand-raised Jersey. Dexters are a more spirited breed and may be a difficult adjustment, but if you're familiar with handling cows they're a fine breed to get. If you get a Jersey - and if we could do it all over again and if we had more money - I would get a healthy four-quarter cow (meaning, all of her udder quarters are working) with NO history of mastitis. You'll pay more but we had a nightmare case of mastitis when we got Matilda and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Since getting Matilda I've learned a great deal about udder attachment. Matilda has a terrible udder attachment but our neighbor's Jersey has a superb udder attachment. When looking over a potential animal, see if you can bring along someone who is knowledgeable about such things to help guide you. Commercial dairies tend to sell off their lower-quality cows. Be careful with a Craigslist listing, as you don't want to pick up a sick animal that someone is disguising as healthy. With a cow, you really do get what you paid for. We paid $500 for Matilda and, while I love her to pieces, that's all she was worth. Our neighbors paid about $2000 for their Jersey, and she is a far higher quality animal. Ah well, live and learn.

Dexter cow - excellent udder attachment

Dexter cow - poor udder attachment

Dexter cow - poor udder attachment - see how saggy-baggy she is.

With udders, a poor attachment looks "saggy baggy." A good udder attachment means the udder is held tight and close to the body. Ideally teats should be not misshapen and not poking out in all directions.

Dexter cow - excellent teats - all uniform.

Dexter cow - misshapen teats (harder to hand-milk)

Hope this helps! If you don't mind, I'm going to post your question and my answer on the blog so everyone can see it.

Selling Ebony and Nix

We sold Ebony and her calf Nix during the summer, though the buyers asked if we would hold the animals until they had a chance to build suitable facilities.  I always like selling animals to people we know will be good stewards, and this is a nice homeschooling family that just moved to the area from Montana.  They're experienced with cattle so I know our girls will be in good hands.

In order to catch Ebony and Nix when we needed to, we fed the beasties in the corral for a couple of days.  This meant everyone could be trapped, and we could shoo out the animals we didn't want in order to scoot the animals we did want into the barn.

Done this way, it was a fairly effortless thing to get Ebony and Nix into the barn (sorry about the white eyes - flash cameras don't do well with cattle).

The buyers brought their horse trailer which they backed right up to the barn door, so we scooted the critters inside within thirty seconds.  Loading animals isn't always so hassle-free, so this was a treat.

"Where are we going?"

And off they go.

I saw the buyer a couple days later and asked how they animals were settling in, and said they were going great.  This family has seven kids (some bio, some adopted) so there will be a lot of love and affection for the animals.

The philosophy of feeding

Last week we moved the cows to their winter quarters, the wooded side of our property.  Normally we feed them through the winter since, of course, they can't graze through snow.  But since we haven't had any snow yet, and since we're trying to preserve our hay supply, we've been letting them pick through the remaining grass in the woods.

But a couple days ago we thought we'd better start feeding.  The calves had never been fed at the feed boxes before, so it took them a day or two to figure out that free food magically appears in the feed boxes twice a day.

Now the calves "get it."  In fact, everybody "gets it."  Mornings and afternoons, we have eleven discontented animals (ten bovines, one horse) standing impatiently next to the feed boxes, waiting for us to get off our lazy duffs and give them food.  They bellow.  They moo.  They whinney.  They don't shut up until we feed them.

It's not as though there's three feet of snow on the ground.  There's still food in the woods if they look for it.  But it's so much easier, don'cha know, to gripe and moan and complain until they get their free food in the feed boxes.  Conditioned by the handouts, they are now too lazy to go look for food themselves in the woods.

But of course, the food isn't free.  My husband and I paid for it.  And we're the ones doing the labor of feeding.  Wind or rain or shine, we trundle the wheelbarrows over to the haybales, pitch the hay into the barrow, trundle it over to the feed boxes, and heave the hay into the boxes.  We fill the wheelbarrow three or four times each feeding.  We feed twice a day.  It doesn't matter what other chores need doing, or what the weather is like, or even how we feel.  And if we're late, they complain.

Until the snow flies and feeding becomes imperative, it finally dawned on me what the problem is.

Our cows are on welfare.

Moving cattle

Ruby, one of our herd matriarchs, recently discovered she could get into the wheat field merely by stepping over a low patch in the fence.  Oh joy.

Okay okay, we knew we had to fix that fence anyway, and clearly it was time.  Once a cow discovers the way through/over/under/around a fence, she won't quit until the fence is fixed.

Ruby proved this in spades by jumping the fence so quickly (three times in a row) after shooing her back into the pasture that we knew it was time to move the critters back into the woods.

