MARCH 31 – We had a little rain and snow for a few days last week and some cold nights. We were glad we weren’t calving yet. I tried to do a phone interview last Monday for one of my articles and discovered that our phones weren’t working. Our secondary line (that services my fax machine and computer internet) was still working, but the old original line was not. I was able to use the phone on my fax line, however, and when Andrea and Stan came down to help us feed cows she brought her portable plug-in phone and we checked our phone box outside the house and figured out which of the lines it was. We had to call the local fix-it guy for the phone company and he found that a brief power outage had messed it up down at the main service box down at Baker, and he got it working again.
Last Wednesday Stan drove back to California again, and Andrea went to a doctor appointment for a swallow test (she is still having some issue with her throat after all these years, from her burn injuries). Lynn went to Carmen Creek to locate a well site for some folks who bought property there. When Andrea got back from the doctor she and Dani and I offloaded the part bale off our feed truck into the feeder in the main corral so we could move the little bull into that corral. It’s getting too boggy by his manger feeder and we don’t want him to get foot rot. We need to clean the mud and manure away from that fence/feeder; he can live in the main corral for a while until we can do that.
Then we loaded the feed truck with little bales and hauled them around to make a stack by the calving pen and 2nd day pens—where we will need some hay when we start calving. Then Andrea did some more work on the windbreak corners in the rebuilt pen below the barn—where we will soon have some baby calves.
Dani and some of her friends went over the dump hill on 4-wheelers and roared around in the mud, and came back covered in mud. I took a picture of them when they got back.
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| Dani & friends covered with mud |
Thursday it snowed again. Andrea took her computer to my brother Rocky so he can update it and put Excel on it so she will be able to do the bookwork as secretary-treasurer for our water district. Steve Adams, our watermaster, sent her the figures for this year’s assessments so she can send out bills to all the water users. Then she went to town to do all the town errands, and took a meatloaf (that Emily made) to our Dr. Cope (our veterinarian) and his wife, who have both been very sick with COVID.
We started putting a few of the most-ready-to-calve cows in the orchard at night, where we can see them easier from the house with spotlight and binoculars. They are also under the yard-light, which makes them easier to see.
Friday, Andrea went to the doctor for an ultrasound on her thyroid, and Lynn went to locate a site for a well on another property on Carmen Creek. A lot of people are moving into our valley and some ranches are being subdivided into home-sites. People are fleeing from “crazy” places like California, Washington, New York and a lot of them are coming here.
That afternoon Andrea, Dani, Em and Christopher went to town for a photo shoot—Emily taking some senior pictures for Sam—and then Andrea took them all to dinner, except for Emily, who had to go to work.
Granddaughter Heather in Canada sent some photos of the boys—young Joseph helping his dad build a shed in their calving area to create more shelter, and little brother James having a ride in their wagon.
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| Joseph helping his dad |
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| James has a ride in the wagon |
Saturday, Em and Andrea took Christopher to an Easter egg hunt but he was a little too young to know what was going on and was more interested in checking out the one egg he found than trying to find any more.
We’ve been getting ready for calving, and that afternoon Dani and her friend Kendall replaced 5 burned-out lightbulbs in the calving barn. A couple were at the top of the peak and Dani had to stand on the stall partition (with Kendall steadying her) to reach those. Andrea brought Christopher down on the 4-wheeler and Lynn babysat him while we sorted out a few cows to put in the orchard for night.
I took photos of Christopher riding around in our house on an old broken “4-wheeler” that he found outside this past winter.
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| Christopher having fun wheeling around |
Then Christopher had fun in his swing, but went to sleep and was still half asleep when Andrea took him back home on her 4-wheeler.
Sunday afternoon was warm but windy. Andrea finished up the windbreaks in the pen below the barn, putting boards alongside the edges of the tin so the cows can’t rub on the tin and loosen it up off the pole fence. Then she and Lynn took the post-pounder off the little tractor so we can use that tractor to harrow fields.
Dani and some of her friends went over the low range on 4-wheelers again and were goofing around, and Dani fell off hers and sprained her elbow. Andrea took her to the ER where they did x-rays to make sure it wasn’t broken. We were glad she wasn’t hurt any worse. She’ll need to keep her arm in a sling for a few days. Lynn and I took care of Christopher while Andrea and Dani were in the ER (since Em was at work) and fed him supper. He loves cottage cheese and chicken nuggets.
