Hay bale. Mud. Fence fix.

Sunny dry day.  Good.  Give us time to dry things out.  The recent snow broke off some evergreen branches.  Late day I spent time cleaning some of the branches up out of the north pasture. I have more branches to clean up in the middle pasture tomorrow.

I put out a hay bale this morning.  Parts of the corral and extended corral are still muddy but I made it. When walking I was careful where I walked so as to not get stuck in the mud again.  I drove the tractor a little extra near the hay feeder.  That gave me some easy places to walk when I unwrapped the netwrap from the hay bale while the tractor held up the hay bale.

Somewhere on the lower left side of the photo is my lost sock.

No new calves today.  When looking at the calves I found this one in the loading corral's runway.  I herded her out then repaired the fence panel in the runway the cattle had pushed off one railroad tie.  I added some more long nails.  Maybe that will stop the cattle from moving the fence panel.

The last calf born is doing ok.  Most of the other calves hang around each other, or are next to their mother.  This last calf usually is elsewhere laying and relaxing.  And he seems ok with being by himself.

Snow once more, plus calf photos

It snowed again this morning.  Once again.  By late afternoon it melted again except for the shady areas.  High temperature was 45 degrees with a strong wind. So it felt cold all day.  More snow fell than what is shown in the photo.

The cattle figured out how to unchain and open the red gate so they could get into the loading corral's runway.  This was a first.

This little heifer was out in the extended corral.  I herded her back into the corral as I planned on putting out a large hay bale later into the extended corral.

I changed my mind on putting out a large hay bale.  Instead I put some hay from the replacement heifer's hay bale into the two wooden feeders.   That was because of the mud.  All this recent moisture these past two days made much of the corral mud.  When I walked out to check on the feeder in the extended corral the mud pulled off one of my mud boots.  I tried to get my foot back into the boot without getting muddy but I failed.  I fell into the mud.   Then it was very hard to pull the boot out of the mud.  Finally I did.

A small bowl I carried for earlier washing mud off the cattle's salt block went into the mud also.  It was hard to find the bowl in the mud, then hard to pull it out of the mud.  My foot was completely covered in mud so I didn't put it back into the boot.  I walked the shortest way out of the mud to a grassy area.  The mud pulled my sock off my foot.  I couldn't find the sock.   It's gone.

I walked back to the house via the hayfeld.  Snow on the ground and still falling, my foot was wet and cold.  Outside the house I took my coat off because the arms were covered in mud.  I took my jeans off because they were covered in mud.  I took the muddy boots off.  It took me hours to find the other sock.  I washed the mud off everything outside the house using a garden hose.  The mud was on so thick the water only got some of the mud off.  With water from the hose against the things I still had to use my hands rub off the rest of the mud. It was not easy as the mud didn't want to come off anything, including my feet.

I decided to wait until tomorrow to put out a new large hay bale.  The way this day went my tractor might have gotten stuck in the mud. Tomorrow is predicted to be sunny and a little warm, but still below average temperature-wise.  

Snow again

Mother Nature pulled an April Fool's joke on us.  I woke up to lots of snow.  What happened to the rain that was forecasted?

On one side of the house the snow was on the tulips rising up.   The other side with a roof overhang was snow free.

 

The snow stayed around until evening. We only got up to 38 degrees today.  Slow snow melt. Even though it was cloudy all day, by evening the only snow left was in the shady areas.

In the morning it was time to put out another large hay bale.

The corral had been drying up.  With a little under an inch of moisture the past 24 hours the corral went back to mud.  If I knew this was going to happen I would have waited longer before bringing the cows into the corral and extended corral.   Fortunately no new calves today.  Too muddy and wet.

This evening I opened the gate to the loading corral.  There is grass in there and will give the cattle a drier place to lay tonight.   Of course, even though the initial cows that entered the loading corral had eaten the hay, they immediately began to eat the green grass.   I'll see how things are tomorrow.  I don't want the cows to pull up all the grass and then turn this into a muddy area.

Ditch burning, calf photos and tree

Rain didn't come until 6 pm. I was able to burn the rest of my ditch this afternoon as the wind was light.

I checked on the calves today.  No new calves.   I noticed the cattle has pushed in one of the loading corral runway fence panels.

I walked around the corral looking for all the calves.  I was one calf short.  Then I looked in the loading corral runway and found the missing calf.

I saw these two calves laying together.  I went and got my camera as the calf on the left was laying right against the calf on the right.  His head was on the other calf's shoulder and under her head and neck.  Pretty view.  Initially I thought it was the last calf who was born as I couldn't see the ear tag.  Of course when I came back the left calf woke up and raised his head up.  No it wasn't the last born calf.

The last born calf is fine.  Every time I checked on him he was in a different part of the corral.  So he is moving around.  Sometimes laying next to his mother.  Other times elsewhere.

This is a female box elder tree.   The bark was peeling away at this location. I removed the bark.  Under the bark and against the tree were box elder bugs.  This is where they hide!   And on female box elder trees, not male box elder trees.