MARCH 30 – I’ve been working on my next book, Cow Tales from an Idaho Ranch, writing chapters about some of the memorable experiences with various cattle we’ve raised—some humorous, some challenging. It’s been fun recalling those adventures, and finding old photos to illustrate those chapters.
Andrea’s
kids have enjoyed helping with evening chores after school—feeding the horses
and the yearling heifers. Dani likes to
help load the wheelbarrow and take the alfalfa hay out for the heifers.
Our old
black cat (the one that always had her kittens in the cab of the dump truck,
before we had her spayed) likes to hang out around the big bales of hay I feed
the heifers and the old horses, and catch mice there. She always “helps” us do chores, and
sometimes sits by the gate when we feed the heifers. One day when a heifer decided to come through
the open gate instead of following the loaded wheelbarrow, the cat stood her
ground and hit the heifer in the nose with her claws when the heifer tried to
come through! She thinks she’s Lynn’s
special cat and always goes with him around the barnyard.
Last
weekend Michael and Carolyn brought their truck and trailer and hauled their
cows to the upper place, to calve up there.
We sorted our cows and put the ones closest to calving in our maternity
pen and horse pasture, and left the later-calving cows in the fields above the
house. On Sunday Andrea and I rode Ed
and Breezy for the first time this year—after their winter “vacation”—and we
also caught Dottie and Rishiam and brushed them. I saddled Dottie and led her around the
barnyard. The next day, I led Dottie
down the road a ways, then Andrea and I rode Ed and Sprout, for Sprout’s first
ride of the season.
I trimmed
Veggie’s long feet. He’s doing a little
better (not so stiff) now that I’m giving him bute every evening, dissolving
the pills in warm water and giving it to him with a little molasses mixed in.
Twinkle Twinkle, the sick pregnant
heifer, started eating a little better.
Then on Tuesday she calved—nearly 3 weeks ahead of her due date. The calf was alive, which we were relieved to
see, in spite of the mom’s high fever a week earlier. She simply calved a little prematurely, but
the calf is ok, a little heifer.
Andrea’s kids were out of school for spring break and they enjoyed
seeing the first new baby of the year, and helping with chores and feeding. Dani named the new calf Surprise.
Later that day Sam and Dani helped
me clean house, and Charlie helped Lynn put some netting along the gate on one
of the second-day pens below the barn, so that when we moved the mama and new
baby into that pen the tiny calf wouldn’t be able to crawl through or under the
gate and get out into the field with the yearling heifers. We had some wind and snow off and on that
day, but the little calf managed to nurse mama and had shelter in that pen with
its windbreaks.
Sam and Dani cleared off the
stairway to the little attic room and took their bean bag bed up there. They enjoyed sleeping in their own little
“hideaway” room upstairs during their spring break, and helping with the chores
and cattle during the days.
On Wednesday I rode Dottie on her
first ride of the year, and Andrea rode along on Breezy. Then we rode Ed and
Sprout on a longer ride. In the evening
Andrea and kids went to the upper place, where Emily took photos of the other
kids posing with one of young Heather’s horses.
She got several good shots, for Heather to select from to choose a cover
photo for her first book, which will be published later this summer.
The next day Andrea and I took Sam
and Dani for their first ride (on Breezy and Ed) with us. Then they helped us do chores and put the
other 3 heifers in the barn for the first time.
We are feeding them a little alfalfa hay in the barn, to get them at
ease with going into the barn—in case we have to put any of them into the barn
to calve. With the crazy weather we’ve
been having (wind and occasional blizzards) it’s nice to have a barn!
On Friday we had visitors from
Canada. The editor of Cattlemen’s Corner
in Grainews, Lee Hart, and his wife stopped by on their way home from a
vacation. It was fun to meet Lee for the
first time (after writing monthly columns for Grainews for more than 30 years,
and working with Lee for about 8 years).
He and his wife ate lunch with us and we had a nice visit. Emily took a photo of Lee and me.
After they
left, Andrea, Sam and Dani and I went for another ride after I trimmed Breezy’s
feet a little bit so she wouldn’t be tripping on long toes. All went well until we were heading home, and
then Sprout was misbehaving a little.
That wasn’t much of a problem until she tripped, going through some
sagebrush, and nearly fell clear down, pulling Andrea forward. About the time Andrea was quite forward over
her neck, Sprout leaped back up to try to start bucking, and the top of her
head connected with Andrea’s chin, cutting it open. The blow to the bottom of her chin was severe
enough that she started to black out, and wobbled a bit, but managed to keep
Sprout from bucking. Her chin was bleeding
severely, so when we got home her friend Robbie took her to the hospital to
have stitches. Her chin was very swollen
for a few days.
