The kids are all right

Another day. How are my "kids" doing after getting their ears pierced? It turns out fine. All have forgiven me. Well... all have but one: Big Panda Bear.

This morning when I added hay to their feeder they were back to their usual: crowding me as I fluffed out the hay from the tightly packed bale. One had her body right against me and her head in front of me under my arms as I fluffed hay. The others came over and were all around the feeder like usual. All except for Big Panda Bear. She continued to sit in the loafing shed and chew her cud. She looked off at the east corral fence and pretended to ignore me. However I found that by the time I finished fluffing hay in the feeder by the barn Big Panda Bear was now at the main feeder and eating.

Their little blue ear tags stand out nicely and I can tell the males from females when standing in front of them. They seemed to have forgotten their tags as I noticed no head shaking or ear twitching thinking they have a fly on their ear.

The steer with the bloody ear looks fine. No sign of blood.

They have forgiven me. Good. I felt so guilty at shouting at them and hitting them with a whip to get them to run down the loading chute to get their ears tagged. I'm glad I don't have to do that for another year. By then I will have my new loading chute and hopefully will have no problems tagging the cattle's ears.

New cattle

Dan bought four more steers from Rich (who I bought my cattle from). I am not ready for his entire heard as I want to wait another week or ten days before letting them all out on grass. The grass is growing, but seems to me to be a few weeks behind where it was last year. This is due to a cool Spring and lower moisture. I just have this "feeling" that it will be a dry year and I don't want to run out of grass before September. The longer I keep the cattle from the initial grazing the better chance the grass will stay ahead of them, even when it gets dry in the summer.

However Dan asked if he could bring his new steers here from Rich's place rather than take them home for a week or so then have to load them up to bring them here. Sure. I think I have enough hay to feed them all till June.

Dan arrived early afternoon and once the steers in Dan's stock trailer seen my cattle in the corral they started to moo. They wanted out to join my cattle.

They left from Dan's trailer and ran over to my cattle. I am embarrassed to say that some of my "kids" didn't give them a nice welcome. Several of my steers immediately went head to head with a few of Dan's steers. This is their way of wrestling to see who is the boss and stronger. They stand head to head and try to push the other one back. My cattle seemed to initiate this contest.

The heifers don't play fair. They don't go head to head. They try to butt or push the other one from the side. A couple of mine were doing that. And here I thought my cattle had better manners.

Later in the afternoon during their cud chewing siesta time I noticed Dan's cattle all sat off to one side near the group. It will take a few days but they will integrate. I am curious how long as usually Dan and my herds are both assembled from different herds. This year all but one or two of my cattle were originally from the same herd - all brothers and sisters. That may be a hard clique to crack.