Roasted and Toasted Okies

  Sunday, June 19, 2011
      The weather is as always the main thing in Oklahoma. Way too hot for sure. Here it is almost 1 am and it is 79* outside with 58% humidity.Our a/c is set on 77* and it runs almost full tilt all day and into the night. I don't even want to think about the bill. 
        Heidi Ho just can not take this heat. She loves to go and do and run along side the truck and make dives at the cows but she starts panting so bad (like a really over weight person) we put her in the truck and give her a drink of water. Old Blue doesn't have a/c but we keep rolling and parking in the shade when we can. Her poor paws I know just get to hot in the bed of the truck. Sometimes she will wade into a pond and cool off like that. When we get home we tell her to go get in the doggie pool and she lays in it going in on a kind of slide maneuver and licking up water the whole way.
   Saturday we took 13 head of calves to auction and we were finally happy with the price. We used the Mid America stock yards in Bristo and we liked the way everything looked on the check. The last few years we have been taking them to a auction and when we get the check the numbers were just off! The weight just didn't look like we thought it should and the price wasn't even close to what the computer said it should have been when you go online and look at the going rates.Anyone that has been around a cattleman knows they know what stuff weighs. Ladies if you put on 3 pounds they know it! Such a frustrating thing sometimes being married to a cattle man. If you happen to be a big girl you better get over being self conscious about it with them because THEY KNOW!!! GGgrrrrr.......... Oh well. We felt so much better this time. When we sorted them out to sell we looked at them and said they weigh about 400 pounds or so. Sure enough that is the same thing the auction said. It wouldn't have been that way at the other one. We knew we weren't that much off! So looks like we will be using this auction from now on as long as they don't start doing something crazy an getting to us on the weight and the price.
    Things around here have been crazy since Memorial Day when Hubby put his dad in the hospital. He had fallen down 3 times the day before and couldn't make a 3 word sentence. At 90 y.o. he has been living on his own and doing for himself with hubby always handy and checking on him a couple times a day. I would send over fresh hot food for supper since he was able to do for himself the rest of the day. When we went and took a closer look at everything he was just not doing good at all! Just 3 weeks ago he could get in and out of the truck on his own and now he had to have help and was skin and bones. He stayed in for a week and now is in a nursing home. We keep telling him he is in there to get stronger so he can go home but we know that probably won't happen we just try to give him hope. He had no urge to eat, drink or move around an his bathroom habits have changed to the point we could not help him at home anymore. The nursing home is $140 a day and regulated and easy for friends and family to stop in a chat. We couldn't get that kind of good private care I know.  June 12th he celebrated his 91st Birthday in the nursing home. His granddaughter Terry came in from Ark and I brought chocolate cupcakes with candles and decorated the room. Terry could get more out of him that I have seen in ages and I told her I am glad to see that he was even capable of responding like that.
    A couple of days ago one of Nikki's cows decided to have a calf at 10 am we noticed as we went to feed cows on Sire's. We didn't notice it until we had already fed them outside the coral where we could catch her if needed. Heidi is the one that told us. Hubby was dropping feed and she crossed the creek where the cows were. I was watching her and she was running with her nose up and I knew then something was going on. She started checking out a cow and hubby could see then she had feet out. Well we knew we had a problem then! First thing it is usual for a cow to be doing this at 10am standing with the rest of the herd. Then we we looked closer she just had 1 foot out instead of 2. Hubby tried for over a hour to walk her into the corral to help her out. He walked and ran all over the northern half of the 160 and she would duck into some light woods, cross the creek and finally she would just stick her nose up in the air and run like a race horse with half the herd right behind her. I was in the truck blocking gates when she headed the wrong way and trying to guide her into the right direction to save him some running or he would tell me to take a bucket of feed and try to sucker her into the right place. It was almost 100* at the time. Not good for cow or hubby either one. I tried to get him to just rest and let her calm down but he didn't want to lose a cow. She has had about 4 calves but this one wasn't good. We had no clue if she had been like this for 15 minutes or all night. She went running through one time and I saw about 16 inches of 1 leg sticking out. Still not good. Finally hubby gave up. He said she is going to have to wear herself out trying to have the calf so he can walk up to her and pull it since she won't go into a coral. He figured then if nothing else we would have a dead calf. I called Nikki to let her know what was going on and there just wasn't much she could do so she prayed. We went home for lunch about noon. A hour later he went back without me and said she wasn't where we left her. Welll.... DUH!... He found her and she had a pretty little red calf. Have no clue if it is a heifer or a steer but it was alive! We figured all that running around must have knocked something back where it belongs and probably kept oxygen pumping enough to save the calf. We still haven't seen the calf again yet. It has been several days and she has kept it hidden really good. 
    Don't know what is going on this year but seems like all the cows are hiding out their babies for a week or more before they bring them out to show them off. We haven't had them doing this in years. We did change our bulls around a lot this year with selling one and adding one or two more. They are all similar blood lines so the genetics are similar. We were wondering if maybe the calves we a little bit weaker and maybe mama's felt like they needed to do that more. 
    After all this chasing around the cow I some how threw out my right hip. It does that sometimes and I look like a hunch back going anywhere. All I can do is rest and stay off of it a while. This time though I got really tired of the pain. Hubby said " You think you need to go to the chiropractor ?" I almost laughed. I felt like my hip was up under my armpit and my right shoulder was 3-4 inches lower than the left shoulder when you looked at it. I had a hobble that was almost comical. I looked at him with the most unbelievable duh look on my face and said ... " Ya think so?"  I went to get my back cracked and I walked in and said Dr. Jay get your sledge hammer and Jeep winch out you got a job to do this time. I was so tight from stem to stern he could barely move anything back.I got to thinking about everything going on with my Father in Law and no wonder I was tighter than a drum!! He helped it alot and the next day the pain was better with putting ice on for swelling and using some arnica and the CopperHead Achy, Breaky and Bruised cream. At least I can walk mostly normal with a twinge of pain that will make you do a funny 2 step or two. If I go back in a couple of weeks he can probably put me back together better. 
    I told hubby we need a vacation. I need to see and do something different. I'm bored. I feel like the little kid in the summer always whining  to mama about nothing to do. I have lots to do .... I am just bored. 


Ranchmama
(roasted and toasted in Okie land)