That night was extremely windy and the power went off for 3 hours. I put candles in the bathroom so we could see. Again, our main phone line quit working, and the phone guy had to fix it again the next morning. The weather was nasty—snowing and blowing—and we were glad no cows were calving, since we had no lights in the barn with the power off.
Also, we couldn’t plug in the tractor, with no power. That morning we fed a few little bales off the feed truck, and started the tractor later in the day to take big bales to the feeders.
Dan and Eileen French called me that afternoon (ranchers who run cattle on the range next to our old range) and told me about their experiences this year with more than 35 “lupine calves” born with crooked legs and other deformities—caused by the pregnant cows eating lupine last summer on the range. I will be writing an article about it, and they sent me a couple photos of some of their deformed calves. Some have legs so crooked they can’t stand up, and have to be held up to suckle a bottle, since they can’t nurse their mothers.
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| Lupine calf bottle-fed |
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| Lupine calf - Chris French |
These are similar to some of the calves we had in earlier years when our cattle were on the range in early spring and ate lupine--and had crooked calves the next calving season.
Yesterday was cold and windy all day; it never got above 30 degrees. Andrea printed out the water assessment bills for all the water users on the creek and will mail some and hand-deliver some of them. That afternoon Lynn went to locate another well site and Andrea and Em took Christopher to town for a birthday party with some other little kids. I took a photo of him in his car seat as they were heading out.
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| ready to go to town for a party |
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| Dani asleep on the floor |
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| China Doll and new calf |
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| Andrea helping the calf nurse |
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| bringing alfalfa hay to the barn |
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| scraping piles of hay and manure away from feeder |
Then Andrea and Lynn took the harrow up to the field by Andrea’s house, carrying it with the big tractor.
They assessed the damage to Andrea’s roof from the horrible windstorm we had a couple nights ago; it blew off a lot of shingles. That wind did a lot of damage to structures around the valley, taking off some tin roofs, and blowing down a fairly new security fence that Michael and crew built for a day care center in town. It flattened the fence, including the big metal posts—like a hurricane would do.
APRIL 12 – Last week the power went off again for more than 4 hours, and we were glad we didn’t have any cows calving in the barn with no lights. That next morning Andrea brought Christopher down with her on the 4-wheeler since Em needed to sleep after her late night at work, and he toddled around while she put a few more boards on the windbreaks and we put hay in those corners. Then Lynn took care of Christopher while we put China Doll and her calf down into the new pen, and walked around the horse pens and horse pasture and found where the electric fence was shorting out, and fixed it.
The next day we took a couple more big bales to the cows, including the cows in the horse pasture, and a new bale to the bull in the corral. I took a photo of the cows enjoying their new bale in the horse pasture.
We put Lilli-Annie (nickname Alligator Eyes) into the side pen to calve. She calved that afternoon, standing up—with the calf falling in a heap with its head underneath its body. We had to rush into the pen and straighten out the calf so it could breathe, and beat off the cow who is always an aggressive “man-eater” when she first calves. One person grabs the calf and the other fends off the charging cow. Then Andrea finished harrowing the field by her house. I took a photo of Alligator Eyes and her calf.
Dani finished that field where the heifers are, then harrowed the lower back field. I took a photo of her harrowing the field below the lane.
Then we put China Doll and Alligator Eyes and their calves up to the field above the house. I took a photo of Alligator Eyes and calf before we moved her out of the side pen and after we put them up in the field.
Dani brought China Doll and her calf from the pen below the barn, and I took photos of her bringing that pair to go to the field.
About that time the Amish were going down the road in their buggies to go to their Sunday service so I took photos of them, too.
That evening we all went up to Andrea’s house for a family dinner and belated celebration for Christopher’s 2nd birthday, with all the kids there. It was great to have Charlie and Sam there, and Christopher had a great time with all his aunts and uncle. He also had fun with his cake; it had little tractors on it and he took them off first thing and played with them on his tray, farming cake crumbs.
He had fun with great grandpa Lynn, and goofing around with his aunt Sammy
Then he opened his presents, and spent some time arranging some of his new toys on the counter in front of the television.
