Calf 12 - Red's

This morning Red finally had her calf.  It's about time.  The calf is a male.   After Donna and I went grocery shopping Donna helped me band and ear tag the calf.   I noticed the calf had a bloody nose.  Must have gotten pushed or beaten up by another cow.  So I put Red and her calf to be by themselves today in the south corral.   The first day usually the cow and calf want to be alone and next to one another.

You can see the calf's bloody nose.

Two cows left to have their calves.

Opening and closing gates

Those cattle.  This morning since the cattle weren't in the south corral I closed the west gate to the south corral.  (The other south corral gates were already closed.)  While it doesn't hurt that the cattle were in the south corral, there is no need for them to be there now. 

Mid-afternoon when I looked out at the main corral I didn't see the cattle.  I went out and found them all in the south corral.  How did they open the west gate?  I thought I had closed it.  Now that all the cattle were in the south corral one of them had pushed the gate shut.   Since the west gate is very heavy and can sag, I place the one end on a short railroad tie.  The gate was against - not on - the short railroad tie.  The cattle couldn't pass through the gate.  I opened the gate so the cattle could go anywhere in the south or main corral.

This evening when I put the final large hay bale out I found all but one of the cows were in the south corral, and five calves in the main corral.  The corral gate was pushed shut against the short railroad tie.

What's with the cattle opening and closing gates?    I opened the gate and the cattle came out to eat from the hay bale.  I closed the west gate again.  I made sure the lever that locks the gate in place was set and the gate is closed.

I'll see what tomorrow brings with these cattle.

Cattle and rain

Tony came over this morning and bought the two steers from me.  So that's done.

Later Donna came over and helped me spray the cows and Haynes the chemical that helps prevent worms and bugs and flies on-or-in the cattle.  To do so we run the cows into the loading corral, and then so many at a time (three or four usually) in the loading corral runway, so I then can spray the stuff on their back along the spine.  Otherwise the cattle would run away if I tried to spray them.  Now, Haynes, was different.  We didn't run him in the loading corral as he was in the south part of the corral.  It took multiple efforts to spray Haynes as he kept moving away from me.  Finally, I think I got enough spray on him.

When that was done I let Haynes out of the south corral so he can be with his ladies.  Usually I wait until June 1, but what the heck, two days early will be fine.  No cows must be in heat, as while Haynes checked a number of cows today, no mounting was seen by me today.

This morning before Tony arrived, I saw the cows had tried to open the gate to the NE pasture.  Notice the silver bar that holds the gates shut.  I found the bar on the ground inside the corral.  Inside the corral.  Not on the ground outside the corral.  And notice the four brackets.  The cows were able to slide the bar out of all four brackets.  The gate stayed closed as you can see I also wrap a chain around the two gates.   But give these smart cattle some time and they will figure out how to unhook the chain also.

Here is the loading corral.  You can see the cattle smashed the grass down while I herded some through the runway.

After noon I thought I would go on a short bicycle ride.  Halfway through the ride, as I turned to go in another direction, I saw to the west dark blue rain clouds with rain falling to the ground.  Where did these clouds come from, as earlier I had only saw some blue clouds to the far south.  Does it look like the west clouds are moving north?  Nope. The west clouds came and started to rain with one mile left for me to ride.  And it rained hard!  I was soaked to the skin by the time I got home.  Tonight I looked at the weather statistics.  They are from the station four miles from me.  Closer to Donna's place.  They statistics said .01 of an inch fell briefly.  Umm.. not where I live.  I had water running down my driveway.  I would guess a quarter of an inch or more fell.

Since I was cold and wet, and it was still raining, and I only had slept 8 hours last night, I went to bed.  I thought I would sleep or a short time to maybe get my normal 9 hours of sleep.  I woke up three hours later.  Rascal was happy I slept as he came and slept right next to me.  But, there went my afternoon.

