Category: Cows

Today Miguel, Spork, Vicente, and I worked all the cows through our corral and across the scales. It’s our first time doing so since the cows went to our leased farm this spring and it’s our first gut check of the year to see where we are.

First, back in 2015 we had a goal for 2016 to finish one cow per month. That would keep us in beef pretty much all the time, so we thought, throughout the year. We scheduled with our processor to have one cow per month back in 2015. However with the demand, we’ve increased our schedule to where we’ve already taken 8 cows through the processor in six months, putting us ahead of plan. It normally takes 90 days to get on the schedule at the processor, or more pertinent to us, to get extra slots in the schedule. Last month I sat down with our processor and mapped out our schedule for the rest of 2016. I did this before I had the data from today’s weigh in so it was really just educated guesses.

For the remainder of the year, we now have spots on the schedule for 12 more cows to be processed over 7 months.

June 13 – 1 cow
July 11 – 2 cows
August 15 – 1 cow
September 13 – 2 cows
October 14 – 2 cows
November 4 – 2 cows
December 12 – 2 cows

Importantly, we have slots at the processor prior to Thanksgiving and Christmas so that we can get our meat back prior to the big days. That will let us order special orders for people and get them in fresh just before the holidays (hint, hint).

As we weighed everyone today, we have 11 cows that are or will be ready to process in 2016. They are:

14 – 1186 lb
3 – 942 lb
39 – 1247 lb
43 – 1050 lb
47 – October finish, 720 lb
LF33 – 1135 lb
WF 18 – Late 2016, 966 lb
Steve 10 – 1210 lb
LF07 – 1198 lb
759 – 1093 lb
63 – 1042 lb

That means we are 1 cow short of plan. Since we just took an unplanned cow to the processor (they had a sudden extra spot this past week), that means we were actually perfectly on plan for 2016, which is pretty good when you consider we’ve increased our beef production 50% above our original plan and we were just guessing on how many we’d need.

We will most likely take #11 to the processor in late 2016 as well, so that will make our 12th cow for the plan putting us perfectly on plan, Lord willing.

So for all of 2016, we will process 18 cows and about 54 pigs.

For 2017, we need to finish 24 cows. We have 13 cows on the ground that will finish in 2017 meaning we are 11 short. We will need to purchase stocker cows to make our numbers for 2017 and I’m already working on that now. For 2017, we have:

47, 54, 55, 57, 60, 64, A1, A2, A3, A4, A6, A9, and A12. Those are our 13 cows already committed. From that group, we have four cull cows, A5, A7, A8, and A11. These will be going to market to be gotten rid of.

For 2018, I don’t know what our planned production will be yet. I do know we have 9 calves expected this year (to finish in 2018), three of which are from new moms. We also have a number of new moms coming into production for 2017 meaning we have calving potential for 2019.

As you can see, it’s not ready, fire, aim so much on putting beef in the freezer. We have to plan out years in advance. In order to keep growing, we are going to have to either find some farm land to lease/buy or change our operation to a finishing operation. That would mean we only buy stockers/weaners and don’t have bulls and momma cows. I’m resisting that option as long as I can, but with the demand for beef in the store, I’m getting pushed that way pretty hard. We’ll see how it goes.

Today Miguel, Spork, Michael, and I transported cows from our leased farm back to our farm. As usual, they were not excited to get onto the trailer but once they got home they were happy to see where they were.

Fred Smith Co had Old Stage down to one lane as they were doing I don’t know what to the road but we managed to get back and forth four trips without too much delay. We even managed to catch the one way traffic going our way the last two trips so we didn’t have to wait.

The cows were turned into the pasture where Betsy and Bernice (our milk cows) have been hanging out. They were quite excited to see all these cows show up as they had new friends to play with. The beef cows were happy to be on the fresh grass and back home.

It took us most of the day but everyone is home. Nobody is happier about it than your farmer. I always miss the cows.

Last Tuesday morning when Vicente went over to our leased farm to feed and check on the cows, he called back to say there was a new calf. I was already scheduled to go look at a new farm that was for sale that day, so I grabbed the new calf gear and ran over to the other farm to see if I could catch the calf.