We had several more calves born this past week. A few of them had to calve in the barn because the weather was so cold and windy. I took a photo of Outlandish and her new baby in the barn (she’d gotten tired and was lying down again to strain and shed her afterbirth, after the baby nursed) and took another photo the next day when we put that pair out to the pen below the barn.
That afternoon Lynn did town errands, bought more ear tags for the calves, and went to Carmen Creek to locate another well site for some other people buying property there. Andrea took Christopher to town with her and they went to see Emily briefly at work, and then Andrea took a photo of him walking around on the lawn outside the care center. There’s not so much mud and snow downtown and the lawn was nice and dry.
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| Christopher in front of the care center |
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| cows eating at feeder in horse pasture |
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| Alligator Eyes and new calf |
The next day was warm –up to 70 degrees that afternoon. It was the first morning we didn’t have to build a fire in the wood stove. Andrea and Dani’s friend Jack finished putting the tin roof on the little windbreak shelter corner in the 2nd day pens. The end pen has a shelter so a calf could get out of the rain in that pen. Dani and Kendall helped me put hay in the calf houses in the field above the house, for bedding. Andrea harrowed heifer hill and the field below it.
Easter Sunday was warm and nice. Andrea finished harrowing the field above the house that morning and I took a couple photos then helped her through the gate into the horse pasture so the cows wouldn’t try to get out and she harrowed that pasture before taking the harrow on down to the lower field where the heifers are.
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| Andrea harrowing |
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| Dani harrowing |
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| Alligator Eyes & calf in pen |
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| Alligator Eyes & calf in field |
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| Dani bringing China Doll & calf |
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| Amish buggies going to church |
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| Christopher's cake |
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| cake & tractors |
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| Christopher enjoying cake |
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| doing a little dirt work with tractors |
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| Christopher and Great Grandpa |
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| goofing around |
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| Christopher & Sammy |
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| opening presents |
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| organizing the toys |
On Monday my cousin Naida called to tell me that her brother (my cousin Roger Smith) passed away suddenly, from a heart attack. He was 83, and still singing opera and singing at many churches in the Sacramento area. He was one of my favorite cousins; he lived with our family periodically a few times while I was growing up, and later worked for my dad a few times on our ranch. One winter he and his college friend Bill lived up at the cabin and went to the woods to cut trees for posts and poles (peeling and treating the posts) and that next spring (1959) they built most of the fence around our half section of land in the mountains.
Roger always enjoyed his times here, doing a lot of hiking in the mountains. He discovered a rattlesnake den in a rock cave about a half mile above the cabin and one fall had a bear get into the cabin while he was gone. It ate the grease out of a pan on the wood stove, and thoroughly trashed the place. After that he built a more substantial door on the cabin and put wood bars across the windows so no more bears could get in.
Naida told me that Roger loved the ranch and wanted to know if we could scatter his ashes up here in the mountains that he loved. I said it would be an honor to do that, so she and Roger’s ex-wife are making arrangements to have him cremated and the funeral home in California will ship the ashes to us—to scatter somewhere on the 320 when the snow is gone and the wildflowers are blooming. My brother Rocky will arrange to have a video made as we do it, so it can be shown at the memorial service this summer in California.
Granddaughter Heather in Canada sent photos of the two boys dressed in their Sunday clothes to go to Easter services.
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| baby James all dressed up |
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| Young Joseph in his Sunday Best |
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| cow & new calf in barn |
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| out in pen by barn the next day |
Wednesday afternoon Andrea watched the cows while Lynn and I went to town for our second COVID shot. We were fortunate to not have any bad reaction or side effects, since we had to keep on doing our chores and checking cows at night. Just in case we weren’t up to par that night, Charlie stayed the night at Andreas to help with any calving problems—after he changed the oil in Andrea’s pickup and helped me put up a temporary electric fence across one corner of the horse pasture, to keep the cows out of that corner (there’s a ditch there and we don’t want them lying there and possibly getting on their backs and not able to get up). Luckily we didn’t have any calving problems that night, and Lynn and I felt pretty good after our shots, just really tired.
Andrea drove to Idaho Falls that night to meet up with Stan (who came from California that day). He was having a flatbed put on his pickup that next day, and then they drove home that evening. That afternoon another cow was calving and it was still windy and cold, so Dani and I put her in the barn to calve. She had a heifer calf.
