Heifers and Helpers

  

I may not be as cute as this little helper at the Pratt sale barn. But I like to think I was just as indispensable. 

I am under no delusion that I was the most vital helper during the County Line's latest cattle work. That honor went to our veterinarian, Dr. Bruce.

He was at the farm Monday to preg-check 25 heifers - our first-time mothers. Many times, he has done  the examinations manually. But this time, he brought along a helpful machine. It's like a sonogram machine for cattle.

I seem to have mostly gotten Bruce's reflection in the photo below, but maybe you can also see an image, too. It's a little hard to see what you're photographing when you're taking the shot over someone's shoulder in bright sunlight. (Thanks for your patience, Dr. Bruce!)

 Most of the first-time moms were 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 months pregnant. 

I was the secretary for the ladies' doctor's appointments and also helped move them up the lane. Dr. Bruce inserts a wand to get the image and determine the approximate gestation, based on the size of the baby.

When I saw 001 come through the chute, I had to take a close-up. I knew I'd be able to find a baby photo of her. She would have been one of the first babies born in 2020, and she would have been born to a heifer, too.

August 2, 2021

January 25, 2020

No. 001 was pregnant, but three of her pasture mates were not. Those three - and an Angus bull - made a trailer trip to the Pratt sale barn. 

To make the sorting job easier, Randy always marks the  "open" cows with "O" on their sides and puts a chalk streak down the front of their faces. 

 

We sorted them off from the rest, and they had a chauffeured ride to Pratt, where they'll be sold on Thursday.

As one was walking away at the sale barn, I realized the Hereford-looking one was my 2020 Valentine's calf. I always thought she was so pretty, and I also noticed her as we fed silage this past winter. But, just like a sports team, you have to make tough cuts to the roster. And not being pregnant is a big deal for cattlemen.

Notice the "heart" shape on her chest: She made an appearance on the blog in February 2020.

 The rest of "girls" were transported to a different pasture, where they will graze as "ladies in waiting" until this coming winter when they will deliver the Class of 2022.

Multi-Tasking

 

I don't believe I'll be entering this photo in a contest or using it for our family birthday calendar. But it's indicative of the quality of photo you get when you're using one hand to hold the end gate of the working chute open and clicking the camera shutter with the free hand.

It may not be a good photo, but I'm kind of guessing Dr. Bruce prefers it to getting a concussion from a falling end gate while in the "business end" of a bred heifer.

Last week, Dr. Bruce came for the first of a series of pregnancy checks for our cattle herd. The heifers were his first patients on the County Line this fall. These 25 ladies are first-time mamas who began life as part of the Class of 2019 calf crop two winters ago. 

They were a lot smaller when they went through the chute in the spring of 2019!

Now, they'll be delivering the first arrivals of the Class of 2021 to The County Line at the end of January and early February.

Just look at the tilt of that head: Believe me, ladies, I can feel this way about my annual ob/gyn appointment, too. 

But back to photo quality: As I learned last year, there is a marked decrease in photo quality when working cattle now that I have more hands-on assignments. With no hired man, I have added a few more roles on cattle-working days. Photographer is not one of them.

I started taking photos as we were gathering the heifers from the Palmer Pasture. 

Here's the ringleader of our little caravan, bringing the heifers along the fence.

So far, so good ...

But, when they began circling back around - away from the open gate - the camera went in the pocket, and I got more serious about urging the ladies to go the direction we requested.

That mission was accomplished. However, getting them to quit turning in circles and go through the open barn door was the next challenge.

I didn't take the camera back out of my pocket until I was guarding the gate while Randy took the first load to the farmstead. 

I didn't fare much better during our appointment with Dr. Bruce. 

Between encouraging the heifers to move the lane for their appointment, then holding the end gate up while Dr. Bruce did his exam, I didn't get many quality photos. And I then went around the table to record each heifer's ear tag number, along with the "degree" with which she was "with child." Most were 5 or 6 months along. 

On a few occasions, I snapped a few photos while Bruce gave vaccines, but alas, those hurried "clicks" didn't yield any memorable shots.

