FEBRUARY 25 – Breezy is doing very well now, recovering from
the surgery to remove her eye. The
padded face mask has helped keep the socket warmer in our very cold weather,
and I’m sure she’s been a lot more comfortable with it covered.
After the rescued calf and her mama
had been in the barn a week, and the calf seemed to be getting around ok on her
frostbitten feet, Michael and Carolyn came down and shoveled the snow out of
the windbreak corners of the pen below the barn. They put hay down for bedding, and we put the
pair down there. They were happy to get
out of the barn.
It was nice to have Michael home
from North Dakota for a few days, and he enjoyed a break from steady
truck-driving in the severe winter weather. We had more snow and storms, but at
least the weather was warmer than the day young Heather’s cow calved
unexpectedly. We thought that would be
the only “surprise” calf, but on Valentine’s Day the skinniest little old cow
of Michael and Carolyn’s was calving when we fed the cows that morning. We called them, and they came down a couple hours
later. The old cow had calved by then,
and Michael pulled the calf down through the two fields in a sled, with the
little cow following. We put them in the
barn, out of the wind and snow. It
snowed hard all evening.
That Sunday
it quit snowing briefly. Michael,
Carolyn and Heather helped Lynn
and me vaccinate and delouse the bulls and the yearlings, and tagged the
yearling heifers (brisket tags) with their permanent cow numbers. Then we put the little skinny cow and her new
calf out of the barn, down in the pen with Heather’s pair.
Those 2 calves were
sired by the precocious bull calf last spring, but there won’t be any more of
those surprises because the rest of those cows had barely calved when Michael
and Carolyn weaned that little bull and took him out of the herd. None of those cows would have had time to
rebreed. The calf we rescued 3 weeks
ago--with the frozen ears and feet--is losing the skin off her nose, and the
ends of her ears, but she feels good.
Andrea had
some tests done on her throat; she has permanent damage from 14 years ago when
she was intubated for so long in the burn ICU after her burn injuries—with the tube
down her throat and trachea. She has to
go to a specialist for more tests.
Lynn was
supposed to have a treadmill stress test at the hospital last Thursday to check
his heart, but the doctor who was supposed to come from Missoula wasn’t able to
come, so it got postponed. We had a lot
of new snow and Michael and Carolyn are feeding their horses hay up on the wild
meadow.
The yard
light in our barnyard and calving area quit working, so on Friday Michael
helped Lynn replace it. They put a long
extension ladder up the pole and Lynn
steadied it while Michael climbed up there to replace the light and timer. I’m glad Michael was able to help him do this
before he went back to North Dakota . Lynn and I are not very steady on ladders
anymore!
Jim and Andrea took Em to the state
hockey tournament in Idaho Falls ,
the last games of the season. Lynn stayed those nights
at Andrea’s house with the other 3 kids and they had meals here and enjoyed
helping us feed cows and do chores.
Emily’s team was doing well, but in the next to last game she and
another girl were racing for the puck and Em slammed into the wall going full
speed—and broke her leg.
The next day, we got about 8 more inches
of new snow and Lynn had to plow our driveway and Andrea’s and Michael and
Carolyn’s. At least the roads from Idaho Falls weren’t too
bad; Jim and Andrea made it home ok, with Em lying in the back seat with her
leg elevated. They got her situated at
home with ice packs and crutches. She
has to keep it iced and elevated to get the swelling out of it before a cast
can be put on.
MARCH 9 – Emily had another x-ray of her leg and found that
she won’t be able to have a cast put on until after it is surgically
repaired. The tendons are pulled loose
from the bone and the break is separating.
Over the
weekend the other kids helped us feed cows and enjoyed riding on the back of
the feed truck.
I’ve been
working on the edits and page proofs of my next book, which will be coming out
in April. It’s called Good Horse, Bad
Habits and is published by Trafalgar.
This book looks at ways to deal with bad behavior—discussing various tips
on retraining problem horses.
On Sunday
Andrea helped us feed the cows and put new straw bales in their empty
feeders. She put more loose salt and
mineral in their tub in the tire holder.
Then her friends Jade and Anita
came out to the ranch. Their kids played
with Andrea’s kids while they helped us split more wood (with a borrowed wood
splitter) for Carolyn and hauled it up to her house, then Andrea fed them
supper.
We had some
warmer weather last week and the snow is melting and settling. On Wednesday Emily had surgery on her leg to
reattach the tendons and stabilize the fracture with a metal plate. The surgery was several hours later than
scheduled, and then took awhile, so Andrea wasn’t able to bring Em home until very
late that night. Lynn got the kids off the bus and we fed them
summer and then took them home to bed.
Emily has to stay off the leg for 2 weeks, keep it iced and elevated,
and then later will have the stitches taken out before a cast can be put on it.
With the
warmer weather there have been a lot of snow slides. A huge slide closed the road between here and
Missoula . On Thursday water was running down our road
and across the fields like rivers. Water
coming down a draw by the upper place nearly washed out the road; Lynn called the county
road department and they brought a road grader up that evening and got the
flood diverted and the next day brought a couple truck loads of gravel up to
fix the wash-out.
We’ve had
Michael and Carolyn’s trailer parked here in the calving pen ever since we were
trailer training all our horses last fall and early winter. Those lessons halted when it got so icy that
it was risky to be leading the horses back and forth. The trailer froze into the ice and we just
left it there. Now it’s finally thawed
out, and today Carolyn and Heather brought their truck down to get the trailer
and take it home. We’ll soon be calving
and needed to have it out of the calving pen.
MARCH 18 – Andrea’s kids have 2 new puppies. One of their friends had a litter they needed
to give away. These puppies are half
border collie and half Brittany spaniel and they are very cute. They will help entertain Emily while she is
recuperating.
Our holding
pen has thawed out and was getting boggy, so Lynn moved the rest of the big
straw bales (that were stacked there) into the hay stack yard. We soon need to clean out the barn stalls
where the two cows with surprise babies spent time, so we can put some new
straw in the barn to get ready for calving.
Saturday
morning we fed the cows at the lower end of the field by the gate, and sorted
off 5 that are starting to get udders.
We put them in the horse pasture and orchard where we can watch
them. Next Sunday Carolyn and Heather
plan to take their herd to the upper place to calve. The snow is melting off those fields, but
yesterday we had another blizzard. The
wind made it a bit challenging to undo (and then redo) the tarp on our big hay
stack to get a couple more big alfalfa bales to load on the feed truck. The wind was so strong it caught our storm
door when Lynn
went outside, and slammed it against the house and broke it.
We still
have to put a tarp over our feed truck every night to keep the deer from eating
the alfalfa hay. We’ve had to sweep new
snow off the tarp on the snowy mornings.
I’ve been
writing the life story for a rancher friend in Oregon who is 86 years old. He wants to have it written up for his
children and grandchildren. I tape
record our conversations on the phone as he tells me his adventures and stories
about his life and then type them up.
It’s been a very interesting project.
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