By midnight one of our heifers was calving and I was glad Andrea was home by then, because we were pretty sure we’d have to pull the calf. The bull we used last year does NOT sire small calves and the first-calf heifers are all likely to need a little help calving.
It was cold (18 degrees) and windy so we put Pimples in the barn to calve (at 1:30 a.m.), using a calm older cow as a companion in the adjacent stall. Dani and a couple of her friends who were staying overnight with her put some new bedding hay in the barn and in the second day pens, then they took a nap on our couches while Dani sat out in the barn and watched the heifer. We have a little stool with a foam cushion on it, where a person can sit fairly comfortably in the back corner behind the old stove (in a tiny area behind one of the barn stalls—next to a wood stove that we put there years ago when we were calving in January and the nights were often sub-zero). In that spot, the cows can’t see us but we can peek at them to see if they are progressing in labor. Dani sat out there until she got cold, then I went out and watched the heifer, about the time she started seriously straining. The calf’s feet were showing but there wasn’t much progress so at 3:45 a.m. Dani called Andrea. She came down from her house, and tried to sneak up on the heifer to get chains on the calf’s legs, but the heifer jumped up.
We prepared to put her in the headcatch (right outside the barn), turning the yard-light on above it and getting gates ready, but about that time the heifer lay down again and began more serious straining. While she was straining and concentrating on her pain, Andrea was able to sneak up on her and get chains on the calf’s legs. This time the heifer stayed down, straining, and several of us were able to sneak over the stall partition by her back end, and help Andrea pull the calf. It was a hard pull but we got the calf out alive—a big bull calf. The kids went home afterward, and I watched the pair for a while to make sure the calf could get up and nurse. He lay there a long time, and the young cow loved him and licked him, but when he finally did get up she was confused and started knocking him around with her head. By then it was daylight and I was doing chores. I called Andrea and she came down to help me—and again we were afraid we’d have to put Pimple in the headcatch, so we could help her calf nurse, but she started to settle down and let the calve move toward her udder. He was able to get onto one teat, so we fed Pimples a little alfalfa hay to help encourage her to stand still, and I stood in front of her so she wouldn’t move away, while Andrea quietly guided the calf onto the other teats. A very happy young cow and calf by that time, and within a couple hours she’d transitioned into a very aggressive, protective mama!
Later that morning we had another cow calving and I got her in from the pasture and put her in the side calving pen. With sunshine and warmer temperature, she didn’t need to go in the barn, and calved quickly. I took a photo of her and her new calf.
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| new calf |
Charlie came out, and helped Stan put some new shingles on Andrea’s roof, to replace the ones that blew off a few days earlier in the horrible wind.
Saturday was cold and windy again. Stan and Andrea went to town and spent all morning at Fire School (to get recertified for working on fires this summer). Dani helped me take the tarp off the hay in the stack-yard and Lynn got a couple more bales to put in the feeders in the horse pasture, and a new bale for the young heifers in the field below the lane. They helped me move the feeders to new locations.
Then they rolled up several bunches of deer netting (that we put around our haystacks to keep the deer from getting into them during the winter) and stored them over by the sick barn. Lynn went to locate another water well site for some folks from Boise. The wind got really nasty by late afternoon and we were glad the new calf was already dry and had a tummy full of colostrum. We didn’t tag any of the new calves that day.
Yesterday was cold again but not as windy. At 2 a.m. I noticed one of the other heifers was calving—when I looked out the window with spotlight and binoculars. The calf’s feet were already showing so I needed to get her into the barn fast. Lynn helped me put her in, using a gentle 2nd calver as a companion. Then I called Andrea and she came down. We watched the heifer awhile and realized she was going to need help. Emily was on her way home from her late shift at work, so Andrea called her, and she stopped here on her way home, to help us.
Andrea tried to sneak up on the heifer in the stall, and started to get the chain on one of the calf’s feet, but the heifer jumped up and ran off. She was running out of time for having a live calf; only one foot was out and the other one was back a bit and right alongside the head—jammed up so tightly that there wasn’t enough room for the calf to come on through the birth canal. So we put her in the headcatch and Andrea worked at trying to get hold of the second leg and pull that foot on past the head. Lynn held the cow’s tail up straight to keep her from straining as Andrea and Em struggled at getting a chain on that leg (really tight in the birth canal, with no room to get fingers around the foot) and I held the light.