I'll have some other opportunities in the next couple of weeks. We're supposed to work the next group on Saturday - Happy Halloween farm style! That's if we can get the group gathered from the Ninnescah Pasture tomorrow. We'll see whether the rain curtailed those activities ... not that we're complaining about rain. The Rattlesnake Pasture round-up will on the agenda next week. 

My cattle working photos weren't anything to get excited about. But yesterday, we loaded up the three open heifers for their ride to the Pratt sale barn. Sometimes those extra cattle tasks put you in the right place at the right time.

I guess it all evens out in the end.

We also saw 14 whooping cranes on two different days this week. They were too far away to get a good photo, but I tried anyway. 

On Tuesday, they were at a circle just about a mile from our house as the crow - or whooping crane - flies. On Wednesday morning, they were on ground we farm. But again, they were half a mile from a road and my camera zoom just wasn't powerful enough.

On a trip to the pasture, I had Randy stop for a quick snapshot of the fall leaves with our dusting of snow.

So I guess I can't complain about the view - unless it's the one where I'm holding up the working chute end gate.

Sometimes, being at the right place at the right time keeps the vet from getting a concussion from a falling end gate. Other times, it brings you rainbows. Which is more important? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. I'm guessing Dr. Bruce would vote for the end gate - even if it doesn't yield the best photos.

Proving Hypotheses, Bovine Version

Hypothesis: Photo quality goes down when responsibilities go up.

After examining my photos from a recent visit from our veterinarian, Dr. Bruce Figger, my hypothesis appears to be proven.

Bruce was there to work a small group of calves and preg-check 25 heifers. (I should probably call him Dr. Bruce or Dr. Figger, but he was in 4-H with my kids. He's been Bruce to me for a long time.)

But I digress. Anyway, since we haven't had a full-time hired man since the end of June, my list of responsibilities during said appointment expanded.

Most of my photos were from the rather unglamorous end of the cow (but not as unglamorous as Bruce's position, I must admit). After I helped Randy get four or five heifers from the pen into the lane toward the working chute, I inserted an awkward 20-pound steel pipe behind them to keep them in position.

Then, after each "young lady" finished her turn at her ob/gyn appointment, I would "urge" the next one in line to take her place. And after they were through the chute, we did it all again with the next group. (It was the country version of weight training to lift that heavy pipe multiple times.)

I think Bruce's other "assistant" would have had a better angle for photos. But Tess lacks opposable thumbs, so that option was out, too. (Even Tess refused to look me in the eye for a photo op. It was not a good photo day.)

I've been called into duty a lot this summer and fall for cattle chores. But after a cursory look through several files, I realized I don't have much photographic evidence to prove it.

It's a little hard to use my right hand for running the throttle on the 4-wheeler and my camera shutter at the same time.

 

And, without an extra person, I didn't figure taking a "time out" for a quick photo op would go over too well.

So most of my photos were taken before or after the actual work.

After we rounded up this group of mamas and babies from Peace Creek and I got them turned south, the camera went back into my pocket so I could "keep the dogies" moving, as they say in cowboy speak. (Not that I'm a cowboy either.)

I've had plenty of morning and evening excursions to the Ninnescah Pasture to help shepherd five pair of perennially escaped cattle back into the confines of the fence. And I've seen some new country as we've chased said cattle out of shelterbelts, through hay fields and back to their summer home. But, again, I've refrained from pulling the camera out during these already-frustrating round-ups. Hard to believe, I know.

I guess you'll just have to take my word for it this time.

Even though the photo quality isn't good, these two photos have to rank among my favorites of the summer/fall.

Many, many thanks to our neighbors, Keith and Hendrik, who penned our five pair of escapees and hauled them to our farmstead corrals while we were in Wichita with our granddaughters. Randy took the renegade cattle to the sale barn at Pratt this week. I had lost count of the number of times we put them back in and fixed fence this summer/fall.

 

I don't believe I've ever been so happy to watch a trailer leave. There's a photo worth framing - no matter the photo quality!

Mud Wrestling: A Cattle Roundup

 35 ... the number of things that went wrong as we brought cattle home from summer pasture.

Truthfully, I'm not sure that number is high enough. But, as I stood waiting on the tractor to again pull the pickup and trailer through mud and muck, it's what went through my mind. It was more like mud wrestling than farming around here this fall.