Again, fence board break

Haynes is not giving up on messing with the fence board.  He wants to be with his ladies.  I found the board and two posts looking like this this morning.

I patched it once again.  June 1 when the cattle and Haynes go out to the pasture and be on grass can't come soon enough.

Cut branches for firewood

Here are some photos of my cut branches that I use for firewood.

This photo shows the cut branches from this stack of logs that I used for firewood last Winter.  Might be almost half of them.  I also had stacked some cut branches in my patio.

You can see last year's cut branches are gone by this Spring.  The logs are still there.

Here are the last load of cut branches from the south pasture.  The 'colorful' logs in the stack are from the tree that fell over last Winter in the middle pasture.

After I stacked the branches from the pickup.

This side of the stack shows the branches I cut up over the Winter and earlier this Spring.  These are some of the branches I picked up last Fall from the yard, NE pasture and north pasture.  Most of these branches I cut using a handsaw as I has time while the cattle's water trough was filling.

Other than a pickup load of branches left to get from the south pasture, here are the branches stacked in the NE pasture I have left to cut.  I guess I won't have to split logs for firewood this coming Winter.

I heat my house using the wood stove. The previous photos show about half of my logs. As you can see I have enough firewood to last me years.

Harrowing, done

Last Sunday I finished my harrowing for the year as I got the south pastured harrowed.   First I had to remove the downed branches from last November's snow storm.

Here is another tree where I had to clean branches from.  The photo was taken after I removed the branches.   Not all the branches fell from the tree.  I had a few branches that remained attached to the tree.  Barely.  I had to climb up the tree to use a handsaw to cut the branches.  The arrow shows how high I had to go.

An example.  The branch is 99% broken, but it is still holding on.

Here is the last tree I had to remove the branches from.  This is a "before I removed the branches" photo.   It is hard to see in the photos, but I had to climb this tree also and cut on five branches to completely remove the branches hanging from the tree.  In the photo on the right, the light colored branch over halfway up the tree, I left that branch there as I didn't want to climb that high.

The top of this photo was highest I climbed in this tree.

An example where the branch broke off the tree on its own.

Raking to clean the area of the branches was a pain.  Lots and lots and lots of small pine cones were there.   The pine cones would get stuck in the rake and I would have to stop and pull them off the rake.  Many, many, ... many! times.  Often, every three or four times of raking.   It was annoying and slowed me down.   The geese liked me cleaning up the pines cones.  I tossed the cones in a low area near the river.  A goose then built a nest on the pile of pine cones and hatched her eggs there.  She liked it as the area was close to the river but not that close, and was dry.

All my raking was hard on my rake.  I had to fix the handle as the rake broke off the handle.  Not pretty, but it works.

It took a few days to harrow the south pasture.   This is the latest I have harrowed the pasture.  The grass was growing tall.

Partially harrowed.  Can you see the difference?

I am done harrowing.

Once again I was hard on the harrows.   There are six harrow pieces chained to each other.  The middle two pieces are now broken up.

To get from the south pasture back to the middle pasture I had to go through the hayfield.  Not ideal, but I had no choice.

So glad to be done with the harrowing.  I ended up hauling eight high pickup loads of smaller branches and pine cones away.  My chain saw still worked and I ended up cutting the larger branches for firewood.  I got one heaping pickup load of cut branches hauled away. 

I wanted to get the harrowing done.  I still have a pickup load of branches to haul, but those branches were right next to a few trees and I could easily harrow around those branches.

Chainsaw, cattle

Another chainsaw problem.   I got my new chainsaw chain and am cutting branches and trees.  I decided to spend a little time yesterday to cut some trees in the lower area of the south pasture.  There are some Hawthorn trees there and I don't like their spiny thorns.  I'm forever getting spiked by their thorns.  And, no, I don't worship the Devil.

https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/disadvantages-hawthorn-hedging-18028738.php

The spiny thorns can keep out intruders, including humans and hungry animals. This can prove to be a disadvantage when the bushes are being planted or need to be trimmed. This is an important consideration since the shrubs need to be pruned regularly; without regular pruning, they can become invasive.