Finally that leg was successfully snared, and we all pulled hard on the calf. It was seriously stressed (and pooped—all the fluid surrounding the calf was green-brown) but still alive when we got it out. We got it breathing and carried the calf to the barn, and the little cow went right back in there and mothered it nicely in spite of all the stress she’d just gone through—licking it diligently. It was a heifer calf, and it soon got up and tried to nurse, but the young cow kept facing it, licking it, and it couldn’t get back to the udder.
The young cow was too nervous to let us help, so we warmed up a quart of colostrum and fed the calf by bottle, to give her some energy and keep her from getting chilled—and buy her some time to bond with the cow. It was 5 a.m. by that time and we were all exhausted and went to bed for a couple hours. By the time I got up at 7 a.m. to do chores, and checked on that pair in the barn, the calf had managed to suck a couple teats, so all was well.
After breakfast Andrea, Lynn and I tagged all the calves that had been born the last couple days and put the heifer and her baby out of the barn but didn’t tag that calf yet because we didn’t want to disrupt their bonding process.
Then Andrea and Lynn changed the drawbar on the little tractor and pulled the old manure spreader up to Andrea’s house so Stan could work on it some more and get it working properly. Stan also started digging some of the debris out of our ditches so we can start irrigating. The fields are very dry and we need to start irrigating soon.
Another cow started calving this afternoon and we put her in the calving pen—and then into the barn by evening because the weather was nasty. She calved quickly and we put the companion cow back out in the orchard. Later, just before midnight, I checked on the cows in the orchard and one of them had just calved—and a couple other cows were trying to help mother the baby. I called Dani and she came quickly from Andrea’s house and helped me sled the calf to the barn, with the cow following. The cow was not happy about us messing with her baby and I had to beat her off with a stick to keep her from attacking Dani as she pulled the sled (and had to put the calf back into it a couple times when it struggled to its feet and fell out). We finally got the pair in the barn, out of the bitter cold wind, and the calf was able to nurse and do fine.
Today was still cold and windy. After breakfast Andrea helped me put several cows and calves up to the field, from their sheltered 2nd day pens. One of the cows we put out was insistent on fighting the other cows and in the process knocked her calf down and it got rolled around and stepped on. We finally got the fight broken up, and brought that darn cow and her injured calf back in from the field.
The calf was limping badly and we hoped it didn’t have a broken leg. We put them in the side pen by the house where we could observe her, and left her there all day. We hope she doesn’t have internal injuries as well as a banged-up leg. She lay down all morning, but by this afternoon she was walking around better, and by evening she was feeling good and bucking around, and still nurses the cow, so maybe she is just badly bruised with no serious damage.
Charlie came out this afternoon and changed the oil in our pickup and feed truck and greased them both. It’s nice to have a mechanical grandson!
APRIL 20 – More cold weather! We’re wondering if spring will ever arrive. The calf that got stepped on seemed fine the next day so we put that pair back up to the field. We tagged and banded the next ones, to put out to the field another day. Stan found several old wagon wheel rims (the wooden wheels long rotted and gone—off some old freight wagons that had been parked here on our place in earlier times) and made a really nice firewood holder for us, to have on the back porch in the winter. This will be a handy place to store some extra wood that’s easy to grab from the house. I took some photos to show what it looks like and how he welded the base onto it—made from the springs of an old Model T car that was parked long ago in the bushes below our barnyard.
I also took pictures of Outlandish’s calf going into the calf house. The calves like to go in there to sleep—out of the wind and rain.
Last Friday Stan and Andrea moved one of the feeders out of the horse pasture with the 4-wheeler and dragged it up to the field above the house. There are so many cows and calves up there now that we need another feeder there, and there are only a few pregnant cows left in the horse pasture-orchard. I took photos of the feeders they took up there.
The trial run worked, so they went back to put in a full load and spread it, too. It’s nice to finally get that old spreader working and useful again after so many years!
I also took a photo of a calf that tried to climb into one of the feeders while I was out there, and got stuck. He was high-centered and couldn’t go forward or back and I had to lift up on his hind end and push him on through it.
