NOVEMBER 26 – Last Thursday morning it was snowing hard when I got up, and we had 2 inches of new snow. It was still snowing at chore time. Michael called to tell us he was worried about us trying to take our trailer to Montana the next day, to go to the bull sale, because the roads would be really bad, and we’d have to chain up the truck and trailer to make it over two of the passes. We realized that another problem would be the cold weather. It was predicted to be 30 below zero at Three Forks, Montana (and about 10 below zero here) and we realized Andrea’s diesel pickup would need to be plugged in over there or it wouldn’t start. We called the hotel where we’d be staying and they said they didn’t have any way we could plug in a vehicle. We might have been able to plug it in at the stockyard but then we’d have to hitch a ride back and forth (10 miles) between there and the hotel. So we decided to take Andrea’s car instead; it has good tires and starts ok in cold weather. The bull we buy could be delivered to a sale yard near Dillon, Montana (just over the mountain from us—a 3 hour drive) and we could go get him later on a day trip and not have to have Andrea’s truck plugged in overnight.
That whole day was cold and windy, with more snow expected, and Lynn was relieved that we decided not to try to travel with the truck and trailer. We were also glad our straw got delivered the previous day; Steve Herbst would not have been able to bring it now. And the weaned heifers were enjoying their big straw bale; they already had some of it broken down to bed on, and I spread more of it with a pitchfork so there is room for all of them to lie on it, and alongside the calf houses, out of the wind. Winter arrived with a bang.
That afternoon and evening we got everything ready for our trip, with lots of warm clothes, and I cooked some things Lynn could have for meals while I was gone. Charlie came out and spent the night at Andrea’s so he could go with us. Our original plan was to have him come along in case we needed help chaining up the truck and trailer or had a flat tire, but we decided to have him still come with us in the car, in case we had any problems.
Friday morning it was 6 below zero when I went out in the dark to feed the horses and check the ice in the bull pen with a flashlight (the little open area in the ice where he drinks) and be ready to leave at 6:30 when Andrea and Charlie came down from her house. We loaded my stuff in her car, and I had a blanket over my lap in the back seat; it took a while for her heater to warm it up back there. She’d made sandwiches and had food in a cooler, and we ate snacks on our way.
It was barely daylight when we were driving along the river and starting up toward Lost Trail Pass, and we had to stop for several groups of elk crossing the road. One herd had more than 100 animals in it, lined out crossing the highway—leaving the river and going up the mountain into the timber.
There wasn’t a lot of new snow on Lost Trail Pass but the next ones were bad; we realized we probably would have had to chain up the truck and possibly the trailer to go over Joseph and Homesteak Passes in Montana, so it was good we chose to take her car.
It was 27 below zero on those passes and in the Big Hole as we headed toward Butte, Montana. We got to the stockyard near Three Forks at 10:30 a.m. and spent a few hours walking around looking at the pens of bulls. The crew was still sorting and putting them in the pens in lots of five. I’d already made notes in the catalog on the ones I was most interested in (best scores for calving ease and disposition) but made additional notes looking at the bulls themselves. It was hard to write with gloves on, and my fingers got so cold they didn’t work very well. We were dressed warmly (many layers!) but still got really cold and didn’t quite get finished looking at the bulls before we gave up and drove to the Sacajawea Hotel (ten miles away) to check in. It took us a couple hours to get warm, in our room!
We ate sandwiches and rested, then went out to the lobby to meet some of the other folks (all the people coming to the sale were staying at that hotel). I enjoyed meeting Kit Pharo (Pharo Cattle Company, who was putting on this sale) because I’ve known him for more than 20 years (interviewed him for several articles, and then bought a bull sight unseen from his Colorado sale 2 years ago) but had never met him in person. Andrea took a photo of us.
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| me & Kit |
Kit’s program in raising seedstock is to produce efficient cattle that do well on grass and are profitable—not requiring expensive feed, and not needing assistance at calving, staying in the herd for a long time—with good dispositions and easy to handle.