If you prick your finger on one of the tree’s enormous thorns you can get ‘blackthorn poisoning’, which causes infection, swelling and joint pain. It was for this reason that early Christians used to believe blackthorn was the devil’s tree, and that those who worshipped him would have their fingers pricked by its satanic spines.

There are also some other trees growing and crowding the few smaller evergreen trees in this area.  I spent some time trimming a few trees around the evergreen trees.  Then my chainsaw chain froze up.  Part of a small branch was between the chain and the bar.   That's odd.  I never had that happen before.  After I removed the small branch I discovered the "wheel" inside the bar at the end of the bar froze up.  It appears bearings in the bar around the "wheel" had come out, but were inside the bar.

I showed it to Curtis and he said he never saw this before.  The "wheel" and bar can't be fixed.  Time for a new bar.

Maybe me cutting some hawthorn trees is giving me bad luck.  My chainsaw bar went bad.  Today when stepping over a low barb wire fence I tore my pants leg.  Of course it would be a pair of pants with no patches on it, unlike my usual ranch pants.

https://treegrowing.tcv.org.uk/identify/hawthorn

You may find many single hawthorns on farmland. Farmers sometimes won’t cut them down. They believe it is bad luck to do this. These trees were under the protection of fairies and, if the ‘fairy tree’ was killed, the fairy might seek revenge.

The cattle are being a pain.  The board in the extended corral that the cattle broke, they broke some more.

Before the recent break.

I nailed and patched the board up today.

Then Haynes and the cows are messing with the inside corral fence and board.   I had fixed this last month.

https://tallpinesranch.blogspot.com/2023/04/broken-corral-fence-board.html

I pounded the small posts back into the ground.  And kind-of nailed the fence board.  Once the cattle are out of the corral I'll have to replace this fence board.

And I found one of the steers laying on the hay in the metal feeder.  He was fine.  He just would occasionally eat while he was laying.   I don't want him there, but he will eventually get out of the feeder when he wants to drink some water.

Weighing steers

I still have the two steers that were born last June and July.  Tony plans to buy them next week.  Instead of guessing how much they weigh, today I hauled them in my stock trailer to a scale.  The two steers weigh 1350 pounds, or 675 pounds each.

After weighing the steers I cleaned the stock trailer. When I hauled the two cows to the auction last November, that is when I had the pickup breakdown.  Then Winter came on.   So I wasn't able to clean the stock trailer last November.  After weighing the steers today I then cleaned the stock trailer.

Also when I got ready to haul the steers to the weigh scale I found that two boards in the stock trailer were tilted up in a V.    It appears the boards, being wet, swelled.  With no room between the boards two boards tilted up.    I never had this happen before in the stock trailer.  In the long wooden feeder I will have that happen when the boards get wet and swell.  Eventually in the feeder I trimmed the width on some boards. and the "V"ing doesn't happen.  Now, instead of swelling tight, the boards were knocked around by the cattle this Spring.  I can't win.

I am letting the stock trailer boards be.  By Fall I will see if they will fit nice again.  If not, I will trim one of the board's width.

I had removed the floor mats after hauling the steers and before I cleaned the floor.  The "V" is not as pronounced in the photos as I had set one of the two boards flat and then let the one side of the other board sit on top of the flat board.

Does this steer look like he weighs 675 pounds?

The other steer.  The steers like to put their head through the fence in this section, then rub on the rails.  That is why the Winter fur is now off their heads and necks.

Haynes, the bull.

He has some big balls.

The steers stick their heads through the fence to eat the grass in the hayfield.   The first photo doesn't have any wire nailed to the fence boards.

This section has wire nailed on the middle boards.  The third photo has wire nailed on the lower four boards, and the steers were still able to eat some grass on the other side of the fence.

The steers can get their heads through the fence farther than one expects.