Baby, It's Cold Outside!

Wintertime has been very hard on the cattle this year. Missouri weather is very unpredictable. No matter how hard the weathermen try to figure it out, it often eludes their best predictions. The most constant thing about our weather is that if you hang around long enough you will definitely see it change.

The fall started out very nice and colorful, but quickly faded into 50 shades of brown as the grasses and leaves began to die. Although we did have some nice weather through the fall, when winter decided to hit, it hit hard! When the high for the day is a negative, that’s too cold for anybody, and this past week we had about 8 inches of snow on top of the coldness.

As you can imagine, this weather begins to take a toll on the animals, if they are not properly cared for. When the weather gets this bad, The Farmer feeds the cows a little grain with their hay. This especially helps the lactating cows, because a nursing mama’s body is working especially hard when it’s nourishing herself and her baby. Sometimes hay alone often lacks the necessary nutrition.

I took some pictures of the snow from the warmth of the house. With my new camera The Farmer bought me for Christmas, I’ll be able to stay in the house this year and take all the pictures of the farm. Well, maybe not when the weather gets nice, but as you can see there was no way I was going to stomp through this storm to take a few pics for our blog.

In case it’s not clear, those black things under the snow are our cattle waiting to be fed.

I hope it’s warmer where you are.

Have a Blessed New Year for 2014!

Autumn Beauty

Loving the autumn beauty on the farm!

Local County Fair

The Farmer and I took the two youngest to the local county fair. Sorry to say it was anything but fun. Too small, too unorganized, too expensive. :(
 

Wouldn't be a county fair without goats, pigs, and horses

Blue Ribbon Winners

Carousel

Funnel Cakes, Corn Dogs, and Cotton Candy

Ferris Wheel

Mud Run (hmm...)

 

 

 

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Must Be Summer, Because We're Putting Up Hay

One of the tell-tale signs of summer is putting up hay.

The Farmer woke up one cool, cloudy morning and decided that he was going to start cutting hay. The weatherman made a prediction of low clouds but no rain, and The Farmer believed him.


Not me...I had often been duped into believing that the weatherman could actually predict the weather here in Missouri, and had finally come to the conclusion that whatever was reported on TV was never what was going to happen.


So being the “supporting” wife, I informed The Farmer that if he insisted on cutting hay on a day when every physical sign pointed to a wet weekend that I would emphatically say, "I told you so”, when he was raking up wet hay.


Fortunately, The Farmer was right (must be farmer intuition). He pressed on, even under the pressure of low lying clouds and an unyielding spouse, and was able to get the first field cut, tethered, raked, and baled before the rain came.  

Cutting grasses while they are young and tender is best because the nutritional value is at its peak. It also makes more tender and tasty hay during the winter months (so I’ve been told).

The ideal time to cut hay is on a clear, warm, summer day, but sometimes that’s not possible, so The Farmer tethers the hay to dry it out faster. A tether machine picks up the hay and scatters it around to allow the hay to aerate. This step isn’t always necessary during really nice weather (just sayin’).

  

After the hay is cured, it is raked into windrows and then baled.

 

 

 

 

We stack our hay and then cover it with a tarp. This is the first field and the first cutting. It really looks like a good year for hay, which is encouraging, because we had to buy a lot of our hay last year because of the drought.

Visit From The Vet

Visit from the Vet

The Farmer and the vet from Crawford County Veterinary Clinic 

We worked the cattle on Saturday, but today we had a visit from the vet. He was here to do a preg check on all the fall breeding cows. As each one went through the chute, the vet would tell us if they were pregnant and give as an approximate point of how far along they are.

We had 16 cows that needed to be preg checked. Unfortunately, two were open (not pregnant) and one of them was #11, the crazy cow that jumped the fence on Saturday. She jumped it again today. So we don't know if she is bred or not.