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| wood holder |
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| cat & firewood holder |
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| base made from old car springs |
Another young cow (number 128) calved that afternoon, in the side pen. She’s the one that lost her first calf last year; it was dead before she went into labor and the front legs never entered the birth canal, so we had to put her in the headcatch and Andrea fished the legs out to where we could pull it, but when we got it out we could tell it had been dead awhile. We gave that cow another chance and didn’t sell her, because it probably wasn’t her fault; we suspected that Panda (the horned cow) had jabbed her in the belly. Panda was mean to all the other cows and we sold her last fall.
Anyway, the heifer that lost her calf last year really wanted calf, so we kept her and gave her another chance. She did love her baby this year, and licked and licked it, but was a bit confused (and wouldn’t let it get to the udder). The calf finally did manage to suckle a couple teats on one side but the cow was kicking her.
The next day she was still kicking at the calf, so Andrea, Stan and I took the pair around to the barn pen and put the cow in the headcatcher. Andrea tried to help the calf nurse the side that hadn’t ever been sucked, but the calf was too scared, so Andrea milked out those teats and we saved the colostrum to freeze. Taking the pressure off those quarters probably eased the cow’s discomfort, because she was letting the calf suck that side of her udder by that evening.
When I was out doing chores I took photos of some of the cows and calves in the field above the house.
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| Outlandish & calf |
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| Blackhead's calf |
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| Outlandish checking on her calf that went into the house |
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| comfy in the house |
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| feeder |
We took 2 big bales up to the cows and calves, then Lynn and Stan worked on the manure spreader and got it working. They took the hay fork off the big tractor and put the bucket on the loader, and Lynn used it to scoop some old manure from the bull pen to put in the manure spreader and try it out.
They took it to the field below the lane, where the yearling heifers are, and spread the trial load on the hill side of the field that never gets enough manure on it because we use it for hay and only pasture it after the hay is harvested and regrows. Stan helped adjust it as we started running it.
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| Lynn taking first load out to try to spread it |
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| Stan adjusting the manure spreader |
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| spreading 2nd load |
I put Zorra Rose in from the horse pasture to the calving pen, and she had a big brockle-faced heifer calf. The weather was nice enough that afternoon that we left them there and the calf nursed quickly.
Alfonso took some of his cows and young calves up the road and left one of the calves along the road, above the field where our cows and calves are. We didn’t want that calf coming down off the back to try to get in with our cattle, so Stan drove up the road on the 4-wheeler to move it on up. The calf was sick, however, and dull and weak, and didn’t want to travel so he had to push it along on foot part of the way. After he got it up around the corner, Alfonso came back down the road, and together they put the calf on our 4-wheeler (with its legs tied) and took it on up to where its mother was. Alfonso told Stan that this calf had been sick ever since it was born. Stan didn’t realize what a problem this might be, especially if Alfonso’s sick calf brought a new “bug” to our vulnerable calves (or even to Christopher, since some pathogens like cryptosporosis are zoonotic and can be dangerous to young humans or people with impaired immune systems). So we burned his gloves and gave him some bleach and told him to go home and wash the 4-wheeler and change clothes. Alfonso brings in new cattle all the time, never vaccinates, and has a lot of disease problems--so we have to be diligent about biosecurity.
We moved 128 and calf down to the big pen below the barn, now that her calf is nursing better and she’s not kicking it as much; we didn’t want to risk putting them up to the field just yet until that cow is behaving a bit better on mothering the calf. Then we were able to put Zorra Rose and her new calf in the side pen where 128 was, and put another calving cow in the main pen.
Before we went to bed, however, we needed more pen space since another cow was calving, so Andrea and I took Zorra Rose and her new calf down to the 2nd day pens, and put 101 and her brand new calf in the side pen, and got in old 42 (Magdalena) who was calving. But the temperature dropped rapidly and the wind was blowing, so we ended up putting Magdalena in the barn to calve. Fortunately by the time it got that cold, 101’s heifer calf was up and nursing and partly dry, and would be ok left outside in the side calving pen.
Magdalena calved at 2:30 a.m. and then Andrea and I helped it nurse because that old cow’s udder has sagged a little low and it’s hard for the calf to get on a teat. She probably would have, eventually, but it was so cold that we wanted to make sure she got some colostrum quickly.
