I guess I can't say we are "cowboying" anymore. The other night we heard a young man say he's not a cowboy, he's a rancher. Of course, he has a full-time job in town and doesn't really take care of his own cows much so I'm not sure he qualifies as a "cowboy" OR a "rancher". Anyway, there is a distinction between the two.
My Tink (erbelle) has turned into Tina and is still alive and relatively well. She has not, however, learned to suck from her mother. We had a rain delay over the weekend so M had some time to get the cow in the maternity pen daily for a few days and try to get Tina to nurse. She really can't figure it out or it's too hard for her, but we've pretty much given up hope that it will ever happen. So, I get to bottle feed her twice a day. We've been so proud of ourselves for saving her, but now we're wondering why since she'll never be worth anything and we're not sure what we'll do with her. Her mother and M are not friends so she may not be here next year. She's not mean, just obstinate.
Now we have Norman. We had a cow that lost a calf and a friend who was bottle-feeding three calves so we took one off his hands. He had named him Norman, and he's a nice big boy. We started him out on one cow, and she was okay to work with but not too excited about Norman. The next day we found a 3-day old calf dead in the pasture and the mother was still being protective so we decided to try to put Norman on her. We skinned the dead calf (yes, that was a bit disturbing) and duct-taped the hide to Norman. The mother latched onto him pretty quickly; we just had to get Norman comfortable with her. He was a bit "flinchy" so we have a hunch he'd been knocked around before. We put them in the maternity pen a couple of times and he nursed well. Then yesterday morning I walked into the barn, and he was nursing her all on his own. Hallelujah! We will still keep a close eye on them, though.
Yesterday was a full day of moving cows around. We brought our heifer calves home so we can start synchronizing them and getting them ready to artificially inseminate and hauled feed troughs and buckets. Then we sorted cow-calf pairs to go to two different pastures and hauled some to pasture.
This morning we sorted off six open cows to put with the heifers to be AI'd. That was a bit of an adventure. Four of them were happy to amble along and be herded to the pasture while the other two were off like a shot, usually in the wrong direction. Yes, there was cursing but no, not from me.
It is a cold, gray, windy day so I was happy to get sandwiches ready for the guys and send M on his way to the field so I could come home and warm up! J got back into the field yesterday afternoon after a few days off due to rain and finished up the lentils. Now he is back to seeding wheat on his march back east. We're about half done with the seeding and hoping the rest goes quickly and painlessly!
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