Bovine injury

Our normal evening livestock procedure is to go out to the barn around 6 pm to button up the animals. We close the corral gate, put Stormy in the calf pen, and fill the feed box with hay for the rest of the animals.

The nice thing about livestock is they're creatures of habit. Once they're trained to do something (like coming into the corral at night), they'll do it without fail.

For this reason, we got concerned when we went out to the barn last night and saw ... nobody.

Maggie (our Jersey) and Stormy (her calf) were in the pasture just above the corral, and they came in without a fuss when we called them. But where were Mignon (our Angus heifer) and Romeo (our young steer)?

Way out in the pasture, we heard some agitated mooing. This did not bode well.

Keep in mind that since our entire property is sloped, it's something of a (muddy) climb to get up to the pasture from the corral. It was pitch dark. Since I was the only one wearing boots (the corral is pure mud), I took a flashlight and went to explore. Somehow, stomping all around a large pasture in pitch darkness illuminated only with a flashlight while searching for black cows made the pasture seem a whole lot bigger.

If you remember, we had subdivided that pasture last spring. After ten minutes of searching, I found Mignon and Romeo on the other side of the fence line. They were both on their feet and seemed fine, but disinclined to move. Why?

To get to the other side, I started following the fence line toward the open walk-through gate when I saw the problem: One of the T-posts had been bent at a 45-degree angle, and the field fencing around it was pretty mangled. To bend a T-post to this extent must have taken a tremendous blow.

As I approached the animals, it wasn't hard to piece together what happened. Mignon was in heat. Romeo, even though he is a steer, was all over her. Evidently at one point he had slammed into Mignon and sent her crashing into the T-post, tangling her up in the wire of the field fence. I could deduce this because even as I approached, randy Romeo was still trying his best. (Removing the equipment takes away the ability but not the interest.)

I didn't see any blood, and since Mignon was standing on all four legs, she hadn't broken any bones. But clearly one of her legs was injured, possibly a sprain or perhaps a strained tendon or ligament. And Romeo wouldn't leave her alone.

By this point, since I had been gone for some time, Don risked his sneakers in the mud and came up to help. Together we were able to gently shoo both animals toward the corral. Except Romeo, that randy twit, would not leave Mignon alone.

We got to the muddy sloped path leading down to the corral gate. Don held back and tried to keep Romeo at bay to give Mignon a chance to gingerly pick her way down the steep slope. Then Romeo broke free and once again tried to have his way with her. As a result, poor Mignon slipped and slid down that muddy slope and crashed into the fence just outside the gate. Grrrrr.

We finally got both animals into the corral and closed the gate. Once we filled the feed box, everyone settled in to eat, and we left them alone to calm down. I checked on Mignon just before bedtime, and she was laying down inside the barn, chewing her cud and looking okay.

This morning, after I finished milking Maggie, I kept the animals in the corral to keep an eye on Mignon. (Her heat cycle clearly wasn't quite over, if Romeo's behavior was anything to go by). She was on her feet and favoring her left front leg, but not cripplingly so.

Later we released the livestock into the lower pasture below the house. This, too, is a sloped area (nearly everything on our property is sloped), but there are some reasonably level portions that hopefully wouldn't strain Mignon's injury any worse than it already was. Also, this pasture is closer to the house, which meant we could keep a closer eye on everyone.

While the other animals grazed, Mignon spent a lot of time laying down.

At one point, Romeo came up and started licking Mignon's face. It would be anthropomorphizing to say he was apologizing for injuring her, but it was kinda sweet nonetheless.

Here you can see Mignon laying down on the left, while Stormy, Maggie, and Romeo pick at the grass nearby.

At one point she extended her injured leg in front of her. I'm sure it was very sore and tender.

Later I photographed the T-post and mangled fencing in the upper pasture. No wonder she got hurt.

We'll keep the animals in the lower pasture for the next couple of days and see how Mignon does. The fact that she can walk, however slowly, is a good sign.