You see, new calves are like new human babies. Wobbly and helpless. Except for calves, it doesn’t last very long, not even one day. Calves have to be ready to run pretty quickly to keep up with the herd and get away from predators. Since we touch our cows every day, dealing with new calves isn’t that big of a deal. But at our leased farm, the cows have a much wider area to roam and the moms will often hide the calves until they are a couple of days old. This is a problem because in order to do what we need to do to the calves, we have to catch them, in an open field. Which is pretty much impossible.

Knowing this I bravely headed off to our leased farm and started looking for the calf. He was nowhere to be seen so I finally started working my way away from the herd and back towards the back of the property. That’s when I found mom and calf walking towards me. The mom was #3 which was a surprise. #3 had gotten sick this winter from the bad cold we had go through the herd and she’d never really recovered her body condition. She looked pretty skinny. However the calf looked perfect so kuddos to mom for having such a good calf in spite of her rough winter.

Unfortunately for me this wasn’t #3’s first rodeo so as soon as she saw me she turned around and started walking away from me with the calf in tow. I casually followed behind her pretending I wasn’t there for her, and then angled off, pretending I wasn’t going to go anywhere near her. She then angled off the other way and kept going, not believing me one bit. Once I’d gotten past her, I walked directly behind her and tried to speed up my walk a bit. She of course sped up so I had one option. Wearing boots, heavy work pants, a t-shirt, a button down heavy shirt, and a heavy coat, and carrying about 15 pounds of various gear, I took off running across this field trying not to outrun mom, but the calf. I could only hope he was young enough still that he wasn’t quite at full speed. It looked a lot like this.

Despite being old and non-athletic I managed to put on a burst of speed and catch up to the calf who was not quite up to full speed yet. I scooped him up and hit the ground, being careful to be gentle with him. He immediately hollered to momma who wheeled around and came charging back, all while I’m on the ground with her calf. This is where having gentle cows pays off because she got to me and then stopped, rather than bowling me over. Of course, you don’t know that while she’s charging you but at some point you have to have faith.

This is as close as I come to a selfie. I had to hold the phone out and do a sorta selfie, which I don’t know how to do but it all worked out. Jr was a bull calf so after this indignity, he got rolled over and I banded him to castrate him.

That’s my view of mom, at my level on the ground. Imagine her charging you in momma protection mode. Thankfully she is a gentle girl, as all of our mom’s are.

By this point, the rest of the herd has shown up to see what is going on so I have quite an audience. In about 2 more hours it would have been too late to catch this calf. He almost had his full mobility so we were lucky to be able to get him when we did.

After this little sideline, I started my day. Just another day on the farm.

You know how it goes. The cobbler’s kids have no shoes. The mechanic’s car never runs. And the beef producer never has any steaks. I haven’t had my favorite steak, the ribeye, in months. We sell out so fast that I never get to grab one for myself. I’ve ordered a ribeye here and there at a restaurant to try and at least say I’ve had one but those steaks don’t taste very good to me. They are either flat with no taste, or they have an off taste. I’m spoiled, I know.

Friday first thing I called the processor to make sure I was not showing up too early to pick up our cows. I’m on the schedule and they’d hoped everything would be ready Thursday but for sure on Friday.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Dan from Ninja Cow Farm, just wanted to check and see what time I should be there today to get my beef.”

“You wanted to come today?!”

Oh poo. I had folks stacked up waiting on beef to show up and the processor had somehow gotten mixed up and thought I was coming on Saturday. I explained what people with pitchforks and torches at your door looked like, and that I’d give them all the processor’s address. They said they’d see what they could do, to call back at lunch. Now these guys do a great job and always meet their promises. They also took an extra cow for me this last time so I’m not complaining but I spent the day doing errands, meeting people, and picturing an angry mob burning their farmer in effigy at my door. At 1pm I called and asked again.

“Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Dan again. Just checking on an update. Can I get my meat today?”

“I moved you to the front of the line. We’re working on it now.”

Oh thank God!

“Um, ok, so what time should I be there?”

“We close at 4:30. Be here at 4. ”

They are an hour away. It takes an hour to load, at best. I have to hand load every single piece of meat, and organize it so it’s easy to put away. I’d planned on being there at 8am, now I’ll be getting back to the farm, with 1200 pounds of beef that needs to be put away, at 7pm. And I had no family around so it was just me for dinner. I’d planned on going out to grab a bite to eat but on the ride back I had a thought and I said to myself.

