Big Daddy never carries as much weight some of the other bulls but he is huge and long. He has one speed…slow; he just lumbers or plods along. Gene debated about keeping him another year but he is so gentle and throws beautiful calves. His influence in the herd is obvious with lots of white-faced babies. White-faced Herefords bred to Black Angus produce white-faced Angus.
We have seven bulls and it takes a lot out of them to do their job as they have approximately 175 heifers and cows to service. This past year we lost several calves that were born during the brutal cold and ice storm in February so Gene decided to delay the start of breeding season until the first of June. This will make next years calving season start around March 10 instead of February.
Signs of spring are everywhere and it is so wonderful, so refreshing and so beautiful. We love riding the golf cart over the farm, admiring the cows and newborn calves. The woods are just bursting with new life, flowers are blooming and birds are singing. How grateful I am to live in a part of the country that we get to enjoy spring. God is so good.
Take a ride with me…..
Red tulips
Strawberries are blooming. I can hardly wait.
The lettuce and onions will soon be ready to eat.
The Maple trees are blooming. As kids we called them “helicopters” because of the way the twirled as they flurried to the ground.
The poison ivy is growing well.
The pear tree is full of fragrant blossoms. Do you see the busy wasp collecting nectar?
Can you believe that in one month, right around Mother’s Day, these peonies will be full-grown and laden with sweet smelling flowers?
Blooms on the birch tree.
Lots of baby calves.
If a calf is red or has a white face it is the offspring of our Red Hereford bull.
Some of the cute faces of the calves.
Noah says his grandpa has 60 hundred thousand million jillion cows.
Curious cows and Noah is scared to death of them.
Gene used his hat to hold the fence down so that he could climb over the fence.
He went over and sat on the ground to show Noah how to be very still and speak quietly to the cows and they will come up to you.
The cows looking at Gene and working their way to him.
The cows were grazing and also enjoying the warm sunny afternoon.
I am reminded of God’s promise to Noah when he stepped off the ark and the earth was springing forth new life. It was fresh and clean and invigorating after months in the dark, cramped, smelly ark.
“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall not cease”.
Pigeons are everywhere. It is probably the most popular, unwanted bird in the city and they can also be a messy nuisance on the farm. But, I love pigeons. I love to watch them, I love the cooing noise they make and I love their colorful feathering.
Pigeons will make a mess in an old discarded barn or silo. I remember as a child daddy would occasionally find a nest of pigeons in the hay barn. We would have pigeon rice soup for supper. Just in case you don’t know, pigeon is very good to eat!
I have occasionally photographed our wild pigeons here on the farm.
I also have a pen of Tumblers-have had them for years. Tumblers fly in circles and then do a head over heel tumble or somersault out of the sky. Just between hitting the ground they soar to fly again. It is so neat to watch. I used to fly my birds but I had difficulty in retrieving them all back to the pen because of the wild pigeons. If you notice in the flock of wild pigeons on top of the silo there are some brown hues. I had a brown Tumbler that would not come back to the pen but was attracted to the “wild side” of town! The effect is still noticeable. Now I just enjoy the beauty of their colorings of blue, brown, white and everything in between and listening to them coo.
Short clip of my Tumblers cooing and protecting their nesting area from other intruders.
Baby pigeons nurse by inserting their beaks into the throats of their parents-yes, male and female. As you could see in the video clip the adults are very protective of their nesting area and when another pigeon invades the area will peck at it until it leaves.
Spot, one of our favorite cows because of her unique coloring and personality, has a newborn calf born yesterday afternoon, March 9. Spot is part Simmental, part Angus and part…. who knows what. She looks like a Holstein but according to Gene, her mother was black Angus and so was her daddy. It amazes me how he knows and remembers all this. He doesn’t keep records; he just knows. She was bred to a Hereford; thus the white face on the calf, and this is her sixth.
Congratulations Mrs. Spot!
