More calf photos and video

As I mentioned earlier I have six calves.  The seventh cow hasn't had her calf yet.  The previous owner said she calved later than the other cows last year.  It has been almost a month since the last calf has been born.  I hope the bull was still around last year by the time this last cow started again to go into heat.

Now that the cattle are in the pasture it will be harder to notice soon when the last calf has been born.  If it is a boy calf it could be hard to band until Fall as after a couple days the calves run like lightning.

So far: three boys and three girls.  The next calf will be the tie breaker.  The first three calves were girls and the last three were boys.  It would be nice to keep the boy streak alive as boy calves command more money.

Follow the link to see 20 new photos of the calves when they were still in the corral.

 https://plus.google.com/photos/109566462412251958234/albums/6024966456412504241?authkey=CLu5lJWT8YW-Ug


Here is a video of the calves running around the corral.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RoJcACupH4&feature=youtu.be


Finally, here are a few photos of the cattle in the pasture.  Notice in the second photo how Rose goes left when the herd goes right.  What an independent and adventurous girl!

Now I am caught up on my cattle and calf photos.
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Calf 6

The sixth calf was born on Thursday May 15, three days after calf 5.  Another boy.  Another afternoon birth which I again missed.

Initially Tammy and I thought  the calf would be born a couple days earlier when we saw the mother lay down.  But when she stood up the birth area bulge retreated back into the cow.

I'm not sure how the calf got manure on him so soon.

 "Meet my new son.   Now cleaned up."

Here is a short video of his mother licking him and the calf squirming around.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNzASVklADA&feature=youtu.be

Calf 5 - White faced

The fifth calf was born on Monday May 12, two days after the fourth calf.  Again in the early afternoon.  The calf was up and drinking from his mother by the time I discovered he was born.  He has no name yet.

Not only does he have a white face but also a white belly and the very tip of his tail is white.

Here is a short video of the newborn calf drinking and walking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGluInecyvY&feature=youtu.be

Calf 4 - Beulah's calf

The fourth calf born was born mid-afternoon on Saturday May 10, just three days after the previous calf.  Again I just missed the birth as the calf was sleeping and clean and Beulah was working on eating her afterbirth. 

This is the first boy calf born and my uncle Larry and aunt Diane wanted to name him.  The name they chose: Buster.  I have a few all black calves so if Buster is not feeding from his mother it is kind of hard to tell him apart from the others.

Tired from being born

Photo Tammy took of Beulah and Buster

Beulah is a big girl.  I was afraid if she was a mother like Momma - over-protective - then I could be in trouble.  But Beulah is a concerned but relaxed mother and I have had no problems with her.

Here is a short video of Beulah licking her newborn calf and then starting to eat her afterbirth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpGLzJvBreI&feature=youtu.be

Swapping gates

I changed two of the corral gates.

First, I replaced the corral gate to the yard.  Last year I had bought a real heavy duty gate - a bull gate - and decided to use it in the corral rather than in a pasture fence.  Also, the corral/yard gate had a wheel as the gate would drag on the ground after you opened the gate. The wheel helped support the gate, but wasn't perfect as the wheel would sometimes get caught, especially in the snow or mud.

Old and new gates

Since this new gate is very heavy I selected a heavy solid railroad tie and then poured 340 lbs of concrete around it to hold it in place.  The post is solid.

Daisy inspecting and helping.

The new gate opens on the right side and not the left like before.  Because the horses had pushed the old post to make it lean when scratching on it last year I needed to replace the post. With a square railroad tie the most the gate will open is straight out to the side.  Due to the position of the gate to the barn I was concerned the room between the open gate and the barn would limit a person when driving in and out of the corral if I had the gate open on the left and move to the right.

You may also notice I replaced the tall white pole with another railroad tie.  The hole for the new well is not yet filled in and it was relatively easy to take out the pole now before the hole is filled in.  I didn't need a tall pole for a fence post.  I don't know why the previous owner placed a pole here.

The new gate has a spring lever to lock the gate.  I drilled a hole in the post for the bolt to go into to hold the gate closed.  This also helps to keep the gate from sagging.  Metal 16 ft long gates have a tendency to do that.

This new gate is not perfect.  At the very most open position the gate brushes the ground because of gate sag and the ground is higher at that spot.  I haven't figured out a solution yet.

The second gate to be swapped was the gate that leads out to the north pasture.  I replaced this gate with the one I had taken out of the corral/yard fence.