And the fact that her heat cycle is over is an even better sign.

Organic weed control

Two years ago, we participated in a county program in which workers came in and cleared out severely overgrown underbrush for purposes of fire mitigation.

Part of our contractual obligation to participate in this program is to maintain the condition of the property after the brush was removed (in other words, not to let it get overgrown again). In talking over how best to do this with the rep, we mentioned we were getting cows at some future point.

She was delighted. "Cows are one of the very best ways to control weeds!"

Of course she's right. The condition of the sacrifice pasture after the cows finished with it is proof enough.

Part of our intense rotation for the cows, therefore, is weed control. At this time of year, grass is growing fast and growing thick. We're managing the cows so they can eat things down without leaving them so long in any one place that they damage the baseline plant growth. Later in the summer, when the grass stops growing and things dry out, we'll have to be careful that the cows don't overgraze anything.

One of the places the cows had never been is the driveway area between the house and barn. This is staging area where we keep a lot of unkempt and loose stuff: Tractor implements, large items such as the log splitter and a small trailer, and miscellaneous things such as the burn barrel and scrap wood from the shop. It's where we keep rolls of fencing, unsplit log rounds, stacked and tarped lumber, unused cinder blocks, and the tarped hay bales. It's a messy and disorganized area we're not eager for visitors to see, ha ha.

But, because it's spring, many places are getting overgrown with grass between all these items. We really wanted the cows to graze it down, purely for purposes of weed control.

So we worked to cow-proof this section. We fenced off awkward angles against the hillside or in places we didn't want them to go (such as squeezing behind a shed). We picked up anything sharp that might hurt them. And finally, yesterday morning, we opened a connecting gate and called them in.

This is an especially overgrown section of hillside, and we welcomed the cows eating it down.

Of course, being cows, they did a lot of poking around. For obvious reasons, we're keeping the barn and shop doors closed while the animals are in the driveway.

Also, being cows, they're leaving a lot of cow patties. But that's okay. Cow patties aren't a fire hazard, just a walking hazard.

This open gate leads to a side chute against the barn, which in turn leads to the water tank at the back of the barn. The cows are familiar with the chute and therefore knew were to find water.

There's not enough grass in this section to keep the cows interested for more than two or three days, at which point we'll release them into the newly subdivided large pasture. Later in the summer, we'll probably put them in the driveway again, just to make sure it stays eaten down.

Organic weed control. Gotta love it.

Fencing the sacrifice pasture

A couple weeks ago, Don and I completed an arduous task we'd meant to do last year: Fencing a sacrifice pasture.

A sacrifice pasture, essentially, is a section of land on which livestock can be housed during times they can't or shouldn't be on the regular pastures. This includes winter months and/or months in early spring to prevent regular pastures from being overgrazed while still in the young-growth stage. In our case, since we have much less acreage than our old homestead, we have to be careful not to let the cows eat too much early grass before the pastures have a chance to grow lush and thick.

It's called a "sacrifice" pasture because, let's face it, it's going to get trashed. In our case, we have about half an acre that's too steep and wooded for any other purpose, so we wanted to fence it for a sacrifice pasture. (You can see the barn at the top of the hill.  The fenced-in corral is to the left of the barn.)

This section of land had never been properly fenced (just three raggedy strands of barbed wire by past owners), so we needed to make sure it was secure for the cows. Nor was it a convenient rectangle, but an odd shape with five uneven sides. The trouble is, the grade is so steep that it's incredibly difficult to get anything heavy up and down the slope, such as the fencing itself. Using the tractor was out of the question. In short, it promised to be a very arduous task.

We started by assembling the tools and materials we needed, including T-posts. Groan, carrying T-posts all the way down that slope wasn't something we were looking forward to.

We gathered the rest of the tools we needed and put them in a wheelbarrow. To get the wheelbarrow down that slope, we ended up going downhill switch-back style. Near the bottom, where we were starting the fencing process, we had to brace the wheelbarrow against tree trunks to keep it from tipping sideways.