To read more about Spot check out my blog post: Spot
There is lots of new life on a farm, occasionally death, and once in a while there are orphans. Right now we have two orphan baby beef calves. It often feels like misfortune comes in bunches. The saga started one bitter cold, icy evening about four weeks ago. Just before nightfall, Gene went out to feed hay and a heifer came across the field with a newborn calf in tow. She didn’t appear to want anything to do with the calf and neither did she appear to have much of an udder. Apparently the calf went in search for its mama and followed her up to the barn. A cow will often stash a calf in a safe spot so it can sleep and gain it’s strength while she grazes the first couple of days. She will go back often to check on the calf and let it nurse. The calf appeared more than a day old as the navel had already dried and was very perky as if it had nursed and gotten the mama’s colostrum. He penned them up together in the hay barn for the night. A little later in the evening we went back out to check on them and the “supposed mama” did not seem to be interested in the calf which was lying across the pen nestled against the hay. Gene gave the heifer some grain as a distraction just in case so he could feed the calf a bottle of milk with the lights on the truck. We began to wonder if this was really the mama. The “real” mama would have been protective and would not have been happy with him messing with her calf. The next morning he went to the barn and fed the calf again. He checked all his mama cows and heifers to see if there was one bawling for or searching for her baby. He put the calf out with the cows to see if anyone claimed it. They came around and sniffed but no one seemed interested in claiming the little gal. He checked the fields see if there was a mama down or dead that he had missed. He could not find anything but it was becoming more and more evident that the “supposed mama” was not the mama. He brought the calf home and put it in a calf hutch bedded with straw. Orphan #1 very quickly adjusted to the bottle and lets “papa” know when it is feeding time!
This past Saturday when Gene went out to feed the cows, he found one of his older mama cows down on her side and unable to get up. She had laid down on a hillside and had somehow ended up on her side. This is a fatal situation for a cow if not found soon enough. He tried but was unable to save the mama and now suddenly he had another two-week old orphan calf. This time it was a little white-faced bull. By the time a calf is two weeks old they have gotten their running feet under them and are very spry. Gene took backup help and while he distracted the calf Tim eased up behind the calf and with a lunge caught the little rascal about the mid section. They hauled him up to the barn and put him in the hutch with the other calf. It is rare to have to bottle-feed beef calves but now he has two to feed! It is reminiscent of dairy farming days. Baby calves are fed two quarts of warm milk twice a day, morning and evening. The first couple of days he used whole milk from the grocery store and then eased them on to Purina’s Herdmaker milk replacer. It is very important not to overfeed a calf or they will get sick and die very quickly. It didn’t take long for these babies to adjust and they very eagerly look forward to breakfast and supper.
Week 1: After a full week of using the mixer wagon, Gene is very pleased and happy with what he sees at this point. Several observations:
1. He was feeding 6 round bales a day in the hay rings. This week he has bunk-fed 4 bales with the mixer wagon.
2. The cows are content and not all crowding the bunk at one time. They eat and go out to graze or lay in the pasture chewing their cud. There seem to be some cows around the bunk most of the time.
3. This does not speed up the feeding routine. The total process actually takes a little longer; however he can do other things while the bales are mixing. Some of the round bales are lighter and fluffier and some are wrapped tighter and heavier and are a coarser stem hay. The lighter bales grind and mix much quicker-20 minutes. He is putting a lighter bale in first and then topping with the tighter which are taking much longer to grind. It is taking 25-30 minutes to grind the two bales. If they were both soft bales it would take less time. He is pleased with the consistency of the hay and the cows are cleaning up the bunk so there is no waste. At some point he would like to have a bale slicer for the tighter bales to speed the mixing/grinding process.
4. He is using more fuel because of the time it takes to grind but he is also feeding less bales of hay.
5. He is putting a mixture of water and Purina Superlix on the hay as it is mixing. It is making an excellent quality forage, smells good and also cuts down on dust. He is using 130 gallons water and 7.5 gallons Superlix per 2 bales which means each cow is getting 1 lb. of Superlix. The young calves are really eating at the bunk.
Week 2: The weather has turned colder with rain. He has had to up the ration to 5 bales but if he was feeding round bales, he would have also had to up the quantity fed.
1. He tried putting the third bale (it was a tighter bale) in the mixer and that did not go well as it took too long to mix-he lost his efficiency. He wants to try a lighter one and see how that goes.
2. He has sent off a sample to the lab for analysis and is anxious to get the results back.
We have this cow; Gene calls her Spot. She is our rogue, fence walker, gate checker, “grass is greener on the other side of the fence” cow.
This morning as Gene and I were standing at the patio doors looking out over the pasture he said, “here comes Spot”! We watched her march up the driveway from the back pasture, heading straight to the gate. Occasionally she would stop and glance towards the house as if she was checking to see if anyone was looking. It was obvious what her mission was.
She looked the gate and noted that it was closed and then looked around to see if anyone was watching before going back the way she came. (She didn’t see me catching her on security camera!). She walked all the way up the pasture just to look at that beautiful closed gate!
If Gene goes through the gate and leaves it open for awhile, she is the one who will find it even if she is nowhere in sight. There is this alarm system that goes off in her brain- boss has left the gate open-go for it.
Quite often in the summer time we see her down on her front knees, head stretched under the fence eating grass even though there is plenty of grass on her side of the fence. It is a defiant “just because I can do it” attitude.
Maybe it is her spots-she is the unique cow in the herd of mostly black angus. Somehow the spots fit her well, individualist bovine that she is!