We attended the “Meet and Greet” meeting that evening. There were folks there from several states and Canada, and one guy from Australia. Some were cooperator breeders (raising bulls for Kit’s program) and some were people who came to buy bulls.
Afterward I talked to several of those folks, including a guy from Canada that I will interview sometime for an article. Also had a great conversation with the wife of the auctioneer; she and her husband are from Missouri and he raises bulls for the Pharo Cattle Company program. I eventually got tired and went to bed, but Andrea stayed up longer and talked to many more of them, and took a few photos.
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| Kit & friend |
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| socializing |
It was hard to get any sleep that night, however. This old historic hotel was built in 1910, with thin walls and ceilings, and we could hear people talking in the lobby in the middle of the night.
Saturday we ate breakfast in our hotel room (we took food with us so we wouldn’t have to spend money on food) then Andrea and I drove out to the stockyard again to finish looking at the bulls before the sale. Charlie chose to stay in the warm motel room and just relax, explore the hotel, etc. The temperature at the stockyard was only 12 below zero that morning (instead of 20 below) and this time Andrea loaned me some knitted gloves that were flexible enough to write with and still keep my hands a little warmer. We finished looking at the rest of the bulls and made notes. We wanted to get a bull that isn’t too closely related to “Babe”--the one we bought 2 years ago--since we need the new bull to breed Babe’s daughters. We also want a bull with a really mellow disposition and guaranteed calving ease. We’re getting to old to have to pull calves!
Andrea drove back to the hotel to get Charlie, and I waited in the heated sale barn and talked some more with some of the folks we met the night before. We all had lunch there (free lunch for the folks who came to the bull sale) and then the sale started The 86 bulls sold in less than an hour. It was a cowboy auction, in which each buyer had a bidder number. We just held our number up for the desired bull, and only pulled it down when the bid went past what we wanted to pay. The first 18 bulls were all on my “first choice list” but they all went past my budget (selling in a range of $10,000 to $25,000) but on the 19th bull the bidding stopped just as I pulled my number down (at $6500) and I ended up with that bull. It was a little more than I wanted to pay but I also didn’t want to end up empty-handed or with a bull I didn’t really like. As it turned out, the final price was only $6110 with the “drought” discount Kit gives for folks in areas that were severely affected by drought this past year.
There were some bulls later in the sale that went cheaper, and a couple that I would have really liked to have, but we were still happy with the one we got. Andrea and I went back out to get another look at the bull we ended up with, and decided that he was ok, and definitely a mellow fellow with a good disposition. Andrea took a photo of him down on his knees reaching as far as he could to eat hay from the pen manger.
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| reaching to eat hay |
His registered name is Jurassic Park, but we immediately nicknamed him Barney (like the friendly purple dinosaur). So now we have Babe and Barney.
Bulls were being loaded out immediately after the sale, to be taken home by buyers, and the Pharo Cattle Company crew were loading bulls to be delivered to various points in Montana, Idaho, Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. Our bull was headed for Dillon, Montana (a lot closer to home for us) with free delivery. We made arrangements with the stockyard at Dillon to keep him until Monday since there was no way we could get home and take our trailer over there immediately, and we’d planned to stay one more night at Three Forks and head home early Sunday morning.
So we went back to the hotel late afternoon and visited again with some of the folks we’d met who were also staying another night (with long drives the next day). We celebrated our purchase by ordering hamburgers from the downstairs restaurant to eat in the lobby, and during our visit with other folks that evening one of them took a photo of the three of us.
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| our celebration meal |
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| me, Charlie & Andrea |
We talked to Lynn again on the phone to tell him how it went, and he gave us an update on the home front. It had been really cold but he’d managed to get the chores done and water the horses and bred heifers. Dani and Roger got their water pipes thawed (the pipes in the old house they are renting in town froze during that cold spell).
Sunday morning we headed home, and it was only 3 below zero. We had an uneventful trip but noticed the huge ice buildup on the river by North Fork, which showed how cold it had been on our side of the mountain while we were gone.