Saturday we
had a hard rain and strong winds that lasted a few hours. Michael and Carolyn were helping a neighbor,
Bruce Mulkey, brand calves that morning, and they’d just gotten the cattle
rounded up and into the corral when the storm hit. They put their horses back into the trailer
and waited out the storm until it let up.
After the calves dried out that afternoon they went ahead and did the
branding and vaccinating.
Yesterday
our friends from Canada, Pete and Bev Wiebe, stopped here to visit on their way
home from working all winter with the Mennonite Disaster Service in Florida and
the Southwest, rebuilding homes for people who lost their homes to flooding. They ate supper with us, and spent the night
at Andrea’s house, and this morning came down here to watch our second calf
being born. Bev had never seen a calf
born, so she was excited that Merilena waited until daylight to give
birth. Merilena is a first-calf heifer,
and we were delighted that she had the calf very quickly and easily. Dani named the little heifer Starfire. The next morning, before they left, Pete and
Bev took photos of the calf and its mama in our windbreak pens.
APRIL 10 – The past 2 weeks Dani has been helping me with
evening chores after Lynn brings the kids home from the school bus. She likes to help feed the horses (she gives
old Veggie his grain) and sort the cows for evening. At night we lock the most-likely-to-calve
cows in the small maternity pen where we can see them under the yard light, and
if any of them start to calve we put them in the calving pen—where we can turn
on the lights on the hay shed.
Lynn and
Robbie put a little straw in the barn in case we need to put a cow in there to
calve (if it’s snowing!), and Andrea and Robbie replaced several burned-out
light bulbs in the barn. Andrea and I
cleaned out the old bedding in the two calf houses up in the field and put some
hay in for bedding, and put the first calves and their mamas up there.
Andrea checks on the cows during
the first part of the night, then I get up about 3 or 4 a.m. and type (finishing
up the Cow Tales book chapters, and writing articles) and check on them until
daylight.
Last Saturday Em’s dad Jim Daine
brought his mule to stay in one of our corrals until he can take her with him
to his trail-clearing job in Montana. In
the meantime, Jim is staying at Andrea’s house.
He rode his mule (Reba) on a couple of long rides in the mountains
behind our ranch, looking for elk horns.
Saturday afternoon Carolyn called,
as she was hurrying home from her job at the vet clinic. Michael had called her, to tell her that her
old mare, Thelma, was foaling, and needing help. He had gone to their upper fields to get
something and noticed the mare was foaling—she had the feet out, but no head. He hurried to get a halter, and led the mare
a half mile down to their round pen by their house. The foal went back into the uterus and was
able to reposition, and Thelma was trying to lie down by the time he got her to
the corral. She started straining again,
and this time the head was there, and she was pushing the foal out. She didn’t lie down, and he had to try to
catch the foal and break its fall as it was born.
The foal was alive, but a little
wobbly at first because the umbilical cord broke too soon (with the mare
standing up to give birth). Then the
next challenge was to help the sassy little critter nurse! She refused to nurse the mare, and young
Heather had to milk the mare and feed the foal from a bottle. Every time they tried to get her on a teat,
she refused; all she wanted was the bottle!
By evening, everyone was exhausted, but finally, just before dark, the
stubborn little filly figured it out and started nursing Thelma.
At 4 a.m.
the next morning (Easter Sunday), Thelma woke them up, whinnying, because her
baby had shimmied out of the pen, underneath the bottom rail, and was wandering
around outside the pen. They got her
back in. It snowed later that morning,
and they created a 3-sided shelter for the foal with tarps.
It snowed
all day. Michael brought a skid-loader
down to our place and cleaned out a couple of our deepest horse pens (Sprout’s
and Breezy’s). The new little calves up
in the field have all learned how to get into their calf houses, and out of the
storm.
This
weekend is the annual Salmon Select Horse Sale.
Emily will be taking care of her dad’s table (where he will display some
of his antler lamps) and plans to have some of my horse books there, too, in
case anyone wants to buy one.
APRIL 20 – The horse sale went well. Young Heather sold a couple of the horses
she’s been training, including a gray mare named Angel. She showed Angel in the
trail class before the sale, and Angel did very well. Heather also rode another mare through the
ring for a man who wants her to train a group of horses for him.
