I couldn’t say anything, because I wasn’t sure if the processor would have our cows ready on time. But I got the call (after multiple attempts to get an answer this week) that our cows are ready as of this morning.
I’m on the way now to go pick up two cows worth of beef and to stuff our freezer to the gills. I will be back, and unloaded, before Lucy opens today at 2pm. That means ribeyes, NY strips, eye round roasts, etc. All the goodies will be in stock this afternoon and tomorrow.
We are open 2-6 today, and 8-5 tomorrow. No appointment needed! Stop by and get some fresh beef!
Of course, we are fully stocked on pork, chicken, dairy, etc. as well so we have all the goodies for you.
I don’t talk about our leased farm that much. Other than stopping by to check on things or go catch an errant cow, we don’t have to go over there that often anymore. We used to have our entire herd over there but now with just the brood cows and babies, it’s pretty quiet.
But at least once per year, I’m fortunate to get to go over and visit with the owners and talk about the upcoming year, visit with the kids, and pay the annual lease.
The picture above was taken from their back porch as we talked about the upcoming year and some fencing projects we need to work on. The picture doesn’t do the view justice. It was absolutely gorgeous as the sun was setting. In the medium distance, you can just see the cows and calves grazing in the fading light.
It was about this time that I told them we’d be coming to get the cows before too long, to take them to our farm for the winter. Lips were poked out all around. Nobody was happy to see the cute and cuddly cows leave. Oops, I thought they’d be happy to know we’d have them at our place over winter giving their farm a rest. I guess I don’t have to worry anymore that the cows have been misbehaving and wearing out their welcome.
But truth be told, I miss them. I’d spent some time before our meeting just hanging out with the girls and their new babies in the pasture. They came right up to me and started asking where I’d been, complaining loudly that I didn’t come visit often enough. You know how moms are. I’d committed to them they’d be coming home before long and you never go back on your word to a mom. They have a memory like a steel trap!
Every week I make the rounds to see our farmers. Some I meet in a parking lot, some I meet at the processor, and some I meet at their farm. This past week when I stopped at our yogurt/kefir farm Carolina Farmhouse Dairy I was met with this young lady.
Cute and cuddly
After loading up all the yogurt, I had to go over and give her a bit of attention.
Cute little baby Jersey calf
She was shy but was happy to have some attention. I don’t know of a cuter animal than a baby Jersey calf.
It’s a lot of time and effort to drive around to all these farms. But there are some perks!
One of the downsides of having our brood herd at our leased farm is we don’t get to see the calves born each day. However, the plus side is when we go check on the cows, it’s like Christmas!
This past week we had a report of cows getting out. When Miguel went over to check the cows and the fences, he found two little surprises.
Our first little new calf of this story
We used to see these calves as they were just born so we’d get close up pictures, ear tag them, etc. Now we get blurry shots just before they run away. But you can see this little one is cute! The momma’s are #23 and #25. I don’t know who belongs to who yet but we’ll figure that out later.
Baby Graham, a mirror image of his dad
This little guy is cute. Miguel was even hushing about him. Perfect markings and healthy as he can be. We’ll end up castrating him anyway so no new bull here but he’ll make for a fine steer.
On July 29, when working with the cows I found A7 dead in the pasture in a little draw in the woods. He’d apparently died the day before. I buried him right there where he fell. A7 was the calf that was sick from the time he arrived and never recovered any body condition.
We were finishing up our day last week when one of the guys noticed that Graham looked a bit worse for wear.
Graham, our registered Hereford bull
It seems that Graham had found a way to get to some potatoes late in the day and he was now paying for it by bloating. Because of the rich diet we feed, we deal with bloat with our cattle. We’re pretty good at avoiding it but sometimes things happen, like in this instance.
Since we deal with it often, we also are pretty good at treating bloat. However we had a few issues to deal with.
One. It was pretty hot, which is why he was bloating. So this was going to be no fun.
Two. Graham weighed, at his last weigh in, 1452 pounds. He does not fit in the head gate like a normal cow.
Three. It was already 5 o’clock. We all had places to be.
Oh well, farming comes first. So we rigged up a lane and ran the cows into the corral. Then we sorted out Graham and got him into the head gate, as best he could fit. He was inside, but the actual locking part of the gate wouldn’t fit his huge neck so he wasn’t secured in place where he couldn’t move around. This is important because in order to treat his bloat, we had to insert a trocar and it’s a lot easier if the animal is still.
Trocar inserted into cow
Inserting a trocar means minor surgery and jamming something into his side that I’m sure, given his druthers, he’s just assume I kept to myself.
However, this is the best way to save his life so it had to be done. I worked on Graham and quite quickly I got my hand jammed between him and the steel top rail as he moved around. Graham was very calm and behaving himself, but he’s dancing around because I’m messing with him. On one of his moves, he popped two of the bars out, just like you see in the picture above. Except those were moved down on purpose my releasing steel clamps that hold the bars in place. Graham flexed and blew them out, and got his leg out too in the process.
So now we have a calm, but unhappy bull, mostly inside a head gate which is unlocked, standing on three legs and with one leg hanging out in the breeze on our side. A lot of times the cow will pull the leg back in the next time they move. Or I could tie his leg back to hold it where it is. But he’s almost done and we are too so let’s just get this over with.
As I finished up the prep and went to insert the trocar, I had to climb up on the head gate to get enough leverage to push it in. Graham decided he didn’t like what I was doing and, reasonably, kicked. Kicking would be no problem because he’s in the head gate. Cows kick all the time. So whatever.
Except Graham’s leg isn’t safely in the head gate. It’s hanging outside, with us.