When we got home we offloaded my stuff, and Charlie and Andrea went home to plug in his truck and hers. I chopped all the ice out of the horse tubs that had built up during those 3 days and watered them, and checked the ice in Babe’s pen—and had to open it up a little so he could drink. Andrea got her truck started by late afternoon and brought it down here, hooked up the trailer, and parked it by our shop so it could be plugged in all night.
Monday morning we left early (after I did chores in the dark) to drive to Dillon to get our new bull. Charlie and Lynn went with us. Lynn and I sat in the back seat (actually just half the back seat since the other half was full of extra clothing, blankets, food snack cooler, etc.) and we were plenty warm. Charlie took a photo of us snug in the back seat, and another photo as we started up Railroad Canyon.
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| snug in the back seat |
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| starting up Railroad Canyon before the end of the pavement |
It was another cold day, below zero as we went through Railroad Canyon from Leadore and over Bannock Pass. The pavement ends partway up that canyon, and the 15 miles of gravel road up over the top is very rough and washboard bumpy. Our top speed was only about 20 mph but it had been plowed and graveled and we didn’t need chains.
When we got to the stockyard at Dillon the owner helped us load the little bull, after we spread a bale of hay in the front part of the trailer for him. We locked him in that front part (and had a tarp tied to the divider, to provide protection from the wind, and put an unbroken hay bale against it to help hold the tarp down and completely block any wind coming in the back. Even though the sides along the top were open, he was down out of the wind and when we checked on him a couple times on the trip he was lying down in the hay, quite comfortable.
It was really slow coming back over Bannock Pass because we went even slower over
that rough road with Barney in the trailer. Charlie took one photo as we were heading back up over the pass, and then he took a nap. Andrea took a photo of him snoozing along the way.
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| starting back up over the Pass |
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| Charlie sleeping |
We got home early afternoon and unloaded him into the pen with Babe, and he went right to the feed manger along the fence and started eating hay. Andrea took a photo of him.
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| Barney went straight to the hay in the fence manger |
Babe came over to check him out but they didn’t even think about fighting; they acted like long-lost brothers and were good buddies from the start.
We cleaned the bedding hay out of the trailer and Charlie backed it up into its parking spot at the loading chute. When Andrea looked in at the bulls again they were both napping peacefully in the corner shelter.
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| napping together |
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| Babe & Barney in their shelter |
Andrea went to town to do all the town errands and check on Dani and get some firewood for her and Roger. That afternoon coming home from work, my brother Rocky slid off the road before he got to his house. As he rounded the corner just above Yoder’s house, the setting sun temporarily blinded him and he couldn’t tell where the edge of the road was. His jeep started tipping off the bank but was caught and held by the fence and some brush, or it would have rolled down off the bank and into the ditch below. As it was, he was stranded with the jeep almost on its side, with the driver’s side door buried in the snowbank and the passenger door up in the air.
He’d recently had knee surgery and wasn’t able to try to climb up out through the passenger door. Fortunately Yoders were home and a fellow who had been delivering something to them saw Rocky’s jeep and told them about it. They came up onto the road and pulled Rocky out of the vehicle through the back door. He wasn’t hurt, but the jeep was banged up a little.
Tuesday was not quite as cold, with 10 degrees that morning and a high of 24 degrees that afternoon. I spent the day catching up--typing interviews and articles after Andrea helped me break ice out of all the horse tubs and the heifer’s water trough above the house. Then we fed the weaned heifers a bale of my horse hay, and some flakes of alfalfa from the big square bale by their round bale stacks. With the snow and cold weather, it was time to start feeding them a little; the grass in their pasture is almost completely covered with snow. Andrea went to town that afternoon and took Dani to the ER; she has bronchitis.
A whitetail doe and her two fawns have been spending a lot of time in our back yard eating weed seeds, leaves, etc. and I took photos of them (through the bathroom window) while they were eating leaves off a fallen branch of the elm tree, next to Rishiam’s pen.
