Wow, it's been a busy weekend, and we are exhausted. The week(s) leading up to shipping day are a little stressful....especially when it coincides with hunting season. We had all our cows moved close to home and really didn't want a hunter to leave a gate open somewhere. M was doing gate checks a couple of times a day for the past week.
The work started on Tuesday when the guys moved our younger cows and calves home. It was a windy, cold, wet day, but I was willing to go help if they thought they needed me. I never did get the call (thank goodness) and M was SO cold when he got home. Then Thursday afternoon we moved the big bunch home. Actually, they kind of moved themselves when they heard M start the tractor to put some bales out. We only had to chase in a few stragglers.
After we were done there we headed cross-country to the neighbor's to grab their stock trailer and take a tractor over to move some dirt and put some bales out there. He has a nice corral setup and a portable scale so we're able to ship right out of there. It's so nice to be able to do that.
The cattle market has gone south since we contracted so we were a little concerned that the buyer would back out (we've heard stories of that happening) or trucks wouldn't show up or something. We were relieved when he called our neighbor on Thursday night to confirm, but he did say that he'd only have two trucks on Friday and the other two wouldn't be there until Saturday. As long as we were "weighed and paid" we could work with that.
We had to get everything in Friday morning, sort off the cows and then sort the calves by sex. Complicate that by having some of our neighbors calves, some share calves, and cull cows to cut off. Complicate it more by having a gate come open and a bunch of steer calves get mixed up with the heifer calves that we wanted to keep for replacements. Then we had to haul by trailer-loads cross-country to the neighbor's. Thankfully, I got out of most of the sorting because I had to go with the first load to keep a count of the neighbor's calves, the share calve and our calves.
By the time we got all of ours sorted and over to the scale, the trucks were loaded (3 actually showed up instead of 2) and the checks were written it was 4:00. I think we are starting to have too many calves to do it the way we are now.
Then I ran home, took a quick shower and headed to town to babysit Sawyer. I was a little afraid that I'd be ready for bed before her. We had tons of fun and I got home about 2:00 am.
M let me sleep in a bit on Saturday while he went to Richland to meet the last trucker and show him where to go. I called him when I got up and he said to come over in 45 minutes because we were preg testing the neighbor's cows. How about an hour and a half? I had stuff to do, was moving slow, and it was cold and windy so I didn't want to go out. They didn't really need my help anyway, but I did show up. We were done with that job by 1:00. Then we had lunch and we helped the neighbors pack up to head back to Harlem, relieved that the weekend was over.
Today M made me go help him do cow chores since R was gone hauling calves for C's step-kids. I didn't want to go, but it was a nicer day than I thought. And, I got back at him by making him help me do some things outside when we got back.
We can't let up now, though. Tomorrow they have to move our replacement heifers and bulls closer to home (and I have to get the calf check to the bank!). Wednesday they have cull cows to haul to the sale in Glasgow and Thursday they have calves to haul for another neighbor. Then, maybe we can rest a little.
No comments:
Post a Comment