Our acreage is roughly split in two, with the house and barn in the middle.  One side is treeless pasture.  This is the summer rotate-able grazing area.  The other side of the property is woods interspersed with some grass.  We put the animals in the woods during winter months because they have feedboxes, barn access, and trees for partial protection from the weather.

Here is the rest of the herd, wondering why Ruby's outside but they're not.

So we moved them over to the wooded side, where they reacquainted themselves with the mineral block in the barn.

Here's Gimli, our bull, looking grumpy as usual.

The animals immediately had their heads buried in what grass was available this late in the season.

Since it hadn't been used all summer, the water tank needed some serious scrubbing...

...but soon it was ready to fill.  We'll put a tank warmer in during cold weather to keep the water from freezing.

However, all this new territory didn't keep the calves from slipping through the fences onto the road, of course.

Late on a foggy evening, I had to shoo them back through the fence to their waiting mamas.

Fences. Ah, a whole 'nother blog post....

Vaccinating cattle

The vet came today.

It's always a big occasion when the vet comes.  Farm calls are expensive so we try to get as much done in one fell swoop as possible.

Today we needed to get Bang's shots for two heifers as well as Lutalyse shots for a yearling heifer and Matilda, our Jersey.

But before we could welcome the vet, we needed to get ready.  This included a couple of stout O-rings to hold ropes attached to thrashing animals...

...as well as adding a removable board above the barn gate to keep panicked animals from jumping the gate.  Don did these in the morning.

Then we borrowed some neighbor boys for extra "bodies" and started herding the cattle from the pasture into the corral.  Then we picked off the ones we didn't need and shooed the two calves into the barn.  Let's just say this was easier said than done.

Here's Smokey, Ruby's calf, looking highly suspicious.

I managed to get a rope around her neck, to her immense disgust.

We needed to fit her with a halter.  Here's our basket of halters.  Surely one will fit?

No such luck.  Don had to take the closest-fitting one into the shop...

...and burn three more holes in order to tighten it enough.

After a minor rodeo, I got the halter on the calf and attached a rope to it to make it easier to catch her.  As it turned out, the halter was still too big and came off her nose.  Oh well.

Next came Raven, now just a bit over a year old.

Surprisingly, she was a whole lot easier to handle than Smokey.  I fit her with a halter and rope without much trouble.

Make a note: always remember to wear mud boots, not my new thrift-store sneakers, into the barn.

When the vet arrived, the first thing we did was give Matilda a shot of Lutalyse.  Lutalyse is an abortant.  After her ill-timed heat cycle last April, we needed to abort the fetus or we'd have a calf born in January, which would almost guarantee a dead calf in our harsh Idaho winters.  We prefer to breed our cows in late August or early September so the calves are born in late spring.  This will be easier to control once we build a bull pen for Gimli.

But meanwhile poor Matilda needed a shot of Lutalyse.  She was not amused.

Then it was Raven's turn.  Raven also needed a shot of Lutalyse, not only because we don't want a calf born in winter, but also because she's still too young to have a calf.  We like to breed our heifers at about 15 months of age, so they'll be just about two years old when they have their first calf.  Once she aborts the fetus, she'll go into a heat cycle and Gimli can breed her.  This way her calf will be born next spring when she's about two years old.

But Raven needed more than a Lutalyse shot.  She also needed her Bang's shot, which also requires an ear tag, and ear tattoo, and a blood sample (because she's older than a year).  Here the vet is trying to draw blood.  Raven didn't cooperate, so after more rodeo antics the vet got the blood out of a neck vein.

After this it was Smokey's turn.  All Smokey needed was a Bang's shot, her ear tattoo, and her ear clip.  Sorry, we didn't get any photos of this because it was, er, rather a lively event.

That's it for vet calls!  We should be good until next year.

Cow chaos

A neighbor brought over his Black Angus heifer, Cowabunga or Cowzilla or something like that, so our red Dexter bull Gimli could breed her. (She's the one with the white star on her forehead.) You'll notice Gimli didn't waste any time becoming familiar with her backside.



Then chaos ensued as everyone tried to establish a suitable pecking order. And the chase was on...






We finally put everyone into the big pasture just to give them something different to do.


By the way, this is why I'm not bothering to milk Matilda lately. We have four calves this year, three of which don't belong to her. But does she care? NoooOOOOOooo. I'm surprised there's only two on her at the moment.


There's a reason we call her our "universal donor." She's never met a calf she didn't nurse.

Cowzilla or Cowabunga or whatever her name will be with us for at least six weeks (two breeding cycles) so make sure she gets bred. Gimli doesn't mind!