By the way, the number is really there because of the pole's former life as an electric pole. But years ago, it got a second "career" as part of a loading chute at the Ninnescah Pasture.

So, am I exaggerating about the 35? Nope. 

First of all, we were a couple weeks behind schedule. We had waited until mid-November, hoping the water on our normal route would recede after the 14-plus inches of fall rain we'd received.

We couldn't wait any longer, so we added 12 miles to each of our trips to and from the pasture, since we had to go the long way around. (We made a total of 12 trips, so that's an extra 144 miles. See? I told you 35 wasn't exaggerating!)

In fact, it rained and deposited another 2 inches or so of rain, and it snowed a couple of times for good measure, including on the night before we were supposed to round up all the cattle at the Ninnescah. 

 Brrrr! At least the sun was shining, making it seem a little warmer.

 

But it was a brisk 4-wheeler ride to find the mamas and babies and get them to cross water into the pens and corral. 

 Still, the ride over the dam on the Ninnescah River was undeniably pretty.

Of course, a few of them were "visiting" a neighbor's pasture, so it added another step to the process. 

The pasture is 320 acres, so there are plenty of places for cattle to hide out. We also had to get some of them to cross the Ninnescah River, and the extra-soggy ground didn't make that job any easier either.

More than once, we thought we'd found them all. But a few stragglers eventually joined their buddies in the corrals. 

The ground was so saturated that a 4-wheel-drive pickup couldn't pull a trailer by itself. So each trip to the pasture also necessitated hooking up the loader tractor to the pickup and pulling it back out to the road.

The mud at the gate eventually led to no traction. And no traction eventually led to wiping out a gate post and tearing up one of the trailers in the process.

At first, Randy planned to have the loaded trailer "limp" all the way home. But one of the tires was leaving a dark mark on the blacktop road, and I started campaigning for an alternative. What if the trailer totally broke down on U.S. Highway 50, a route we had to take for several miles to get back home? I was envisioning trying to transfer cattle from one trailer to another while semis whizzed by.

So, instead, we pulled over at Sylvia and made the transfer there. I was impressed with my husband's backing skills. He didn't need more than one try to get the two trailers positioned end to end.

Getting the cattle to step from one trailer to the other is usually the bigger challenge, he contended. He and his Dad had to do it a long time ago. But the mamas and babies cooperated well. (Maybe they knew we were about at the breaking point.)

We did eventually get all the mamas and babies moved back home. The mamas had their OB/GYN appointments with Dr. Figger ...

... and the babies had their "well-child" checks. 

(And, I could add more to the number of ways things went wrong during that process, too. The hired man got hurt - not badly, thankfully.  But he was out of commission for an afternoon. So I did a lot more heavy lifting than I sometimes have to do. Literally, I did heavy lifting. After we got cows or calves into the lane toward the working chute, I lifted an awkward 20-pound pipe and inserted it behind the final one to keep them in position. When you only have four or five mama cows in the lane at once, that's a lot of lifting! It's the farm version of weight training.)

But, we eventually got everyone moved to their appointed places. Some of the mamas are on sudan or corn stalks while they await the births of their new babies in February. 

The feeder calves are getting their daily rations with the feed truck.

And, for a couple of weeks, I was the feed truck driver and full-time hired hand.

 

However, this fall, we also had some excellent short-term help from a couple of other volunteers. Kinley and Brooke helped me keep the gate blocked.

 They looked over the herd with Grandpa to observe any problems. 

And they just brightened our outlook, in general.

They also helped move some of the mama cows and used their newly-developed hand motions to get them moving out of the trailer and into their winter home. Reading hand signals is an integral part of farm-girl education.

I wonder if they're free next fall?

Note:  We actually moved cattle home from summer pastures in mid-November. I never got the blog post written - visiting granddaughters, holiday preparations, personnel problems ... the list goes on and on. But I still thought we needed a record of this memorable year. And by memorable, I don't mean enjoyable ... except the granddaughters. That part was enjoyable! As I've said in the past, it's important to tell about the hard stuff, too - not just the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets but what actually went on between them.