A Little Cattle Talk
April 22nd, 2008 by Northern FarmerThings are getting to be a tad bit more like spring as the days go by. Calves are being born, had four born today so far so that’s picking up a little bit. All was well although yesterday I discovered one calf that was born last Thursday with a severe navel infection, and I mean severe! Plus it looked like it might be getting sick to boot because of the stress involved. This very rarely happens around here and I haven’t treated more than one or two calves a year for the last few years since going to later spring calving. But I knew the way it looked to me that the calf didn’t have very long to live the way the infection had set in. An infection like that is hard to detect until its fairly far along and I can’t catch every calf everyday and inspect them, nor would their mother’s approve of that either. Its a cat and mouse game just getting them ear tagged and marked in my little book the first day they are around this earth. And no, its not some animal ID ear tagging, its just so I can match the pairs if anything ever goes wrong and also to keep a record of good replacement heifers. A private tag. Because without it I’d be sunk when I split the herd four ways and send them to their pastures. But back to the sick calf, like I say, didn’t look good, but I have a motto, “no calf left behind” and this was no exception. I always have a bottle of cheap penicillin around for just these rare occasions. Now some might say that Tom is using antibiotics, how dare he! Well, I figure this is why God placed it here, to save lives. But the directions on the bottle say one cc for every hundred pounds of animal weight. Years ago an old vet told me, “you follow the directions and you’ll have allot of dead animals”. Hmm, that always stuck with me. Since then, on occasions like this I use what I call the Lazarus potion. And I will say its amazing the lives you’ll save! Like the old vet told me, the reason for the low dosage on the bottle is because city folks figured we’re over using antibiotic, which truthfully the “industry’ of farming is. So to make it look good to the public they put that low dosage on the instructions. And it truly works keeping antibiotics out of the food supply because the animal WILL die with that treatment. My Lazarus potion consists of a 15 cc dose instead of a 1 cc dose. A few hours after I grudgingly gave the shot I could see the calf hadn’t moved and its mama was standing beside it keeping good guard. Its times like that when a fella feels a little down. I fully expected that calf to die because of the terrible shape he had developed so rapidly. But around supper time yesterday I seen him get up and march right to mama and get him some good milk! And today he was running around and dancing! Praise the Lord! I hope that’s the only one I have to treat this year, might be, because I never want to use an antibiotic except to save a life and I don’t ever use it for anything else, ever. But when used properly on the farm its a life saver, literally. I figure if I had some high class notion that no animal would ever get to use it I’d be no better than a farmer that would let his stock starve to death. It has a proper place and industrial farming took it out of that proper place.
So on to other things here, cause talking calves can really keep me going! Well, lets talk a little more about calves then. Last evening another calf got herself stuck in the only mud hole in the seven acre calving pasture. Just before dark I seen it struggling to get unstuck. Luckily I wasn’t showered up yet and we went out with a little goat roping rope and being I didn’t feel like getting stuck too I decided to rope it and drag it out. Besides, being a human and being stuck by a stuck calf remarkably doesn’t slow an angry cow down one bit. They can speed through the swill! And I swear their eyes turn red when they do and I’m stuck. But being the hot shot roper that I am I snared that little rascal and dragged it out of the swill and booted it to safety. And a person has to make sure they get away from the area because there’s an unbroken rule with unstucking calves. When you get them out they’ll go right back in just to make you mad! And today the swill hole was destroyed for the year with the skidsteer working for two hours digging it out, so now the calving pasture is totally safe unless the cattle can figure out some other form of trouble to get into.
The days are mostly now occupied with hauling manure, checking the cowherd and getting ready for field work. The evenings are occupied with different things around the place and it sure does beat winter! Taters keep getting planted in the evenings and we’re hoping for a good crop this year of them good tasting black dirt spuds that can beat any industrial sand raised spud. Yup, a farmers yearly dream of a good crop and the right rains, green pastures and fat cows, whew!
April 24th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Hmm, kind of reminds me of an old movie I saw, one fellow in the woods says to the other “It’s quiet out there” and the other fella says “Yup, too quiet” and then all heck breaks loose as the savages (or soldiers or monsters or whatever) attack out of the woods (or was it jungle?). So I’ll make some noise,OK? The Lazaru dose of antibiotics makes sense to me Tom, I showed that to the wife and she said it sounded like a great idea, we’ll try the same on the calfs that start looking poorly, what’s to lose? I was going to disc today, before the rain comes but then decided to work on finishing the trim in the milkhouse, in case we get enough milk to ship and have to please the inspector! We’ve had people asking about raw milk and butter/cheese again, if we have to start over (again) that might be part of the game plan. The grass is growing nice in one field that had droughted out last year, of couse it is across the road from the cows, but we might start green chopping next week to gets the girls some decent feed. Speaking of feed, we’ve filled silo (custom operator) for 9 years now, and no matter how good the field was when I knock it down it always comes out poor from the silo (we only had one really quality year from the silo), seems like the custom guy is always running late and my feed goes in too dry or rained on. This year (Lord willing) we will small bale everything, a lot more work, but maybe some quality?
