Dexter beef

Feeding complete

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I spent Friday and Saturday getting more winterizing completed. I was able to set out a cow feeder in the orchard and empty the rest of the hay from the Naked Gardener’s fields. It filled the entire feeder and should last the single alpaca and the three yearlings at least a month. I opened the gates up to the orchard so the feeder cows would come in. I think I am going to lock them into the orchard and just keep them near the house. They are a lot less crazy when they are around people.

My new $60 chicken door came a few days late but I did get it installed. The chickens are so stupid, I shut the main door, one foot to the left of the chicken door and the chickens were not sure how to get back into the coop. I had to wait until they all went inside the coop and then shut the main door. The chicken door had closed so now the only way for them to get in and out of the coop is to use their chicken door. I know the door worked as I saw them the next morning. We only have 12 chickens left and only ten are hens! The raccoons decimated the chickens this year. So I am on the lookout for more free adult chickens. I guarantee to give them all the food they can eat and let them free range to their hearts content. The raccoons have different plans for them but the strong and savvy will survive.

I went down to four corners and hooked up the old pickup bed trailer that has been down there for over three years and got it emptied and the tires all pumped up. I am going to use it to feed the round bales to the cows. I can get 16 round bales in the trailer and four on the tractor forks. It is enough to fill one round feeder full. So it will only take me three trips to fill up all the cow feeders. I also spray painted the sides that said “for sale” a grey putrid color again so that no one thinks I want to get rid of the trailer. Although no one ever called me asking to buy the trailer when it was at four corners. The rust helps it drain so that it doesn’t hold any water.

The ewe lambs just eat with the cows. They are not coming into the barn every night yet. Mr Golfpro has all the raspberries done and is finishing up the blackberries. He is almost done for the winter. I saw these inflatable animals at a kid’s birthday party and knew that the Grandson had to have one. I ordered it while we were still at the party. Little did I know that it would go with his Halloween costume! I did not know what the kid’s were going to dress him. He loves the big cow!!

Cows tag and banded

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I had big plans for Saturday, I thought I may be able to finish the barn but the skunk Friday night had other plans. We had a skunk come into the front yard and Chance took umbrage. She ended up getting sprayed so badly that her neck turned a yellow color from all the skunk spray. She stunk so badly you could not get within ten feet of her. The skunk got away and we were unable to dispatch it. This meant that my priorities had to change. So Saturday morning I went to D and B and purchased some skunk stink free liquid and some soap that supposedly did the same thing. The liquid worked pretty good and then after rinsing that out I went for the skunk soap next. She smelled so much better after those two treatments that I figured I had gotten it all off of her. Nope, my nose had just been so abused during the washing process that the improvement had me believing I had it all. I did not and especially after she got wet again in the rain. I am going to have to wash her again. Skunks suck. I think the skunk had been eating my chicken eggs.

I messaged the nephews and Gingerman to see when we could arrange tag and band of the one male calf and tag the one female calf. Mind you the calves are four months old. Gannon wanted to do it right away as he was just coming back from helping someone else with cows. So the Gingerman and I went up and herded the cows back down to the barn lot. We got the calves separated into two pens and the female calf just kept smashing into the gate and fence trying to get away. We had to get a rope to tie her up so I could tag her ear. She made a cut on her forehead. The boy was worse, he was bigger and the bander would not fit so we ended up cutting him. Only the Gingerman knew how to do that so we held and he cut. Nope, I am definitely going to be tagging and banding way early from now on, that was fairly barbaric and traumatizing to Gannon! Luckily, the temperatures have dropped off and the fly population is low. We cleaned it up and put blue goop on it. It should heal fine but it was brutal. The pigeons currently number over 50 and the doves are everywhere. I am going to have to take some time next weekend to try and cull the population some.

It shoulda worked

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Last week we did get a lot of stuff done. I was able to “mow” the front hillside with the animals. Normally one would think our new front fence would be sufficient, but it is not. Both the young Border Collie and Border Terrier can get past the fence, one jumps on top of it and drops just past the fence in the little spot before the rocks, the other just crawls through it. This meant we needed to get them locked up in the back garden area. They can run out into the orchard, lavender patch and back garden area. Chance, Border Collie, figured out how to jump through gate so we blocked that, then she learned to jump in the corner next to the post so she can jump on top of the gate, this requires a little scrambling but the upright post helps her stabilize. Once settled on top she just jumps down. Gingerman and I installed a cattle panel onto the top of the gate that raises it another two feet, she cannot jump it now.

Once that was done it was safe for the animals to come into the front hillside. I didn’t count on the cows liking it so much that they came in every day. It took about a week for everyone to knock it down sufficiently. Of course there were consequences, the cows broke a part of the plastic irrigation pipe that took me a few days to figure out. I could not figure out why there was a swamp in the making in one area and that same side was not getting watered. The dogs loved the swampy area, it’s cool and muddy.