The next difficulty was transporting the field fencing itself. A 330-foot roll of field fence is heavy, on the order of 190 lbs. What we did was roll it out and measure off 100 feet, which brought the weight down to a bit under 60 lbs., then re-rolled it. Still heavy, but with two of us carrying it, at least manageable.

And, of course, for the fencing we needed at the bottom of the slope, we simply carried the fencing rolls into the section and let 'em go. Whee! They bounced downward at faster and faster speed until they crashed into a tree, at which point we climbed down behind them, repositioned the rolls, and let them go again. In this manner, at least getting the fencing to the bottom was fairly easy. (For those wondering why we didn't simply drag the entire 330-ft. roll into the field and do this, it's because a 190-lb. roll could easily crash through the fragile fencing already in place at the bottom of the pasture, cross the road, go into our neighbor's field, and keep going. That would be the stuff of cartoons, wouldn't it?)

We started the fencing process by locating the boundary pins between ours and our absentee neighbor's property. Then we ran a string along the boundary.

Then we dropped T-posts at 12-foot intervals along the string.

While carrying the T-posts downhill was a hassle, actually pounding them into the ground was one of the easier tasks. The ground is beautifully soft this time of year, and it took just a few whacks to get the posts properly installed.

Then we stretched out the field fence, loosely draping it over the T-posts to hold it in place until we could tighten it.

Once the fencing was tightened, we wired it to the T-posts in three spots: top, center, and bottom.

It took a couple of days of hard work, but at least we had two sides of the pasture properly fenced. The third side was the boundary fence with one of our grazing pastures, so it was already done.

What remained was the fourth and fifth sides, over a small ridge and on an even steeper slope. We didn't need to install T-posts on this side, merely to reinforce it with field fencing, but it was a daunting task on so steep an incline.

Once again we unrolled stretches of fencing, but this time in 50-foot sections rather than 100-foot, for easier carrying. We wouldn't be able to just let the fencing roll to the bottom.

This time, however, we had one advantage: We could load the tools and equipment onto the tractor and drive it to a flat spot behind the barn at the top of the slope. While we still had to carry what we needed down the slope, at least it was a shorter distance.

Last year, Don had built a utility box for the back of the tractor, and we loaded it up with everything we needed for the project, then drove it to the flat spot.

Fencing this fairly short section took another two days of work, but we finally got it done.

At last we could move the cows from the nice lush pasture where they had been happily grazing, and into the sacrifice pasture. This pasture doesn't have much by way of grass, but of course that's the point. By allowing our two pastures (one larger, one smaller) to grow the grass tall enough to support summer grazing, we needed to remove the grazing pressure from the cows long enough to allow the grass to grow.

We got the animals into the corral...

...and opened the gate into the newly fenced sacrifice pasture.

It didn't take them long to make their way into the new territory. Filet, as the dominant animal in our little herd, was the first one through.

It didn't take long for the rest of the animals to follow suit. What happened next was hilarious: The three younger animals (Mignon, Maggie, Romeo) began racing back and forth across the slope, kicking up their heels in high spirits.

While the others capered, Filet, meanwhile, got right down to work eating.

Now, of course, we're back to feeding the cows twice a day, just as we did during the winter. They're not overly thrilled to be taken off the green grass, but that's the way it goes. We'll keep them in the sacrifice pasture a few more weeks until the grazing pastures are more mature. We'll also provide them with a bloat block when they transition to the greener grass.

Another project, done.

Gender reveal

After our Valentine's Day calf was born yesterday, I still wasn't able to determine the gender. That's because Filet was being, understandably, very protective.

This morning when I went out to feed, she immediately gathered her baby and retreated to the opposite side of the corral. Actually I didn't mind this. It meant I could clean the barn and fill the water tank without watching my back.

The baby actually navigated the deep snow with surprising dexterity.

I cleaned up the barn floor and then layered the floor mats with sawdust in hopes it would increase traction for the newborn. I noticed it slipping yesterday.