The Farmer is not happy. :(  And well he shouldn’t be. This cow knows exactly what to do to get out, and she’s not soon to forget it. Our choices are to build a higher fence, give her lead poison, or wait until she’s too old to jump. We can’t afford to build higher and lead is too scarce, so I guess we’ll just have to wait until she gets too old.

Working Cattle

Working cattle is always a learning experience, and this year when we worked our herd we learned a lot!

We learned that it pays to be prepared and organized.

As each cow or calf comes through the alley, we have to be prepared with what we are going to do to them. They are all given a fly tag (to ward off flies), treated for lice, grubs and other unwanted parasites, vaccinated against pink eye, and various other infectious viruses, and then weighed. Our calves also get a shot to prevent respiratory problems and blackleg, which can actually wipe out a whole year of calves. Fortunately this disease is preventable with vaccination. So these shots and tags all have to be kept separated and organized.

We learned that sometimes it takes several hands to do one job.

Although the Farmer is very proficient in what he does, he just can’t be in three places at one time. As the cattle go through the alley way someone has to encourage them along, and someone else has to open the sliding gate and shut it behind each cow or calf, and then the Farmer shuts the head chute at just the right moment.

We learned that a 13 year-old farmer’s daughter is not a big enough threat to keep a 1500 lb. cow from going over the fence.

Usually a cow’s moo is worse than their bite, so we had daughter #5 standing at the top of the gate to ward off any wayward cow that may have gotten a crazy idea of trying an escape while they were in the holding pen. And it worked. Although we had a crazy cow escape (#11), she didn’t go through the gate; she jumped over the fence! Well, she jumped on the fence, it broke, and then she went over. But still the same result. Several years ago we had a similar incident in a sort of make-shift lot that we used to work our cattle in. So when we built our existing lot, we purposefully built it high enough so a cow could not go over (or so we thought until this year). The crazy thing jumped a couple of times and then finally busted through the boards and went right over, like she was a trained horse or something. Whatever…she didn’t get a fly tag so I hope she gets bitten by a great big horse fly!

And the final thing we learned this year is working cattle in the rain is no fun at all!

Although the day started out a little nippy, the sun soon came out and we were plenty warm about a half hour into the process. Unfortunately, the sun was overtaken by some ominous looking rain clouds and it began to pour. It didn’t take long before we were all soaked and covered in mud, which wasn't too bad because it washed away some of the manure that we were all covered in from working the silly cattle in the first place. They are so uncouth.

Son #4 setting up the scales so we can weigh the cattle. Our largest cow weighed 1550 lbs. and our largest fall calf weighed 732 lbs.

Daughter #5 still holding her post after the rain had let up a little.

Notice she's staring down one of the mama cows

If you look closely, you can see Son #1 and the Farmer separating

the spring cows and their babies from the fall calves.

All the cows and calves have been separated and will soon be back on the pasture.

Harvesting Cattle

Farming can be so unstable. No matter what we are doing, the final result is usually out of our hands. Although the Farmer is a very hard worker, everything he does around here depends on the weather, the seasons, or the money :)

Last year we informed our beef customers that we would have meat around April or May, but had to push back the date because the calves weren't gaining quickly enough.

This year we slacked off of weighing them--mostly because it was so wet and we didn't want to have to swim to the scales. But we went out and weighed them this past weekend and they are ready to go!

We have one topping out at 1200 pounds, which is really the max weight of what we like to get them to. Another one weighed 1,180 pounds, so these two can go to the processors today!

Fortunately, the rest of them are just right, weighing 1,035-1,075 pounds. We have an appointment at the processors set for the end of May and these calves should be ready to harvest at that time. I guess I should give an honorable mention to the two calves that are still in the 900 lb. range. We seem to always have a couple of late bloomers. 

So bottom line...we will be taking orders for the next two weeks. If you would like homegrown, naturally raised, grass-fed, grain-finished beef, we've got some available. 

Take a look at the "Buying Beef" tab at the top of the page for more information on ordering beef. Or Click >>Here<<