But he cannot reach us, so no big deal.
Except, I’m standing on the head gate, just above Graham.
Now we have the final link in the accident chain. Too big of an animal, not secured properly, not inside like he’s supposed to be, and a farmer closer than he is supposed to be to the action.
Graham caught me right in the thigh with that one kick.
Ouch!
I knew I’d been popped pretty good because Miguel didn’t make fun of me as I hobbled away. At least not for the first few minutes. Once he saw I was going to live, and so was Graham, then he started making fun of me. That’s when I knew I’d be ok.
Joking aside, this could have easily been a damaged knee, needing surgery and rehab.
So what went wrong?
I saw Graham’s leg sticking out.
I knew he could and probably would kick.
I had a rope already laying there I could have used to secure it.
I knew better.
I was in a hurry and didn’t take the extra two minutes to tie up his leg and I got a nice reminder that getting kicked is the result of carelessness. The head gate has adjustments, but nothing that will accommodate somebody as big as Graham. They make bigger, better head gates, but this one does 99% of what we need and it is paid for. I just need to take extra care when we have an overly large bull in there.
One of our farming friends had an accident on her farm and is going through a really tough time right now with lots of trips to the hospital, multiple surgeries, etc. Things are not going to get easier for her for about a year and she has some really excellent milk cows that she wasn’t going to be able to milk. She decided she’d dry off most of her herd, and sell one of her cows. Erin and I talked and we decided that we’d get this cow from her because of how well we knew her, both the farmer and the cow.
Hedi, getting off of the trailer for the first time.
Meet Hedi (pronounced Head – E), our new milk cow. Hedi is already bred back via AI. She was bred to Draper at ABS Global and her calf, if it’s a girl, can be registered. Draper is high bf and bb, kappa and beta caesin, A2/A2. (I don’t know what most of that means, that’s what I was told. Someday when I figure all this stuff out, I will come back and have these notes.)
What I do know is that Hedi is not shy about pushing me around with her head so the name fits. Although she is a typical Jersey and is gentle as a lamb. She’s out in the pasture with Betsy and Bernice, our other milk cows. She is also sharing space with Curious and now with the ninja calf, who, surprise, keeps escaping the paddock where all the other cows are. His butt is going back to the momma cows as soon as I have time to get him on the trailer.
Hedi checking out her new pasture
Hedi has already made herself at home here and milked wonderfully this morning. That’s a huge deal as cows do not like a change in schedule or environment. And Hedi has had both in spades since yesterday. We’ll acclimate Hedi to the program here over the next few weeks and she’ll be part of the tour when you come out for a tour.
We are a very unusual farm. Most farmers have some cows, a bull, and every year a crop of cute little calves are born. Then later that year, the truck backs up and loads all the now six month old calves and away it goes. The farmer gets a check, minus trucking and auction fees, for his calves and that’s the end of the cow business for the year. This is called a cow-calf operation.
Then there is another type of farm where the farmer buys cows from someone like our first farmer. He brings these six month old calves into his operation and raises them till they are 16-24 months old. At that point, the calves are fully grown and he sells them as steaks/hamburgers/one half cow/etc. This is called a finishing operation.
To be good at something, you have to grow it to a certain scale to make it efficient. You also have to specialize. So what do we do on our farm.
Neither. Both.
We are a small farm that has bulls, cows, and finish cattle. We do it all the way through from just born to slaughter. This creates challenges. For instance, what do you do with a female calf that you don’t want to breed? You can’t leave her in the herd with everyone because by 24 months, she’s having her first calf. Up to now, we would sell the females at the market and keep only the males. But Miguel has come up with another solution.
We are splitting our herd.
We have another farm that we lease. On Wednesday we worked all the cows through our corral and across the scales. We also sent the finishing cows one direction, and the mommas, bull, and babies another direction. We then loaded up the mommas and babies, and the bull, and took them to our other farm.
Off loading the cows and calves at our leased farm
This leased farm has ample water, shade, and tons of grass. We won’t intensively manage the cows here. Instead we will let them roam and graze as they like. And make babies, and raise them. Then every couple of months or so, we’ll do a roundup at this farm and we’ll take the calves that are old enough to our main farm. Boys, girls, doesn’t matter. These calves that are old enough (around 8 months old) will come here to the finishing herd where they will be moved to fresh grass daily, supplemented with fresh produce, and basically handled multiple times per day, in other words, intensively managed. We will keep the finishing cows here, till it’s time for them to go to the processor. This means our finishing herd will no longer leave this farm but will simply rotate around as long as it takes them to graze the grass. But since there are half as many of them, that should work just fine.
Hopefully the end result is we will have more cows ready for the freezer and purchase less in the process. I already know we handle them less since it only took two trips to move the cows to the other farm instead of the typical four which saved us hours of work.
Monday when Miguel went out to feed the cows, he noticed a new calf bouncing around amongst the cows. The calf was strong and frolicking about, meaning he wasn’t just born.
#73, prior to getting tagged.
Fortunately Miguel was able to catch the calf and see that he was a bull. Unfortunately, I had not seen this new cow born on Sunday so I guess I missed one. It all worked out ok though as Miguel got him tagged and banded.
After a bit of watching, Miguel noted that this new calf took to momma #33, Birdie.
#72, having an early morning breakfast right in front of the house
This was what greeted me when I was walking over to the barn this morning. Sorry for the bad exposure, it wasn’t exactly day time yet. Here you see #72, having breakfast. Just out of the picture was Betsy and Bernice, and Bernice was going to town as well having her breakfast. It looks like little #72 is going to be ok.
