Thursday my daughter sent me a pic of my youngest of 3 grandsons graduating kindergarten. That is the cool thing about cell phones. I might not be able to be almost 300 miles away but she can send me a pic and I can get it anywhere my cell phone is.
We were driving to town and decided to pick up some salt blocks we had forgoten and left in a pasture that we had recently moved a bunch of young heifers out of. It is little over 4 miles away. It is just a little 10 acre pasture behind Nikki's house that is just the right size to put really young heifers that we think we want to keep for breeders. We can feed them seperately the way they need to be fed without a bunch of pigs hogging all the feed from them. As they grow and develop we can watch and see if we still like them to keep for mama cows.
I got the cute pics and leaned over to show hubby on the IPhone. I said, see this is you grandson graduating kindergarten!
"My Grandson?"
"That's not my Grandson!"
"He's YOUR grandson!"
Yes he is he has your genetics in there to.
"Well if there in there they must be in stealth mode!"
I have so much fun with his off the wall comments sometimes. He is such a serious, class A type workaholic personality. Always thinking and planning and figuring on how to keep things going and working properly on the ranch. I tell him a joke that everyone else gets and it just seems to fly right over his head and he hasn't a clue even when I explain it to him. So you can see how when something like this comes spilling out I get a really good chuckle.
Today was a busy day for him. During all the other things going on one of Allexcia's heifers we have in the West pasture behind the house we use for a nursery / sell lot decided she was going to have her calf today. He put her in the corral and watched her for about 30 minutes. She only had 2 front feet out. He fed her and left her alone waiting to see how she would do. After about 45 minutes she had only laid down once and he decided not to take a chance and just put her in the head catcher and give her some help. He called me down from the house and I helped him hold the strap to the butt jack on her back and held the tail out of the way while he attached the chains to the feet to get ready to pull. She was having contractions but nothing was really happening and everything was lined up right but that was about it. After he started putting some pressure on with the jack the calf started to come out more. The little black nose was out and boy was she doing some major pushing! I don't think I have ever seen one of the cows hunker down an push that hard and I have seen a few. It wasn't a overly large calf or anything, pretty average for limousine cattle anyway. Got the baby out and he pulled it around to the front of the cow for her to smell and all. I got the heck out because I didn't want to be anywhere near when she come out of that headcatcher! He put stuff up then carefully let her out so she wouldn't get him. After he got all the stuff cleaned up he opened the gate so she and the other calves from that pasture could go out. While she wasn't looking he snuck over and tagged the baby before he even got off the ground. We had to really watch her or she would for sure get him! It was fun watching this brand new baby calf. He was just all wobbly sitting up looking around and all. I never noticed it before but he was trying to do a baby calf moo. Looked like he needed to clear his throat because it barely came out sounding like a sheep with a tiny little baaaa... he tried 3 or 4 times to sound like a real cow. LOL A few hours later she had that baby all cleaned up sporting it around the pasture and he was sucking really good. She is going to be a good mama.
So now Allexica has 2 official baby calves on the ground from the heifers we had set back for her. Allexcia (blue tags) and Nikki (pink tags) both have heifers that have either been set back or they have grown for them to have some extra money some time during the year. Maybe someday they will each have a small herd to bring extra income in.
Well it is late, about midnight and there is no telling what tomarrow brings so I better get some sleep.
Ranchmama
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