It has been a super busy four days of cowboying around here. On Friday, we had an auditor from Verified Beef so we could get our NHTC (non-hormone treated cattle) certification. We were kind of under the gun to get it done because of some confusion and miscommunication and the guy was very helpful. That went off without a hitch, thank goodness. Saturday we rounded up our cows and calves and got everything ready for the next morning at our place and at the neighbor's. We were at the neighbor's until about 7:00 when M remembered that he needed to weld a piece on his stock trailer so we had to run to Richland to the shop and do that.
Sunday morning we were up and at it before sunrise getting the cows sorted from the calves and then the calves sorted by sex and sorting out the heifers we were planning to keep for replacements. R and C were helping us and J was over helping the neighbor's. We had to haul them into Scobey to the scale. Most years I get to help sort and load and then I can go home, but now we have more paperwork to keep track of so I had to go to the scale. We didn't get there until almost 11:00 and were there until almost 3:00. The buyer and feeders invited us out for supper so we decided not to go have lunch. We had a few calves to haul back home so we did that and had snacks and drinks at the neighbor's and then we all went back for supper. I told M's sister that we were going to supper with the cattle buyer and she said "order chicken." Shipping is always stressful no matter how good it goes so we all slept well that night!
Today we pregnancy tested the neighbor's cows and ours. J and R went to help them right away this morning while M, C and I got things ready here. We had to get the cows in again and round up the heifers. We then went to the neighbor's and got in on the last 100 of their 300 head. We had lunch there and then moved back here to do our 150 head. The vet and his helper are quite the characters and make it interesting and fun. The vet is from Canada and I always want to make fun of his Canadian accent, eh, but wouldn't want to offend him. His best comment today was "look at the sun go down over the shit pile." He usually palpates by hand to check the cows but this time he used an intravaginal ultrasound. I told him he looked like Iron Man with the battery pack on his back and the goggles. He let me look through the goggles and see a calf heartbeat. Very cool!
We've had gorgeous fall weather to get our cow work done, and I've been loving being outdoors. I bet M never thought he'd see the day when I would rather be out pregnancy testing the cows than go to work, but I was so happy that it was a Monday and I didn't have to go to my job. The bad news is I'll be cooped up indoors at work for the next three days. With the shipping and pregnancy testing done, we feel like we can catch our breath for a minute.....before we're off to something else!
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