We sold the last horned brown Dexter cow we owned. She was the nicest of the batch but compared to the black ones she was the craziest we had on the farm. She was very pregnant and a proven mother about six years old. We sold her for $1800. The price of cattle currently is crazy. We have of course cut the herd down dramatically last year. We will only have three cows for slaughter next year. We only have five female cows left. Our bull will come off the group at the end of the month. We will pull the rams off the sheep at the same time.

The fruit continues to come on at an unrelenting pace. Gingerman went up with me to pick yellow plums. Using the tractor as a platform is more efficient than a ladder. Plus, I get to steer and not pick fruit! We picked about 40# of plums and Annmarie made jam. We gave a large portion away and will just let the rest drop to the ground. The sheep will clean them all up.

Cows for the revenge

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Sunday became the day the Gingerman and I would tag and band calves. I went out and started picking our tame blackberries. They are getting picked about every four days now and we just had a hot spell which they loved. Gingerman came out and helped me finish up, we picked two half flats full of blackberries. I have a running total of how many blackberries we have collected to date, when the season is over I will add it all up, it’s a lot!

The Gingerman had brought his four wheeler over and I took the tractor out to herd the cows into the barn lot. We locked the horse up with some food in the lamb shed so she would be content. If we keep her out she wants to help and in reality she is no help at all. We got the cows pushed down fairly easily. I did notice that the spring in field #3 is dried up. There is no water coming out of the ground in the middle of the field. There is a small spring in the corner that is still running but that one has always ran since we have been here. I did notice that the golden plum tree actually has plums! I checked them today and they have about another week before they are ready. We will give some seeds to the Gingerman and hopefully he can propagate some new trees from seed. The plum tree is probably at least 80 years old. The plums are quite sweet when they are ripe. Our Italian Plum tree has antoher 1-2 weeks before they are ready and there is at least another week on the nectarines. Those are the last of our fruit trees that will need to be harvested. We are quickly running out of freezer space for the fruit. We have an entire standup freezer stuffed full of fruit and there may be just enough room for the nectarines. We will need to take out the tomatoes and process them to make that open space.

We got the cows all pushed into the corral and after sorting off two cows I latched the gate loosely and one of the brown cows pushed it open. Now we had contaminated our keeper group and were going to have to run everyone back through the chute and sort them again. Right after that happened I looked up and the Gingerman was standing fairly awkward. One of the brown cows had bum rushed him and ran into his knee directly or kicked his sorting board and that clubbed him into his right knee. He limped for the rest of the cow fiasco and is currently laying down on the couch with his extremity elevated and an ice pack applied.

We ear tagged the girl first, it went fairly smoothly. The next one was the smaller boy calf. He did not cooperate. We managed to get him banded (both testicles were verified present) and tagged without getting any cow poop on us. I consider this a significant win. Unfortunately, we saved the largest calf for last.

On our way to the ground we both managed to get covered in cow poop. It went downhill from there. The calf had virtually no scrotum. There was only room for one testicle. So we had to just keep trying to get the band on and both testicles pushed through. It took about ten minutes to get both testicles contained.

I mowed weeds with the Kubota because the parts for the John Deere bucket have not arrived. I mowed until the tractor heated up then came back to the shop and cleaned out the dust and weed debris. I also killed all of the puncture vine that was growing in the driveway. I had already sprayed and killed one wave. All in all it was productive despite the weather.

Less crazy is a good thing

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I came home early on Monday so Mr Rainman and I could sort the cows. We wanted to wean off the babies and move them down with the teenagers, then sort off the bull and put him in Alcatraz, pull six horned cows off the herd and load up into the trailer to go to the sale first thing Tuesday morning, and let the other momma cows go toward the upper pastures. This was all preceded by getting the cows into the corral. Despite three attempts the two of us could not drive the cows toward the corral. We need the arena panels to go across the spring access in the barn lot, the cows just kept breaking around us.

I went into the house and retrieved the border collie Chance so that the cows would move. There were some explicitly worded commands given once she started to ignore me. Eventually, we got the cows into the corral. Mr Rainman had just finished the last of the repairs on the corral on Monday and it worked. We managed to get six of the horned devils into the trailer.

They were dropped off at the auction house and the check for their sale already came to the house! It was pretty much what I expected for cows who are old and just had calves weaned off the day before. The important part is that they are no longer on the farm. The herd was already calmer once we got the crazy out of the group.

We are back to having to do nightly feeding of the sheep in the barn again. They take seven bales spread out amongst the feeders. I set out 10 bales initially and figured out what they could eat in a day from that. There are a couple of bales in the feeders that they don’t particularly like so if they want to nibble on something they are there. I had forgotten the cardinal rule of feeding the sheep at night, chase all the sheep out first and shut the door of the barn before feeding. The first night was total chaos with the sheep running around and jumping on the bales as I attempted to unwrap them to load them into the feeders. A couple of the bales had to stay on the floor as I could not get them away from the sheep. I now follow the cardinal rule when feeding and it is a lot more organized and a lot faster.