Later that morning Lynn and Stan took a load of manure to spread on heifer hill. It needs a lot of fertilizer but we decided to only do one load this spring because it’s so dry and cold and there isn’t much water in the creek. We don’t want a lot of manure on the grass for too long before we can water that field or it will “burn” the grass and set it back. We’ll try to spread more on it this fall after we are done haying and grazing, when it can do more good for next year.
Andrea harrowed the area below the lane where they spread fertilizer on that field, and then we put the harrow away again until we need it to do the field where the cows and calves are—after we move them out to green grass.
Dani’s little pickup quit running on her way home that evening from taking her friend Kendall back to town, and she had to leave it down at Baker. The next morning Stan and Andrea towed it home and Stan started checking it to see why all the oil drained out of the transmission. That morning Allan Probst brought us 4 dump-truck loads of big rocks, to put down below the old barn where the creek channel has been undercutting the bank and topping our old fence into the creek. With the first load, he didn’t realize how much the bank was undercut, and the dump truck nearly caved it away and very nearly went down into the creek chasm. Fortunately it didn’t fall in and he was able to get away from the chasm. Michael will bring his skid steer sometime and push the rocks into where they are needed, to stabilize the bank.
Andrea, Dani and Kendall helped me corner 128’s calf in the lower pen (5 days old and very fleet) so we could tag it. We didn’t want to mess with that calf any quicker since that young cow is so weird (still kicking a little at the calf) but they are well bonded now. We also tagged Magdalena’s calf and 101’s little heifer calf and put Zorra Rose and her calf up to the field.
Later that day I took photos of some of the cows and calves, including Magda and her baby, China Doll and baby (our oldest calf. I also took a photo of Zorra Rose’s brockle-faced heifer lounging near the calf houses.
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| Magda & calf |
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| China Doll & calf |
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| Zorra Rose's calf |
On Monday we had a snowstorm in the morning but it didn’t last very long. We needed the moisture; everything has dried out a lot with all the wind we’ve had. I did chores in the snowstorm, and put my “crash cow” into the calving pen. It was still snowing when she started serious active labor, so we put her in the barn to calve. She had a big bull calf at noon. We don’t have very many male calves this year—mostly heifers—but I was hoping this cow would have a heifer. She’s a really good cow and I’d like to have a few daughters from her, but so far all she’s had are boys!
That afternoon Lynn went to town to do all the town errands and get some groceries. Andrea and Stan drove up the creek in her pickup and sawed three trees out of the road and sawed them up into firewood.
I put Magdalena and calf up to the field and then Dani came along (to leave Christopher here with us for a while) and helped me put my crash cow and her new calf out of the barn into a 2nd day pen where I can feed and water her. Lynn got home from town shortly after, and he and I took care of Christopher until Stan and Andrea got back.
Monday evening our phones and internet quit working, and it was a good thing we didn’t have any calving problems during the night because I wouldn’t have been able to call Andrea. The phones still were not working this morning, and Lynn had to drive 2 miles down to Baker and use a cell phone to try to call the phone company, and to call the guy I was supposed to interview for an article, and to call a guy who tried to call Lynn about a water witching job.
Andrea came down mid-morning and helped me put 101 and calf to the field and then we took 128 and her week-old calf to the field—figuring she’d had enough time with it by herself that she could handle taking care of it out with the other cows. But they were both a little wild and goofy and on the way up to the field gate she kicked her calf in the head and knocked it down. It seemed to be ok, and got up and ran on out the gate with her, but then ran and ran around the field with the cow trying to keep up with it. They eventually settled down and seemed to be transitioning into the herd. I checked on them later and the cow and calf were together and the calf had nursed, so hopefully they will do fine.
Andrea had a very painful toothache this morning, but since our phones were still not working she couldn’t call to make a dental appointment. So Stan took her to town and she went to see a dentist, who prescribed antibiotics for the infection and made an appointment for her to see a specialist who will be here in about 3 weeks (he comes to Salmon once a month).
Our phones and internet started working again this afternoon so I was able to send some urgent articles to editors, and call the person I was supposed to interview this morning.
At chore time this afternoon I took photos of the heifers eating at their feeder in the field below the lane, and some of the cows and calves in the field above the house.
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| heifers at feeder |
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| happy pair |
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| calf stuck in feeder |
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