Snow piles

March has been an expensive month so far.  The vet bill for the dead calf came to $309.  The tractor window will be between $370 and $380.  Will I make money this year?  Or will I have a loss two years in a row?

Glass from the shattered tractor window.

Here is one snow pile from snow I had scraped out of the corral.  This is not all the snow scraped from the corral as I put piles elsewhere too.

Most of the cattle this morning

Speckles

A pregnant looking Speckles

Sugar - the cow that lost her calf.

Pregnant cow

In the afternoon I scraped snow in the NE pasture.  I have a large hay bale out there from back before the snow came the end of January.  The calves were eating from that bale before the snow came and I put the calves in the corral.   Now that the hay bale in the north pasture has been eaten I let the cattle into the NE pasture to eat that bale.  First I scraped paths for the cattle to reach the hay bale.  Also, because the cattle seem to love biting tree branches, I pushed snow piles around the small evergreen trees to protect them.

Since Speckles and calf 90 were by the gate I let them in the NE pasture before the other cattle.  These two heifers get bullied and have to wait until the others finish eating before they are allowed to eat.  Today they got a 15-20 minute head start on the hay bale before the bullies came and pushed them away.

Having the cows restricted to the NE pasture and main corral it will be easier for me to keep track of them when they deliver their calves.  Otherwise I was afraid one or more cows would head to the far end of the north pasture and have her calf in a snow bank.  I talked with Joyce a few days ago.  While they have straw bedding for their cows the other day they discovered one cow had her calf in a manure pile / snow pile.

We got another inch or two of snow overnight.  When Daisy got me up to go outside I saw the snow and it was still snowing.  Depressed I went back to bed for another hour before I finally got up.   After I scraped snow in the NE pasture I scraped snow off the driveway and some in the backyard.  I also scraped the new snow from the main corral.  I am so tired of snow.