Again, I'm behind on my blogging. We've been busy with our usual fall stuff. M and R built another fence up the hill from our barn so that we'll have another space where we can move cows and calves in the spring. My job is always the clipping. I did it in about three hours since I had a date with our accountant later that day. Think three hours of doing squats. My thighs were so sore the next day I could hardly walk. I should do that every day!
Next on our agenda was pregnancy testing our last bunch of cows. Our friend, Roger, did it for us and the only day he could come was when R was gone. Not fair! We had to enlist J to help us run the chute. We were lucky to have another nice day to get it done. We had a few more open cows than we would have liked, but the majority were older cows that should probably be retired anyway.
On Wednesday M and R rounded up all the cows and calves to be ready for shipping yesterday. I missed out on that, but M said that Junior did well helping with the roundup. He still has a lot to learn, but he's making progress.
We had a very smooth shipping day and good weather for it. The cows and calves came in without any problem. M and R sorted one bunch to separate the calves from the cows while C, his stepson, Jared, and I worked on sorting the big bunch. When M and R finished sorting their bunch they then started separating the steer calves from the heifer calves while we finished sorting cows from calves. We also had the open cows to sort out. Then we loaded calves into our trailers to take across country to the neighbor's where the buyer was to be weighed and loaded on semi trucks. M was so happy that it all went so well that he celebrated with a beer and a sandwich. While we were finishing up our neighbor called to see if we were on the way over because we had too much weight and had to decide what to do. Calves that are too heavy is a good problem to have! The calves came in quite a bit heavier than last year, so M had one more thing to be happy about. Maybe that kept him from feeling the pain of getting kicked by calves a few times during the day.
The majority of the calves were contracted and went to South Dakota, but a load went to Billings to be sold today. We're hoping they sell well there, too. We were a little concerned about the calves getting to South Dakota in good shape since it appeared that the truck drivers were a bit clueless. We watched one of them back up to chute and wondered what the heck he was doing. It's probably not fun having a bunch of people watching you, and when he finally got backed in and got out of the truck he said he hoped we all got a good laugh. We did. The neighbor's wife put it best when she said "I shouldn't care because they're not our calves anymore.....but I do care". Spoken like a true rancher.
When the work was done we had supper and drinks with the neighbors. They live in Harlem so we don't see them all that often but really enjoy the time we do spend with them. They are pregnancy testing today so M and R are helping them. I knew they had a lot of help so I stayed home (and out of the wind) to catch up on things here.
Tonight we get to babysit our granddaughter while J and K go to a Halloween party. Can't wait to get my hands on that little girl....♥
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