We’ve had a
bunch of calves the past 10 days. Dani
named most of them. As examples, Emerald
had a heifer that Dani named Geminy Cricket, and Rosalie had a nice heifer that
Dani named Zorrarose (the sire’s name was Zorro). Magrat had a heifer that Dani named
Malillamae. Buffalo Baby’s calf got
named Buffaloona. Buffalulu had a bull
calf named Buffalo Biffer. As you can
tell by some of the names, several of these calves are closely related; their
mothers are daughters of dear old Buffalo Girl, who was Emily’s pet cow, raised
on a bottle after her mama died. Buffalo
Girl is a family pet and the kids enjoy picking grass for her. Dani fed her some grass in the maternity pen,
a few days before she calved.
It was very
cold and windy the night that Magrat calved, and since we didn’t put her in the
barn, we helped her calf nurse before it got too chilled, and then moved the
pair to a windbreak pen.
The next night Buffalo Girl started
calving, and we put her in the barn—not only because it was cold, but because
she always needs a little help during the first hour of motherhood. She bellows and roots her calf around too
vigorously and won’t let it get up, so we have to intervene, so she won’t hurt
it. After it’s up and nursing she’s
fine.
This year
Sammy, Dani, Andrea and Emily sat out in the barn with her, quietly watching
from the next stall. After she calved,
Andrea, Emily and I protected the calf and helped him get up, and helped him
nurse. He was a large fellow, and it was
all Em and I could do to hold up his hind end while Andrea guided his front end
to a teat. Buffalo Girl is Emily’s pet
and was actually calmer this year than in previous calvings, maybe because Em
was there to help. After we assisted
Gilbert in his first nursing, Buffalo Girl had settled down and was a normal
mom. The kids all enjoyed petting that
calf the next day, and again after we put that pair up in the field with the
other cows.
Andrea
didn’t get much sleep the night Buffalo Girl calved. By the time we finished helping the calf
nurse, it was 1 a.m. and Andrea had to get up early and take Charlie to a
doctor appointment in Pocatello.
That morning Magdalena had a heifer
that Dani named MiniMag, but we were lucky to save that one. I saw the cow calving just before daylight,
with the water sac and amnion sac protruding, but no feet. Lynn and I put her in the barn, in the stall
next to Buffalo Girl, because it was a very cold, windy morning. I kept checking on her during chores and
feeding, but nothing was happening. Then
the next time I checked, there was placenta coming out, hanging clear to the
ground.
This was a
serious emergency! The calf’s “envelope”
and lifeline were detaching from the uterus and it would soon die. So Lynn and I put her in the headcatch to
check her. The calf’s feet were coming
through the birth canal, but the head hadn’t started through yet and the cow
wasn’t dilated enough. We attached
chains to the legs and started to pull.
Andrea stopped briefly on her way out the driveway, heading for
Pocatello with Charlie, but she’d called Michael and Carolyn and left a message
for them, saying we had a calving emergency.
Michael was heading off to work, but Carolyn came down to help us. With her added strength we got the calf
delivered before it died. We’re not sure
why it was detaching, unless it just took too long for the calf to get into
proper position for birth. The little
brockle-faced heifer seems to be fine.
We had
another calf the next night. Cub Cake
was finally calving, and she had a huge bull calf that Andrea and Robbie
pulled. The bull we used last summer
(Lightning Zorro) sires bigger calves than the bull we used the previous years,
and we’re having a few more calving problems than normal. This makes it all the more important to be watching
the cows at night, in case any need help.
Dani named
Cub Cake’s calf Cinnamon Bear (he’s golden red) and the kids all got a chance
to see him the next day.
Then Mary Mary Quite Contrary had a black bull calf with one little
white spot on his face (so his name is Spotrick).
Meanwhile,
Andrea has been harrowing the fields with the big tractor, scattering all the
manure piles and wasted straw (from the feeders) around the field, before we
start irrigating. The straw the cows
didn’t eat, and the manure, serve as excellent fertilizer. We try to feed on the areas that need more
organic matter to increase the soil fertility, and thus don’t have to buy any
chemical fertilizers. The natural stuff
is best.
Michael
brought the backhoe down from his place (where he’d been smoothing more areas
for additional horse pens for young Heather—for the horses she will be training
this spring and summer) and cleaned one of our ditches that was filled with
silt from all the snow melt run-off last month.
We have several more ditches to clean before we can start irrigating the
fields.