One of the joys in the life of a farmer is getting a big project completed. My farmer hubby has been dreaming, planning and researching this bunk feeding project for months. While I surfed facebook in the evenings, he was browsing the web looking at other farmers’ ideas and equipment, trying to figure out what he wanted, was economically feasible and would work best for his situation. We have approximated 150 plus brood cows plus young stock. For years we have been using round bales feeders but the cows make a terrible, muddy mess around the feeders in the winter which means there is hay that gets wasted. Gene felt he needed to have a something different before this winter. Finally the pieces began to fall together and this weekend he completed the bunk and it was ready to use.
I climbed up on that ladder and looked inside…..
There were some serious looking blades inside the mixer.
The mixer will grind and hold 2 round bales at a time. It takes about 20 minutes to grind a load and he can grind on the go.
The mixer grinds the round bale into small pieces and mixes it all together; the best with the not so best of the hay.
This keeps the cows from wasting hay-they eat it all and all the cows get to eat the same thing. The more timid cows who stand back and wait will get the same mix of hay as the more aggressive ones. They say you save about 30% doing it this way. Last year he baled 1900 bales and this year he only got 1200. He had to figure out a way to stretch the hay!
You can also mix feed supplements such as Purina Superlix, corn or other commodities such as brewers grain with the hay.
At first the cows paid no attention. They were laying out by the hay rings waiting on their supper!
Suddenly one cow who was off in the woods on the side caught on to what was happening. She came out with her calf and started bawling-alerting her herdmates that food was now on the table!
It wasn’t long until the whole herd was bawling and coming to the bunk.
(We even had a neighbor email and wonder what the ruckus was about with the cows tonight and if everything was ok!)
Gene talking to his cows as they came to the bunk.
The first to the bunk!
It wasn’t long until they were lined up munching away.
My view from the house.
It took 2 batches (4 bales) to fill the 288 foot bunk.
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Below is a video of filling the bunks.
A note about the video: First you will see Gene filling the bunk and then you will see a cow from the side figure out supper was being served. She starts bawling and then you can see the other cows start to get restless and start bawling. When Gene calls them they start coming. They know the tractor means feeding time but something different is happening. If you notice they are laying around their empty bale rings waiting for them to be filled.
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All fall he has been working hard …..
First there were a few trees to be removed. Our son, Keith, did the tree removal, grading and setting of the bunk.
Gene is removing a fence that was in the way and will be relocated.
Setting the bunks on a good base of ground up asphalt from a highway project.
Graveled the driveway.
The long term goal is to have a roof and a concrete slab but sometimes things have to happen in stages!
280 foot loooooooong! Gene figured he need 2 foot per cow.
Building a fence to keep the cows off the drive through side.
Finishing touches.
Making an electric cattle guard.
He has an electric cattle guard at each end of the bunk. The wires are maybe 6″ above the ground and he can drive over it.
The cattle won’t cross it as they can smell the electricity. They use this method out west on roads where cattle roam the open plain. Time will tell if this works.
Gene says the cattle will tell him what they like and don’t like, what works and doesn’t work and he will make adjustments.
A farmer knows how to interpret the actions of his cows!
Note: When you do something different there are always things to learn. We are now on day 2 and Gene is very pleased with what he sees happening. The cows are contented, eating off and on all day and not crowding the bunk. The four bales lasted 24 hours. He had been feeding 5-6 bales. We will see how this figures out-whether this trend continues. This evening he added some water and Purina Superlix to the hay as it was mixing. He really liked the results. Below is an update after a about 10 days of usage.
After the storm this evening I rode with Gene to put Wind & Rain mineral out to the cows. We pulled up to the gate and Gene revves the motor on the truck. That is his “call” to the cows. Instantly dozens of ears come up, mouths full of grass look towards the gate and across the field they come in a run.
Yum!
We went to another field and the brood cows with their calves were all standing at the bottom of the hill in a corner. Again he revved the motor and they came running.
Is this the same as “finger lickin’ good’????
They would bury their noses in the mineral and then lick it off their noses.
This poor little calf got his face at the wrong spot at the wrong time. Yes, that is fresh manure all over his face! His mama will probably lick him off later.
I am a country gal who enjoys writing, gardening, baking and my family. My husband and I own a retail feed store and it keeps us active and busy. We love living in the country and on our beef farm. We retail natural, Angus, dry-aged beef in our store and a local "natural" store.
My writings, called "From A Grandma's Perspective" are mostly inspired from our five delightful grandchildren. These along with "Life Perspective" can read on our web page at www.hffinc.com under the "Who We Are" tab.
By the way, I love hearing from people who read my blog!!!