Another reason to replace this gate is that it also drug on the ground when mostly open.  I had installed the gates lower than I install them now.  But also the cause of the lean is that I drilled the two bolt holes in the center of the railroad tie.   However the railroad tie is warped and not straight.  That caused the gate to lean down the more it was open.  Below you can see where the new bolt hole is located.  Another reason to swap gates is with the old red gate I can't re-position the height of the hinges.  With the 'new' green gate I can adjust the hinge height. I felt more comfortable with the new hole up in addition to being left of the old hole.

I had to drill into the post a little bit for the top bolt.   That is because the railroad not only is bent a little to the side, it is also bent slightly towards the gate as you can see in the second photo below.  I can adjust how far out the bolt protrudes from the post.  Because of the position of the railroad at the other end of the gate I didn't have much room to extend the bottom bolt.  It was easier to draw in the top bolt to make up for the sag and keep the gate more level.

The 'new' gate.  It also has a sliding bolt that goes into the railroad tie to help prevent sag and provide a secure closure.

A feature I add to the  gates hung near railroad ties is to nail a 'hanger' to support the gate when open, and to prevent the gate from swinging.

How the 'hanger' works.   This photo was taken just after I finished installing the green gate.  I work till dark.

Driveway gate

I replaced the old driveway gate with new gates.  The old gate was a string of barb wires.  The new gates are two ten foot metal gates.  They are definitely better than the old string of wires.

I removed the old wagon wheels that stood at the end of the driveway.  The wheels are badly deteriorating.

Horses

I got horses again this year.   Only two horses this time.  Earlier the grass in the horse pasture seemed behind the other pastures so I decided to go with a few less horses for the time being.  I wonder if the horses over ate the pasture last year.

They brought two mares who had been nursing foals.  Bringing the mares here is the start of the weaning process.  So far the horses are not non-stop eaters - unlike the horses last year.  If they stay as light eaters then I could have another horse or two.  The warmer weather the past week got the grass to finally growing better.

The horses are missing their foals.  Occasional whinnying and the white horse runs to the north pasture gate when she hears something thinking it may be her baby.

After the horses arrived I "horse proof'd" the yard so I could let them in the yard to eat the grass down.

Sunday I replaced a gate in the corral. While I worked I locked the horses out of the corral.  Naturally they wanted back in to the corral.

Primary election

Once again Tammy and I served as election judges.  That meant an early start to the morning as we, and the four other election judges, set up the polling place before the polls opened at 7 am.  The polls closed at 8 pm and then we had to take down the polling place and put everything away and deliver the ballots and results to the election headquarters.  Our group is experienced and we finished at 9 pm.

This was our first election after the redistricting due to the 2010 census.  It appears our precinct shrank in the number of registered voters.  Our register of registered voters seemed smaller and we had to redirect 30 to 40 voters to a neighboring precinct to vote, many of these people were voters we recognized from previous elections.

We had no problems or crises.  We had few voters (only 134), even for a primary election on a non-presidential election year.  This was especially noticeable after our previous election where we had so many voters we ran out of ballots.   We were bored quite often during this election.

Around 7 pm, an hour before the polls closed, a rainstorm moved in.  The clouds looked intense and many clouds moved in an unusual direction.

We even had some graupel and small hail.

Fortunately the rain quit by the time we loaded the election material in the car and returned to the election headquarters.

Daisy was outside from the time we got up before 5 am until we got home.  Even though I left food and water outside for her she was very happy to come inside the house.

Into the pasture

Monday morning I let the cattle out into the north pasture.  The cows and yearlings quickly got down to eating grass.  The calves ran all over checking things out.

I had the gate open to the middle pasture and Momma knew the routine.  She made her way over there and the rest of the cattle slowly followed.   That was easy.

Here is a short video of the calves running.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIbJxCiCnTA&feature=youtu.be

Tagging, spraying and banding

A perfect storm was coming: the cattle's hay was almost gone, it was time to let the cattle out to the pasture, Tuesday would be spent all day running the primary election at a precinct, the cattle needed to be tagged, sprayed and banded, and Dan was busy moving.

Every couple of days Dan said he would help me in a couple days as he was really busy right now.  My "perfect storm" meant I needed to release the cattle to the pasture by Monday afternoon at the latest. Once the cattle were released they would be very hard to get back into the corral. My stress was rising and by Saturday I was working on coming up with a "Plan B".

Dan wasn't available on Sunday and I went with Plan B.  Donna has had experience banding calves and Wyatt provided extra muscle as at three weeks the calves are getting stronger.