April 24th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Brent,
Hmmm, what movie was that? That’s the way its been here this evening, up to a little while ago there wasn’t a breath of wind outside but in a while I know whats going to be happening….. the lull before the blast! Sounds like the weather will rattle up the new born calves a bit the next couple of days and hopefully won’t rattle up this farmer all to much. Talking snow even which I’m not all to keen about.
The one thing I always hated about having custom work done was the waiting and the crop being put away so much later than it should have been. People around here always wonder why our silage is of such high quality and the answer is we do it ourselves. And a lot of it! But then they say “the cost is so high with your own equipment”. Then I explain that the chopper is an old JD 35 that cost a little over a thousand bucks quite a few years ago. Tore that thing apart and got everything running smooth as silk and the silage gets chopped when it should be chopped. Same with baling. A person gotta bale when the hay is ready and in all reality a baler doesn’t cost much. And with a little time they can be tuned up as good as new. In your situation a decent baler that works should more than pay for itself the very first year in quality of feed alone.
So as you might be able to tell, I’m not a fan of having someone come and do custom work. Did allot of waiting years ago and many times it cost more waiting than having some rusty but trusty equipment of our own.
April 25th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Tom,
Do your cows have any shelter or are they calving in the rain - and it looks like soon to be snow? How do they do calving in this cold rain? I just looked at the forecast for your area and was astounded to see a forecast of 7-10 inches of that white stuff. They are only forecasting up to an inch down my way. I was thinking that we might get cattle on pasture in a week or so, but now I suspect that I am only dreaming.
Jim V
April 25th, 2008 at 10:53 am
Jim,
Just walked in the house from tagging a couple calves that were born in this cool wind and they’re doing fine. The cattle are calving in the wide open spaces and if it gets a little ugly outside I’ll just have to use my smarts a little more. The barn is ready for any individual that’s having problems but that’s the last resort. Very seldom do we have problems this late in the season with weather but there’s always exceptions eh! Another trick I use is that all those Norway pines on both sides of the calving pasture are fenced off with a one wire electric and if I can push the calves under there they can go bed down under the pines nice and comfy. Better than any barn really, no germs, sterile ground.
I’ll be going out now for a bit, (weather permitting), and get some more pastures ready. I have three pastures I didn’t graze last fall with allot of stockpiled grass on them and those cows can be booted out next week. I’m fencing off most of the pastures to let them grow a few weeks more but should have enough in the fenced off acres that I let the cows into early till the grass grows more in the other places. (Ever notice all the strategies a simple Christian farmer has to go through just to survive?)
So no, no shelter, but these ain’t wimpy cattle either. The were created for this and that’s where they’ll be
Good Luck Down Your Way In This!
April 25th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Tom,
So thankfully someone a generation or longer ago had the foresight to plant some pines. Now you have me thinking about ways that I can plan for the coming generations. Seems that I see a lot of trees getting taken down, but not too many people planning for the future by planting trees in strategic locations.
Jim V
April 25th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Jim,
Hmm, yup, someone had the foresight a generation or two, me
But I do span many generations.One thing about planting trees, a person kinda figures that he’ll never really see much use out of them because its gonna take a long time. But a long time goes by and the trees are big and they’re doing something useful like sheltering some calves. And I’m still kicking! Around here besides trees for shelter I want to plant a few fruit trees or nut trees every year from now till whenever so that everywhere a person looks there’s food of some sort growing!
April 27th, 2008 at 8:32 am
Morning Tom!
In from my morning chores, time to warm up. It’s ncer out then yesterday, sunny, breezy but not blowing everything around. Loaded two pickup loads of silage (with my trusty shovel), haulded manure and got the green chopper pulled into the yard for servicing (yup, got some grass ready to go!), now a cup of coffee and rest a bit, the old back is sore. When I was hauling manure I checked on the killdeer that made a nest on the shoulder of the road and laid her 4 eggs last week. I had put a large rock on the shoulder to mark her nest and protect her from wandering car tires. After all the rain and wind I wasn’t sure she’d still be there, but there she was this morning hunkered down on her eggs and watching me carefully. We should have half that little birds determination to see things thru instead of throwing up our hands in despair every time we get rocked by the storms of misfortune!
April 27th, 2008 at 8:41 am
Morning Brent!
Ah, a new day! The winds are pretty much down to nothing here and the sun is shining, only 25 degrees outside but its like Florida compared to the last two days around here. My big gamble payed off this morning, the cattle that were literally packed in the loafing shed came through it just fine and now they are booted out into the seven acre calving pasture and look all comfey and happy! So I’m happy too! I like the killdeer thing. I always do that to, mark there nest so we don’t drive over it and all. They do not realize that we are protecting them but we are. Hmm, kinda sounds Biblical, eh!
I just praise the Lord this storm is over with, don’t know how many days it’ll take to get rid of the new snow this time, but whatever. As long as it ain’t down right brutal outside. I’m almost in disbelief that we came through without any major disasters here. So I’d better slurp this cup of coffee down and get ready for church in a bit!