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| fawns in back yard |
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| fawn eating next to Rishiam |
Wednesday was warmer; it actually got above freezing for a little while that afternoon. Andrea chopped holes in the ice along the little water channel (fed by springs) in the back field and we moved the 9 bred heifers over there, since it will be easier for watering them (the water tank above the house will just keep freezing up) and the grass where they’ve been is just about gone.
The last few nights have been cold, but not quite down to zero. I’ve been feeding the weaned heifers a little hay every morning with the sled—some grass hay and some alfalfa. On Thanksgiving day Andrea, Jim, Lynn and I went to her friend Russ’s place; he cooked a nice dinner. Yesterday I started feeding the little heifers twice a day with the sled. They are still grazing a little, but it will soon be time to give them a full feed of hay.
Today we had our family get-together for a belated Thanksgiving dinner at Andrea’s house in the late afternoon, since this was the day her kids could all be there (except for Sam, who couldn’t get off work in Twin Falls). We also invited Nick.
Lynn had to locate water for some folks above town, who need to put in a well, and I did chores when he got home, then we went up to Andrea’s house and took a fruit salad and jello. Emily, AJ, Christopher, Dani, Roger and Russ were there, and after dinner some of us played a few rounds of Tripoli. It was a fun day. Here are a few of the photos Andrea took:
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| Roger, Dani & Charlie |
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| Dani & Charlie |
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| dinner |
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| good food |
DECEMBER 5 – Last Sunday was windy and I did evening chores in a blizzard. We had new snow and drifts. I sent one of my books (Beyond the Flames: A Family Touched by Fire) to one of the gals I met at the bull sale at Three Forks, and she called that evening to let me know she got it and was looking forward to reading it. We’d shared a lot of things about our lives and various challenges, when we talked that weekend, and hope to stay in touch.
Lynn had a serious painful, itchy area on his lower leg when he got up Monday morning—a big red area the size of a quarter—and it looked like a nasty spider bite. Some of the skin was coming off, with a deep, raw ulcer. Jim took him to the ER and the doctor thought it probably was a spider bite and gave him a prescription for an antibiotic in case it becomes infected. We’ve been changing the bandage on it a couple times a day and checking on it.
Dani and Roger came out to Andrea’s house to get some of Dani’s things, and Roger brought several more sacks of pellets (for the pellet stove) into the house from the barn across the driveway.
The next day, Andrea helped me get a load of little bales from my hay shed, onto the feed truck, to take down by the gate to the heifer pasture, so I can continue feeding the weaned heifers some grass hay twice a day (plus a sled full of alfalfa hay every morning). They seem to be doing ok with that ration but we’ll soon give them more.
Granddaughter Heather in Canada sent some photos she took when they were hauling their last bales of hay from harvest, and a photo of baby Ian.
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| bringing home bales - Nov 28 |
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| Ian - Nov 28 |
Thursday was storming with snow and wind. When I did chores that morning I took a pitcher of hot water to pour on the base of the 3 step-in posts I used earlier this fall and winter to create a fake electric fence around the haystacks by Sprout and Shiloh’s pens so I could let Sprout graze the grassy area next to them. The ground is so frozen that it was impossible to get those posts out of the ground without breaking them, but the hot water thawed it enough that I could loosen and pull them out. They had to be removed so we can get to the haystacks with the tractor (whenever we have to start feeding those big bales to the heifers) without running over those posts.
Andrea checked on the bred heifers in the lower back field. They are still doing ok, grazing the rough feed that’s sticking up above the 6 inch deep snow.
It started snowing hard at 4 p.m. and I did evening chores in a blizzard. Andrea came down again and helped me put more bedding hay in the corner shelter in the bull pen, and another irrigation dam over the top to make a little more roof so both bulls can be out of the storm.
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| bulls in their shelter |
She also checked on the pellets in the barn (for the pellet stove). There were only 5 more sacks out there, so we’ll need to buy some more.
