It has been a busy week. Thank goodness R was home to help us through a very busy calving time. He headed back to South Dakota today, and we miss him already.
One day we woke up to a couple of inches of new snow. The next day we woke up to ice from freezing rain during the night. Just when we see some improvement in the roads and pens we get just enough moisture to make it messy again. I used to try to watch where I was walking, but I've given up. I'm usually in poop up to my ankles (or deeper) or water nearly to my knees. After the snow, the sun came out and we warmed up into the 50s. That really started the water running. M and R spent an afternoon putting in a culvert and building a crossing over it. The calves sometimes don't like to cross the ditch with water running down it so this seems to be helping. M had dumped some snow over the windbreak while cleaning out the corral and that was damming up the runoff making it run into one of the pens. R worked on snow removal to eliminate that problem. They tried to dig out another culvert, but it is still frozen so water is running over the road. M also moved more snow in the calving pasture so those cows have more high and dry places to go. We have lost a lot of snow, but we have a long way to go with 3-foot drifts in the calving pasture.
We finally made the decision to open up the pasture adjacent to the cow yard so those cows with calves can have more space, and more dry areas. We thought about waiting until we saw what the weather was going to be since the forecasters kept predicting a storm, but it didn't materialize when they thought it might so we let them out. The calves were happy to have more space to run. They can still get into the windbreak if they need to.
We had close to 60 calves while R was here, and our pen of early calvers is down to six. There were apparently a couple of fence jumpers since we found two calves that weren't tagged in the pasture this morning. We did some investigation and found where we think the cows got out, but they had to jump another fence to get back in. Odd. We were perplexed for awhile. One of our heifers had a set of deformed twins that looked like they were probably dead before she had them. We decided to take one of our other twins and put it on her. I felt really bad for the calf at first because it was a bit of an adjustment, but they are bonding now and he's getting plenty to eat!
The weather is supposed to turn cold (er) for the next couple of days with wind. We are getting a new computer system at work so they want me to come in on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for training. I'm feeling bad about leaving M alone especially if the weather is bad, so we'll see how things go tomorrow.
We're still having a hard time dealing with life without Pete. We expect to see him everywhere, and M is taking it really hard. I can hardly remember the last time we were dog-less. I hate it.....but life goes on.
I really wish Mother Nature would make up her mind that it really is spring and send us some nice, warm, sunny days. We could use some brightening in our life right now.
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