“Self, you have 1200 pounds of beef back there and it’s not frozen. Surely we could spare one ribeye out of all that meat.”

When I arrived, I left the truck with the cooler on to keep everything cold and safe overnight and went straight to the house and into the kitchen.

I made sure to grab a steak from #42 as he’d been pretty crazy and if any steak was going to be off, it would be him. The first bite is always scary because what if I’ve done something wrong. What if the cow didn’t eat right, or was sick and I didn’t know it. What if the processor messed something up? There is two years of work in that first bite and you don’t know till it is on the plate.

The result? I was so busy drooling all over myself that I didn’t think to take a picture for this update till half way through. Rest assured, crazy tastes AWESOME!

Don’t look for parts 1-3. They were not posted here however they are burned into my brain over the past few months.

Here you can see the record on #42. This cow escaped our paddock, the one that all the other cows have used for years, not once, not twice, but three times over the past few months. He routinely destroyed something in the process prompting even more work than normal. Usually when he escaped, we weren’t even after him but were simply working cattle as we normally do. However, crazy has its benefits as this cow never got worked, never got treated, and is wild and free.

Well he was free, now he’s hanging in the cooler. It took us a good chunk of the morning and the help of five people, but #42 went into the trailer with little fuss.

After he got on the trailer, well, things got loud. There was lots of banging and crashing and he was none too pleased to be on there. Just so he’d feel better about the trip, we loaded his crazy friend, LF501.

LF501 was also marked as crazy and needed to be culled. Although he’d been calming down lately and was only moderately crazy the past few months.

Both cows made the trip to Chaudhry’s on Monday and #42 couldn’t wait to get off the trailer. He jumped off and started causing a ruckus at the processor. However, this isn’t their first rodeo. The walls at the processor are steel and two inch thick wood and go from floor to ceiling. There is nowhere to go and shortly we had him in a holding pen to calm down. I didn’t stick around for anymore of the show, I headed back to the farm to meet some customers and do some work in the shop.

The rest of our cows are pretty calm and they are doing well overall. I was really happy to have this crazy cow on the trailer and off my farm as that means everyone who is here now is only moderately crazy or not crazy at all. We have a few culls left and then, sadly, you’ll have to start eating not-crazy cows. For those of you that are used to the taste of crazy, I’m sorry.

As happy as I was to have #42 of the farm, I’ll be even happier to have him in the freezer so we can be fully stocked again. We are scheduled to have all the meat back in the freezer on March 5th, plus I’m picking up pork tomorrow to restock on bacon and pork chops.

We had a new little winter calf born on the farm. Momma, #66, formerly #14 (she lost her ear tag) had a beautiful baby boy calf who we tagged #67. It’s odd that mom and son have ear tags one number apart but that’s the luck of the draw. This mom calved on February 9th last year so she is definitely a winter calver. Hopefully she’ll transition to a warmer calving time at some point on her own but for now she seems content to getting jiggy with the bull when the buds burst forth in the spring.

For those of you who’ve taken a tour in the past week, you’ve been able to meet this little guy. He’s definitely a cute one.

Yesterday Erin and I travelled to Creedmoor to look at a milk cow that was for sale. She’s just freshened on the 21st of January and she looked pretty good from the pics.

After driving about 45 minutes, we arrived at a closed farm where we met the farmer’s wife, Linda. Linda’s husband had injured himself and he wasn’t able to milk anymore. Linda loved milking, but was tied up making a living off the farm as many farmers are. Therefor they were selling this freshly freshened milk cow and her little bull calf. Erin and I looked the cow over as best we could and by all accounts she looked great. The calf was cute as a button and everything seemed like a decent deal. Well, she was a little expensive but with what happened to Ginger I wasn’t in a negotiating position. The cow is a Heinz 57 of a breed. She’s 1/2 Jersey, 1/4 Dexter, and 1/4 Holstein. The calf is even more of a mutt with a makeup of 1/4 Holstein, 1/4 Jersey, 1/4 milking Devon, and 1/4 Main Anjou. Phew!