This was the day Michael and Carolyn were driving to Jackson, Montana to get a mini excavator he is buying. He’s had to rent one for some of the fencing jobs, and spent enough in rent over the past few years that he could have purchased one, so he decided to buy one—and found a used one in Jackson that will work, and be better than the one he had to rent. It was a rough trip to get it, with the snowstorm and bad roads, pulling his flatbed trailer. There was 8 inches of new snow on the passes. He had to chain up for about 50 miles, each way, with very slow going. They finally got home late that evening.
With the new snow here we thought we might need to start feeding hay or plow driveways so Lynn plugged in the tractor that evening, but we only had about 3 inches of new snow (but it was really cold that next morning—almost down to zero). The cows were still able to graze, but we took the last of our protein blocks down to the bred heifers in the lower back field. The protein supplement will stimulate them to eat more of the rough feed that they can still get to, with all the snow.
The gate to the lower field was impossible to open, with the wooden uprights frozen into the thick ice where the spring has flooded out into that lane. But Andrea’s 4-wheeler fit through the small space between the gate post and the first upright (we could open it that much) to take the protein blocks to those heifers.
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| protein for heifers |
Then she and Lynn took a big bale of straw to the cows with the tractor, putting it in the brush at the edge of the field where they like to bed. They can bed in the straw and eat some. Lynn plowed the snow away from our mailboxes up on the main road, then he went with Andrea when she took her truck up to Scott Kesl’s place to get 10 more blocks of protein (100 pounds each). They stopped on the way to say Hi to Bob and Jane and pick up a check for some things they wanted Andrea to get for them downtown. Andrea tries to do their town errands whenever she can, so Jane won’t have to drive on bad roads. Bob is getting around very well now in his wheel chair and working hard at increasing his upper body strength, realizing that he may never be able to walk again.
When they got home with the protein blocks, we put 8 of them in the back of the brown jeep (with its covered top) and took a couple blocks to the cows by her house. Then she drove to town and to do all our town errands and get a ton of wood pellets for our pellet stove. Charlie came out that evening to help unload the pellets into the barn. Jim came along about that same time (he’d been up the creek hunting) and he and Charlie and Andrea got the pellets unloaded and stacked in the barn across the driveway from the house. While unloading the first of the sacks, however, they discovered that the ends of the sacks were not properly sealed and were coming open. They had to use a lot of duct tape to patch them so they wouldn’t leak the pellets out. Charlie brought a bunch of the sacks into the house so it will be awhile before we need to get more out of the barn.
Christopher spent some time at Andrea’s house, and she took photos of him playing with his trains. He loves building track all over the house.
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| playing with trains |
Saturday was colder. Andrea helped me break ice out of all the horse tubs that morning and reload the little sled (for the weaned heifers) with as much alfalfa hay as it will hold (big heavy flakes of hay). I am still feeding them two sleds of hay in the morning (one full of alfalfa and one with a bale and a half of grass hay) and a bale of grass hay at night.
Then Andrea called us at 3 p.m. that afternoon to tell us the old house that Dani and Roger are living in was on fire! She was rushing to town to try to help them. Dani had come home from work (she works part days on Saturday) and was taking a nap when Roger came home and discovered the smoke and woke Dani, and they got out (with their cats). Andrea and Emily got there soon after the fire department crew arrived.
The fire started in some old wiring in the attic and had already burned through the ceiling into the laundry room. The fire crew broke a hole into the front of the house and were able to get the fire out within a few hours.
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| house on fire |
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| firemen breaking in to put out fire |
Eventually they allowed friends and neighbors to go in briefly and get as much stuff out as they could salvage, though much of it was smoke and water damaged. Andrea got all of the clothes to take home to wash and filled the back of her truck with some of their other belongings. Dani’s dad and Charlie filled their trucks and some of the neighbors helped, too. The bed and couch will need to be cleaned before they can be used again, but most of their things were gotten out. Andrea took a photo of Em & Charlie and some friends waiting for the firemen to allow them to go in and retrieve Dani and Roger’s possessions.
