A difficult decision

Tomorrow is butchering day. We have a steer, Chester, who is actually only a half-steer. That's my fault -- I did a lousy job with the banding -- and as a result this randy fellow has been happily coasting around with our young heifers, who aren't old enough to breed yet. So he's going in the freezer, even though he's pretty young.

This isn't a difficult decision. Steers always have a date with the freezer. It's just a matter of when.

However something happened this week that caused Don and I to add another animal to the freezer list, and that's one of our herd matriarchs, Ruby.

We got Ruby and Jet shortly after we arrived in Idaho, when they were about nine months old. Right now these ladies are about eleven.

Both have horns, and both have very different dispositions. From the start Jet has been very sweet and mostly gentle. From the start, Ruby has been an absolute pisser. She's very much the dominant animal on our farm.

Nonetheless I milked her and Jet for several years, and she has faithfully birthed a healthy calf every time she's bred. She's an excellent mother and produces beautiful calves, which is why we've put up with her for this long.

But there's no question her dominance affects the dynamics in the feedlot. I feed over two fences (our goal is eventually to build feed boxes), and Ruby usually sweeps the other animals out of her way. Often she ends up with the whole awning almost by herself...

...while the rest of the herd makes do with the feed by the other fence.

This demonstrates how much our animals are held hostage to Ruby's dominance.

Then something happened this week which made me mad enough to spit nails.

I was feeding the cattle in the morning in the feedlot. Parts are still pretty muddy from the winter snowmelt, so the cows have to pick their way to dry ground.

As usual Ruby came along and swept everyone from her path under the awning as she searched for the choicest hay. One of the cows she swept out of her path was Polly, our purebred Jersey. Polly lunged away from Ruby, tripped, and got momentarily mired in the mud and couldn't get up.

Instantly Ruby was on her, attacking Polly as she lay helpless on the ground.

I leaped into the feedlot and started whaling on Ruby with the back side of the pitchfork. Startled, Ruby broke off her attack and this gave Polly the chance to start heaving herself to her feet. But then Ruby went after Polly again, so I continued whaling on Ruby until Polly had a chance to get away.

To say I was furious is an understatement. Poor Polly has a scarred backside from putting up with Ruby's temper. The last thing she needs is to be gored by a mean cow.

So after discussing it with Don, we called the mobile butchers and asked them to add a second animal to dispatch when they come to our farm. Enough is enough.

Yet I am not at peace with this decision. Butchering Ruby will leave little Alice orphaned, always a sad situation. Alice was born in June and is now ten months old. She's plenty old enough to wean, but it will be hard on her at first.

Yet butchering the steer, Chester, will deprive his mother Raven of her calf... and I'm not having bad dreams about this decision. We need to do what's in the best interest of our farm.

I know butchering Ruby is the best thing in the long run and will make life much more peaceful for the rest of the critters, but I confess I've been having nightmares (literally) about it. I've been walking around with a knot of dread in my stomach for the last couple of days. This is one of the few butcherings I won't attend. I plan to head into town tomorrow morning and hang out someplace until the deed is done.

It's hard to say goodbye to an animal we've had for ten years, even if she's a bad-tempered twit.

Cow matters

We needed to take care of a number of cow-related chores before I leave for Portland.

The most important thing was to castrate Chester, our bull calf. Chester is our meat-on-the-hoof, and we normally butcher around two years of age. But his lifespan will be considerably shorter if we don't castrate him, since we won't tolerate another bull on the place. Bulls can become active by about nine or ten months of age, and once they "discover girls" their disposition and temperament goes down the toilet. Hence the need to turn Chester into a steer.

But Chester has been a wiley little boy and evaded our every attempt to pen him. To be fair to Chester, however, the failed attempts were due to our "operator errors," such as not making sure the opposite gate is latched before pushing him through the first gate into a pen. Et cetera.

Anyway, all systems were go on Saturday when we got Chester cornered in a stall.

To castrate, we use an emasculator, sometimes called a bander. This handy and inexpensive little device is nothing more than a gizmo that spreads a tight rubber band over the top of the calf's testicles. It takes literally five minutes or less.

The rubber band is slipped over the prongs...

...and then when the handle is squeezed, the band opens wide.

This band is slipped over the top of the testicles and then the tool is removed, after which the band tightens and deprives the testicles of their blood supply. They whither and dry up within a couple of weeks, and eventually drop off. While somewhat uncomfortable, it's painless. If you've seen the way vets castrate -- throw a calf on his side, slice open the scrotum, clip out the testicles -- all without anesthesia, you'll understand why we prefer this bloodless method.

The challenging part, obviously, is getting the calf's cooperation.

Bull calves can't be castrated until they're at least a few days old, once the testicles have a chance to descend. But little Chester is now about five weeks old, and has some kick in him. Don tied a rope around his neck. (Since the pen is kinda dark, the camera flash is on, which reveals all sorts of dust on the camera lens -- sorry about that.)

Chester was understandably suspicious about our intentions, but fortunately he didn't struggle too hard.

Nonetheless he required two people to hold him. Don grabbed his back quarters then held onto one leg, while Older Daughter stood by to secure the second leg.

After this things got a bit too intense to take photos, so Younger Daughter (who was operating the camera) couldn't get any shots of the actual process. But Don and Older Daughter gently hefted Chester's hind legs off the ground, while I slipped his testicles through the band. It's kinda hard to get the band off the bander, but after one or two attempts I succeeded.