The baby followed Filet right into the barn for breakfast.

In fact, while mama ate her own breakfast, the newborn dove in for its own breakfast as well. Go for it, kiddo! Get all the colostrum you can!

I checked up on everybody midday, and saw Filet by herself out in the snow. But where was the baby?

It turns out baby was bedded down inside the barn. Smart baby.

In the evening, since all the animals were outside, I took the opportunity to clean the barn and scatter more sawdust.

Interestingly, the calf came loping over right away, curious to see me. Keeping a wary eye on Filet, I felt under its tail. A boy! Dear readers, meet Romeo.

We've marked on our calendars for ten days from now (when the testicles drop), at which point we'll band Romeo's equipment and turn him into a steer. He'll have a date with the freezer in a couple of years, but in the meantime we're enjoying having a calf again.

Our Valentine's Day surprise

For the last few days, we've had bitterly cold temperatures, with lows at zero degrees Fahrenheit. Coupled with our huge snow whomp from last week, we're definitely into winter.

We've been keeping the cows confined to the corral for a few reasons. One, there's no sense letting them out into a pasture that's sixteen inches deep in snow; two, the gates are blocked shut anyway; and three, our Angus cow Filet was due to calve at some point, and we wanted to keep her close.

Filet is what had me worried. Since she's a former range cow, she's not crazy about being in the barn, even though it offers abundant shelter and that's where the feed box is. She'll eat, then retreat back outside. During the last cold snap, I'd feed the cows in the morning and tell her, "Don't have a calf." I'd feed the cows in the evening and tell her, "Don't have a calf." I prayed, literally prayed, she would not have a calf during the cold snap. Temps that low will kill newborns.

Today – Valentine's Day – was significantly warmer, with a low of 18F. And it snowed the blessed day long – prettily but relentlessly. When I went out to feed the cows in the morning, Filet was giving low moos and acting agitated – and her udder was bagged up.

I came back into the house and told Don, "I"m 99% sure Filet is in labor."

I made it a point to trudge through the snow and check on her about every hour and a half. Later in the morning, I was amused to see Mignon, her yearling calf, avidly nursing. I haven't seen Mignon nurse for months. Evidently she smelled milk!

The temperature rose until it hit about 31F by noon. Around 2:30 pm, I went to check, and she had just – and I mean just – dropped the baby. Even better, she actually came into the barn for this! I was thrilled.

Maggie (our Jersey) was intensely curious about the new arrival, of course, and to her credit, Filet wasn't overly aggressive about it. I, however, stayed well away. I've seen bovine maternal hormones in action many times. Nope.

When I got there, the calf wasn't yet on its feet. It flopped around a few times, but the barn mats were slippery and it couldn't get much by way of footing.

Splat!

Filet is an experienced mother. I have no idea how many calves she's had, but I'm guessing at least four and probably more. The baby was in good hands.

I had to dip in and out of this scene because this is my last weekend working my online job, so I was somewhat tied to the computer. But it was hard to stay away from a new baby!

I went out to check on things before dusk to clean the barn (if I could) and feed everyone. The baby was on its feet and Filet had moved it outside ... which was probably better for its footing, to be honest.

I took the opportunity to clean the barn, keeping a very wary eye on Filet. She bellowed and lunged at one point, and I didn't argue – I ducked back behind the gate. Mostly it was just bluster, but not all of it. Filet is a big cow and I wasn't taking chances.

I mean, c'mon ... would you mess around with this mama?

The baby wandered in and out of the barn, greeting its new herd mates.

Mignon, the calf's big sister, seemed calm and interested in the newborn.

When I left them for the evening, the calf was juuuuust on the verge of finding the faucet. A belly-ful of warm colostrum, and the calf will be just fine in the snow, especially since we're actually on a warming trend.

I'm about 80% certain the baby is a girl, but obviously I wasn't going to peek under its tail to confirm. However on the assumption that's correct, what shall we call our Valentine's Day calf?