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| waiting to go in to salvage Dani & Roger's things |
The house was destroyed, so now they need a place to stay. A friend who works at a motel arranged for them to stay that night at the motel. Charlie and another friend brought some of their things out to Andrea’s place to unload it that night.
Yesterday was down to zero. Andrea took her truck back to town to get all the firewood that Jim had taken to Dani and Roger a few days earlier.
Today was a little warmer but it snowed again. Dani and Roger came out to Andrea’s house to get some of their things and clothes that Andrea washed, so Dani would have something clean to wear to work.
DECEMBER 14 – Last Tuesday we started feeding the weaned heifers their big alfalfa bales. Andrea pulled the bale feeder out to their field with her 4-wheeler, and she and I cut the deer netting and made a “gate” we can open easier to get into those stacks. Lynn took a bale out to the feeder with his tractor, and also plowed a patch of snow away by the machinery parking area, next to the corral across from the bull pen. He was able to get a big square bale (first cut alfalfa) from the stackyard and put it there, next to the corner of the corral where I’ll be feeding the little bulls (the two young ones we kept this year) for the winter. Andrea took photos as he brought the bale for the little bulls.
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| bale for the bulls |
The 2nd cutting alfalfa round bale we gave to the heifers was pretty rich—mostly leaves—and we hoped they wouldn’t bloat. They were somewhat adjusted to eating alfalfa (the flakes I’d been giving them daily for more than a week) but it wasn’t this rich. I checked on them a few hours after we gave them the big bale, and they were all very full and a bit bloated, but none seemed in danger of fatal bloat. I checked them again just before dark that first day, and they seemed ok.
The weather continued cold, and the straight alfalfa wasn’t adequate for generating body heat (ruminant animals need more roughage for that) so I have been giving those heifers a little grass hay, especially in the evenings. They are not as cold in the early cold mornings. I took photos of them eating the extra hay, and a photo of one of them (Melanagastor, daughter of Magdalena and a great granddaughter of Maggie) when she came to the water tank to drink.
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| heifers |
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| heifers eating the grass hay |
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| Melanagastor |
Andrea and Jim helped AJ and Emily put up a hot wire around their yard, to keep their dog from jumping over the fence and going to the neighbor’s place or out on the street (at risk for being hit by a car).
We had more new snow on Friday. The cows and bred heifers were still able to graze, but we gave them more protein blocks. Saturday was a little warmer but the water for the heifers in the lower back field was becoming an issue. About the only place they can drink now is some little spots where a spring comes out of a patch of brush on the hill, and a place where Andrea has been able to break ice for them near the gate where another spring is making a huge ice flow. Andrea checks them every day and breaks ice for them, and monitors their grass; by Friday she could see that they’ve eaten most of the rough feed in that field. I took a few photos around the barnyard—looking down toward the calving barn...
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| old blacksmith shop in front of calving barn |
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| lane toward calving barn |
…and the view toward my hay shed… |
| hay shed |
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| hay shed & pens |
..and a photo of Sprout by her gate, and our old freight wagon parked along the lane. |
| Sprout |
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| old freight wagon |
I finished writing our Christmas letter for this year and put some photos on a thumb drive for Emily to work her magic and put photos on the backside of the letter, like she did last year. Andrea took the thumb drive to Emily when she went to town Saturday to pick up Christopher. Here is our Christmas letter for this year: 
That evening we invited Nick to join us for supper, so we’d have a chance to visit with him again, and also play a few rounds of Tripoli. Andrea and Christopher stopped by for a few minutes on their way home from town, but Christopher was eager to go on home to “Gammy’s house” where he could play with his little train and put it together.
Sunday was the warmest day we’d had for a long time (32 degrees that morning, and up to 37 degrees by afternoon) so we decided it was a good day to vaccinate the bred heifers (their first scour vaccine, so they can have a booster shot before calving—when we give the cows their annual booster). The heifers need a two-shot series of the scour vaccine, to help them create the antibodies against E. coli and rotavirus and coronavirus in their colostrum—to give their calves protection against those common pathogens.