As we talked a few minutes, I noticed that the bull calf peed out “his” backside. Now I’m no expert, but bull calves pee from a different spot. Heifer calves pee out the back. Erin noticed the same thing so we asked Linda if the calf was a bull. “Sure is!” We’d already agreed to the deal so we pointed out she was a heifer and explained to Linda what she was selling. Heifer calves are worth a lot more. She agreed to go ahead and we paid her and backed the trailer up. The calf was a tiny fuzzball so when she got near the trailer I scooped her up and plopped her into the trailer. I then walked her into the front so I could close the cut gate and then coax mom in the trailer with me. As I was walking forward, I felt the trailer move and looked back. Mom had hopped in with me and was ambling forward. I closed the cut gate and Erin closed the rear gate and we had both cows loaded easier than I’ve ever loaded anything or anybody. It took about 5 seconds.

We put mom and daughter into the barn last night and we’ll begin working with her, and milking her today.

Both cows are really cute. The mom’s name is Betsy and the calf’s name was Bernie since Linda thought she was a boy. I was going to keep Bernie and just say it was for Bernice but SWMBO has declared that’s a terrible name so we’ll see. So far they both are sweet but as they say the proof is in the pudding. We’ll see how milking goes. She may be a devil cow in disguise!

 

I hate writing these posts.

I always try to share all sides of farming. I think it’s important to be open and honest with our customers and our fans. I’m always quick to point out that we share everything here, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But it doesn’t make it any easier to do.

Yesterday, we had the vet back out to look at Ginger. She had declined since Sunday and I needed to get more attention from the vet if she was going to make it. She was up and moving, but having trouble breathing, and still not drinking or eating.

We’d already run some IV fluids into her on Sunday but on Monday Dr. Baker ran a huge bag of fluids into her to try and get her rehydrated. She also gave her vitamins and a different antibiotic. We discussed taking Ginger to Summit Equine to stay in the hospital but Dr. Baker was concerned she may not survive the trip. We made up a batch of Gatorade and put some molasses in her water, all to try and get fluids in her. That afternoon we used a syringe to get her to drink Gatorade, and our neighbor Erin came up to give her some more Gatorade that evening and again at night.

This morning about 4 am I went over to check on her and give her more fluids if I was able and I found this.

She’d died from pneumonia during the night. We’ll bury her today but unfortunately that isn’t the end of the story.

This problem seems to have arrived with the batch of weaner cows we brought onto the farm about a week and a half ago. We put them in the pasture with Ginger to make sure they were ok before we introduced them to the whole herd. Ginger had the pasture to herself as we’d just sold her daughter so having some new cows around would make her happy. And it did, for a while. Unfortunately they also seem to have brought some disease onto our farm. And Ginger isn’t the only victim. Yesterday morning we found this.

This is one of the new calves that we just bought. This calf had died overnight while bedded down with everyone else. I’d personally checked these calves over the evening before and everyone was bright eyed and spry but a few were coughing. They certainly looked good enough to make it to Monday, which was important because for the past three days I’d been running the farm solo.

Well, Spork and I had run the farm together. And Erin and Dustin had pitched in here and there but overall it was Spork and I doing everything, which is not the best time to try and work a bunch of cows or have a disease spread through the farm. Everyone else was iced in, including the vet until later on Sunday. In order to do much to the cows I needed some help and Monday would be a relatively normal day, I’d hoped. So much for that.

So in addition to treating Ginger on Monday, we pulled this entire group of new cows into the corral and treated them all with duramycin 72-200 antibiotic in amounts appropriate for their weight (I love my new scale), which equalled an entire bottle of duramycin. An entire bottle would normally last us about 4 years, before we finally threw it out for being old.

Today, we are bringing the main herd into the corral and checking everyone over carefully and treating anyone who shows signs of anything, no matter how small. Even thought the main herd is separate from the new cows, we know we aren’t safe because we had this last week.

I haven’t even had time to post this. A little more than a week ago one of our mom’s turned up dead early in the morning when we went out to feed. She appeared to have died from bloat which is very unusual in the winter. We’ve rarely ever had any bloat issues in the winter so we were perplexed why this might have happened. In talking with the doc while she was treating Ginger, she said that whatever respiratory issue we have going around could cause bloat to crop up. Great.

This mom, #62, had a little calf who breaks my heart every time I go in the pasture.

