Calves eat lots

In addition to the large hay bale I put out when I started weaning the calves almost three weeks ago, I have put additional hay (the left over hay when Dan had his cow/calf pairs in the corral) in the wooden hay feeder.  The calves ate it all in addition to licking the Vitalix mineral block and eating the occasional bag of apples or pears I scavenged from what fell from trees.

Monday I put another large bale out in their metal feeder.  Now with the tractor I can use it to lift the feeder up.  I no longer have to hoist the feeder up by hand using the pickup's tailgate.  The problem was that the calves rushed in to eat the leftovers in the bottom before the feeder was completely tipped on its side.  This was the first time I used the tractor to tip the feeder and I was trying not to break the feeder while also not letting it drop back down on the calves.  I had to chase the calves off a few times before I got the feeder tipped on its side.

When I originally got the bales from Dan one of the bale's twine broke and part of the bale flaked off.  I wanted to use this bale first while the weather was good and I could easily clean up whatever else flaked off.  Where was the bale?  In the middle of a row of bales.  In the rush to haul the bales I didn't think of setting this bale aside.  So I had to move seven bales to get to this bale.

I should have parked the tractor farther from the gate as I prepared to move the bale into the corral.  Several calves couldn't wait for me to bring the bale into the corral.

To distract the calves while I moved the bale into the corral I dumped a half dozen bags of fruit.  I'm not sure what the fruit was. They were edible though dry and bland.  It was just that they were so small as not to make it worthwhile for a person to eat.  Jan had a number of trees with this fruit and they are loaded.  Her daughter raked up bags of the fruit as the grass was covered with them.

This calf couldn't wait for me to spread this bag of fruit as she preferred to eat the fruit out of the bag.

The fruit distracted the cattle long enough for me to move the bale into the corral, remove the rest of the twine, drop the metal feeder around the bale and drive the tractor out of the corral.

I noticed today the calves are getting a round hay belly.  This morning I got up early(!) [6:40 am] to help Dan load some of his calves to be driven to the auction in Missoula.  His calves are bigger than my calves but I noticed that his calves all have big round hay bellies.  Probably yet another thing to be docked in price by the cattle buyers.


When driving the tractor I noticed paw prints on the front window.  Look at the lower left quarter of the photo.  It appears Daisy got on the tractor's roof somehow and then judging from the paw prints came down the front window.  That is a big vertical drop.