I'm a little concerned that I didn't get the band high enough on his scrotum. A few years ago we had a bull calf we emasculated in the pasture while trying to fend off an angry cow with horns. It was a rodeo, and we learned later that the banding didn't "take." There was juuuust enough testicle left that the calf grew into a nasty-tempered quasi-bull. We were glad to put him in the freezer.

Anyway, after this procedure we immediately let Chester rejoin the herd. He didn't appear to suffer any ill-effects from the operation.

Nonetheless I find myself peering at his nether regions whenever possible. It appears he's banded correctly, so for the time being we won't worry about him and will hope for the best.

The next chore to accomplish was to put a tractor tire into the bull pen to act as a feeder. We've just been feeding Samson and his pen mate Shadow over the fence into their shed, but the old hay is starting to get piled too deep; and until we have a chance to clean their shed, no sense adding more to the pile. A tractor tire will work fine as a feeder until rainy weather comes in the fall.

So, using our neighbor's borrowed tractor, we heaved one of the smaller tractor tires close to the bull pen.

Don cut out the sidewall...

...then we chained it to the tractor bucket and lifted it over the fence into the pen.

It landed upside down (naturally). Samson immediately came over to sniff this new thing.

So, armed with stout poles, we went into the pen to flip the tire over and adjust it where we wanted. Any work inside the bull pen is a two-person operation: one person to do the work, the other person to keep the bull at bay (hence the stout poles). It's not that Samson is mean, it's that he's a bull. We never let ourselves forget that.

Once the tire was flipped over, we filled it with hay for their evening meal.

The next cow issue to address was getting a neighbor's cow in with our bull so he could breed her.

This neighbor has an Angus cow, and since we have the only bull in the neighborhood we're happy to let Samson breed her. So early Sunday morning he came over with the cow in his horse trailer, which he expertly backed up to the barn.

The cow, whose name is Cowbella, made a lot of noise during this process.

This brought ALL of our animals up from the pasture. ALL of 'em. Our fault, we forgot to close the gate to keep them down. I blame it on the early hour.

The last thing we needed was seventeen animals milling around as we're trying to get Cowbella in with the bull, as well as trying to get Shadow out. Since Cowbella is going to be Samson's pen mate for at least a month (through two heat cycles to ensure she gets bred), no sense keeping Shadow locked up with him any longer.

Anyway, I trotted toward the pasture gate and gave the universal "Bossy bossy bossy bossy BOSSY!" call. With Don bringing up the rear, rather to our surprise everyone obediently headed back into the pasture. I made sure to close the gate after them.

Then we could turn our attention to Samson and Shadow. We needed to shoo Shadow out while keeping Samson in. This proved challenging, but successful in the end. Then our neighbor released Cowbella, and she trotted right into the bull pen with very little persuasion. Here Samson gives her a greeting kiss (unfortunately Cowbella was blocked by a tree because otherwise it was a sweet moment).

But of course the part he was really interested in was at the other end, the lech.

With Samson dancing attendance, Cowbella quickly settled in. She's an Angus, and as such is significantly bigger than Samson, who is a Dexter. However we've learned not to worry about the mechanics of small bulls breeding larger cows.

Where there's a will there's a way. Ahem.

Heat wave

It's hot. Whimper. I don't like heat.

As you doubtless know, much of the western U.S. is experiencing a heat wave. There are hideous reports of 120+F temps all over the southwest.

In anticipation of this heat, on Saturday morning we decided to move the cattle to the wooded side of the property, where there is more shade.

Saturday dawned with a mighty thunderhead in the west.

Doppler radar showed some incoming storm cells.

As dawn broke, the western sky displayed all sorts of bizarre cloud formations as thunderstorms dodged around us.

Sadly the storms mostly skirted us by, and we received just a sprinkling of rain before the clouds moved on and the heat moved in.

As you can see, not much shade for the critters in the pasture. Time to move the herd. Animals don't need to suffer through heat, not if we have alternatives.

So we opened the gates to the woods and sent out our universal cattle call: "Bossy bossy bossy bossy BOSSY!!" (In case you're wondering, Bossy was the first cow we ever owned.)

In no time, everybody was moseying into the woods. The calves had never seen this side of the property.

We kept the water tank in the driveway, though, so we could keep an eye on it and make sure it was always full. This is Raven and Chester.

Meanwhile on Sunday, the girls left for a week-long church community service camp. I hope they don't work the kids too hard in the heat.

Late Sunday evening, with the sun down, the calves got frisky.

Today, Monday, is the worst heat day. I watered the garden early -- it takes 2.5 hours to water -- and I noticed a neighbor working in her garden as well.

The heat is making the new strawberry plants explode in size. A few even had some almost-ripe berries.

This afternoon the temperature climbed to a gasping humid 94F. I realizing this is laughably cool by, say, Phoenix standards, but (whimper) we're not used to this in north Idaho. We don't have air conditioning. Could have been worse, though. They were predicting 102F.

The chickens stood around in the shade with beaks open and wings up.

A good day for homemade ice cream. We got cream, we got milk, we got eggs.

We got ice cream.

What's the temperature in your neck of the woods?

Stay cool, everyone!