I pulled some green grass and all the cattle followed me into the loading corral except for: Momma and Rose and three other calves. 

Momma is sharp and realized something was up and would not go into the loading corral.  She saw Donna and Wyatt outside the corral fence and between them and my actions she got worked up.  Lots of pacing, tossing her head, and her typical strangled warning moos.  I put Momma and Rose in the corral south of the barn so Donna, Wyatt and I could work in the corral without fear of Momma.

When it looked like the three calves would enter the loading corral I opened the gate.  The three calves did not go in but the previously banded bull calf came out.

Argh!

I have a second gate to the loading ramp part of the loading corral and I got the bull calf and the three other calves in there.  In the loading ramp area I had yet another gate and I got each animal in there one at a time so it would be safer to work on them.

First up: a little bull calf.

Wyatt pinned the calf against the fence. I reached under the calf and grabbed its balls in order to band them.  I had both balls in my hand, but when I slipped them through the band one ball would disappear.  I tried again: same thing.  The calf was more docile than I expected.  His mother was on the other side of the fence and making a racket and trying to get her head through the fence - to no avail.

Donna was just going to supervise as she is around 70 years old but she climbed into the loading corral to see if she could do better than me as I had to try to hold the calf while banding him.  By now the calf was getting antsy.  Donna also "lost" one ball when slipping them through the band.  So Wyatt and I wrestled the calf to the ground.  He pinned the calf to the ground and grabbed the front legs.  I held the back legs and spread them.  Three weeks old and the calves are getting strong.  Donna was able to get both balls through the band.  Success!  You'd think having the calf stand and letting gravity help you keep the balls lower would work better, but nope.

For the other two bull calves Wyatt and I immediately wrestled them to the ground and grabbed their legs.  I took the lead on the last bull calf - the smallest one - and was rewarded by a swift kick to my right shin before it ran off. Once we had him on the ground he tried to suck his balls up but Donna eventually got them banded.


Other items to do: tag the mother and her previous calf who had no ear tags, and re-tag four other cows with faded or identical tags.

Luckily I have my head gate.  The cattle were pretty accommodating in trying to run through the head gate and easily tripped it trapping them.  Most cattle remained calm but I had a few others who tried to get free and wiggled all around.  I am happy I attached the head gate to two railroad ties as several large cows really rattled it in their struggles.

One hiccup  in using the head gate is that the previously banded bull calf got its head and front shoulders through before the gate closed.  The calf was stuck and the gate was stuck.  I couldn't release it.  I had to get a wrench and loosen the "backwards" stops.  Then I could pry the gates back further until the calf slipped through.   That is the first time something like this happened.

The bull calf looking at the bottle of Ivermectin while stuck.

The ear tagging went well as I did not piece any veins in their ears.  Only one cow had a couple drops of blood.  I used a scissors to cut the old faded tags off the other ears.  It is best to not re-tag the same ear as the old hole makes the ear a little weaker and the new tag may come out.  I planned on re-tagging a couple of the heifers as the previous owner had the silly procedure of giving the calf the identical ear tag number as its mother.  But in the excitement I forgot to re-tag Beulah's calf and one other heifer calf.    It wasn't worth running them through the loading ramp to re-tag them.


The final thing to do was to spray (pour) Ivermectin on the cattle's backs (along their spine so it is hard for them to immediately lick it off) to fight any parasites they may have.  While we didn't have to lock the cattle in the head gate to put the Ivermectin on their backs, for some cattle we set the head gate so it would trip.  Otherwise the cattle could walk a short distance forward and backwards in the final part of the loading ramp to try to avoid the spray on their backs.  For Beulah we didn't set the head gate as I was uncertain if she would even fit through the head gate.  She can.


Donna and Wyatt said they had fun helping me with the cattle.    After they left Momma calmed down.  As she stood by the fence I poured Ivermectin on her back.  When I opened the gate between the two corrals she fought with another cow.    I closed the gate and went over to Rose who was sleeping in ther corner to the corral and poured a little Ivermectin on her.

After a bit Momma and all the cattle settled down.

All done. Now I can let them out into the pasture on Monday.


Here is a very short video of Momma fighting with another cow.  Initially the other cow started the fight but by the time I started videoing Momma got the upper hand and started chasing the other cow around.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VN_IDEoa79Q&feature=youtu.be

The newly tagged cattle. (The blue tags).

I didn't tag the newborn calves as the tags I have are for bigger cattle.