So Andrea called Charlie to see if he could come out and help us. He said he could probably come in the afternoon, after he shoveled some snow off his dad’s leaking roof. Andrea and I took her 4-wheeler and sled to the lower back field, to bring back what’s left of the protein blocks and salt block, and bring the heifers up to the corral. The gate uprights (in the wire gate out to that field) were frozen in the ice that’s flowed out from the spring above it but Andrea was able to chop around them and get them loose so we could open the gate completely, and make it safer to try to get the heifers through the gate without them falling down on the ice.
We called them from where they were grazing at the lower end of the field, and they followed us (and the sled with their protein blocks) out through the gate and up to the corral. While we were waiting for Charlie, we took the feed truck around to the stackyard to load with little bales for the bulls, and broke ice on the creek in the corral. Andrea took the sled with the protein and salt up to the field by her house (where the older cows are).
When Charlie got here we put the heifers through the chute and vaccinated them. Dani and Roger came out, too, and helped; Charlie caught their heads, Dani ran the tailgate and squeeze, while Andrea and Roger brought the heifers up the runway to the chute, and I vaccinated them. Andrea took photos as Charlie and Dani worked the chute.
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| Dani putting cow into chute |
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| Charlie catching the head & Dani shutting tailgate |
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| team effort |
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| ready to bring the next one |
It was a smooth team effort and we were done in about 10 minutes. Then we took the heifers up to the field to live with the cows; they can hopefully all keep grazing for another 3 weeks or so (if the snow doesn’t get too deep) before we have to start feeding hay. Andrea took a photo as the heifers went through the corrals and past the haystacks. |
| taking the heifers from the corrals to the field above the stackyard |
Charlie and Roger finished loading the feed truck and stacked the bales next to the bull corral for Babe and Barney. Andrea, Dani and I got the little bulls (Blindy’s son Blind Man Bluffer and China Doll’s orphan Kung Fu) from the field below the lane, sorting them out from the weaned heifers, and put those young bulls in the main corral, where they will live for the winter, and I can feed them in the corner feeder in the adjacent pen across from the big bulls. We put a bale of coarse grass hay for bedding in the protected area next to the chute, out of the wind. Then Andrea fed the kids lunch at her house before they left. Jim took care of Christopher while we were working the cattle, and Charlie took Christopher back to Emily and AJ’s house when he left. |
| kids at Andrea's house |
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| Christopher having a snack in Charlie's truck |
Before they left, they also posed with Chewy, the very old dog that Andrea got for the kids about the time Dani was born. |
| Charlie, Dani & Chewy |
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| Dani & Chewy |
Monday was a little stormier (a little new snow) but still fairly warm. The two little bulls in the main corral were too timid to try to drink from the creek, since the shore ice was several inches thick and they didn’t want to step down into the creek. So we opened up the little water hole pen at the end of the alley to the chute, broke out some of the brush, and opened up that area of creek. It’s protected there with all the brush and the ice wasn’t very thick—and the bank was more gradual. The young bulls could walk right into the creek to get a drink. After we got that situation resolved, we put more bedding in the big bull’s shelter. |
| more bedding for Babe & Barney |
Andrea sent me a photo of one of the raccoons that regularly eats the cat food in the “cat house” and is often in there when she goes in to feed them.
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| extra cat |
Later that day she went to town to do all the town errands and also went out to visit Cope and Terri and take them some things from the grocery store. Cope is still doing fairly well; that morning he’d preg-checked cows for Jenelle (reading the ultrasound from his wheelchair while his helper ran the ultrasound probe), and recently preg-checked cows at a neighboring ranch, where Jenelle took some photos—and sent them to me. Cope has always said he will continue doing everything for his clients that he can, for as long as he can still get around in his wheelchair. |
| Cope preg checking at Slavins - photos by Jenelle Thomas
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Greetings from Nebraska. I missed your annual letter in 2023 and thought to send a note of hello. Things are good in Nebraska and I have had a good year discovering the cause of several new cattle inherited diseases.
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