He is the last of the Ninja breed and as a castrated male, the end of the bloodline. He mopes around the pasture and looks pathetic every time I see him. He’s fine, eating and drinking and healthy, and will grow up to be a fine cow but I don’t even point him out when I give tours. It’s too sad.

So we’ve lost three cows in about two weeks. Since I usually lose a cow every few years this is a killer. It kills my mood, my time, my psyche, and my ego. It also kills my bottom line. It hasn’t been a good time on the farm the past few weeks, but as with all things, this too shall pass.

Today it’s supposed to be nearly 60 degrees and we’re going to work our way through this thing. All my guys should be here today to work, we have 12 customers coming on Saturday (a record!) with more booking still and the weather looks perfect for winter farm tours. I’m picking up a cow on Friday from the processor and we’ll finally have steaks in the freezer again (for as long as they last) and tonight we’ll have Ninja Cow brisket that has cooked for about 15 hours low and slow (this is where meat goes when it’s been in the freezer too long, you guys had your chance!)

It’s going to be a good day, if I have to drag it to the ground and choke some good out of it.

 

Ginger, our milk cow, has been acting kind of down lately. At first I thought it was because I sold her daughter but it is lasting too long for that. Plus her daughter was neurotic and Ginger really didn’t seem to mind that she was gone.

Of course she started looking her worst when all the weather came in last week but fortunately Sunday things were clear enough that Dr. Baker from Hoof and Horn could make it out.

She gave Ginger a once over and declared that she was dehydrated, and had pneumonia. She gave her a shot of florfenicol, a shot of banamine, an IV of hypertonic saline, and an IV of isotonic saline. She also gave her a shot of B complex vitamins.

Over the next few days we are keeping her in the hospital barn and giving her Gatorade and plenty of hay, water, and feed. We also will keep up with the banamine shots and the B complex vitamins. 

With all the stuff we are giving her, we won’t be using her milk at all, even for the pigs. It will all just go down the drain. At least she’s 10 feet from the milking parlor so the workload is reduced.

Once we stop giving her anything beyond hay and water, we will have to wait a week for double the recommended withdrawal which means we will be short on milk for the coming few weeks. Sorry folks, that’s the way it goes in farming some times. I just hope we can get her back on her feet. She is pretty sick.

Yesterday it was time to take another cow to the processor. We had 53 cows on the ground, of all ages. So how does a farmer know which one to take?

First, we certainly don’t eat the young cows. No veal for us here. Second, we weigh all of our cows routinely now. Part of knowing which cow is the one to eat is to know what they weigh and how they’ve gained weight.

Third, you have to have a trained cattleman’s eye. To be able to look at a bunch of black cows and see which one has developed the best to date. Who has started to fill out, who is getting a little fat and where is that fat showing (everybody sucking in their gut right now?)

Some farmers use ultrasound devices to measure fat on the ribeye, something we can’t afford around here. All these ways of deciding who goes are usually more art than science. Around here we go with a much more tried and true method.

We eat the crazy ones.

Ok, that isn’t the only criteria but it is the big one. We do look for how they’ve filled out, and their weight. But after those criteria are met, we eat the ones that are a pain in the rear. If a cow acts crazy at any point in its time here, we note in their record we maintain on every cow. As you can see below just above the picture of the cow.

This cow, #42, weighed 997 pounds in November and is still growing. In December he and another cow were the last two in the corral and we loaded the other one. Then #42 escaped through a weak place in the corral but it was moot because we already had his buddy, another crazy cow loaded.

This month I wanted #42 or LF05 to go to market. Both were marked as crazy. LF05 was the first one of the pair to go through the chute so on the trailer he went. He proceeded to solidify his crazy moniker by bending the gate on my trailer and generally being a pain in the rear.

Once he was on and settled down, we worked the rest of the cows through the gate checking them over, fixing any minor issues, etc. Basically being good farmers and taking care of our animals and gently and kindly as possible.

Then #42 came through. He got halfway through and started backing up on Michael and Miguel. After they both started working him, he proceeded to break out of the corral, tearing it to pieces in the process. He broke boards, ripped 1 inch thick reinforced rubber, that kind of thing. Many much larger cows have gone through this corral, no problem. We were only letting him walk through at that point not actually doing anything to him. He’s just crazy so he decided to do it the hard way.

Guess who we are eating next month.