Calving Capers 4

On February 25, 2016March 21, 2016 By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving Capers, Domestic Animals1 Comment

Calving Capers is pretty tame right now as we are in the preparation stage and carrying on with our day to day routine. Filling, packing and feeding 100 chop pails daily, feeding bales and bedding pens with straw every second day or so. Add the calving escapades to this in a few weeks time and we are going to be “occupied”!
During this relative calm I have the opportunity to introduce the final cast member in my pen of Calving Capers Characters. Meet my fancy heifer… Shirley Temple…[17B]…note the “blonde” and “curly”….

I picked her out as a “keeper” shortly after she was born two years ago.

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Even then she had that blond and curly look. To my mind, it’s neat to have a few unique looking animals in our herd. My husband concentrates on the all red look and admittedly it sure does make a big herd look lovely and uniform out there in the pasture. Thankfully, I’m “allowed” to identify and keep a few characters that I like the look of. I trust pretty Shirley Temple will deliver some fancy calves of her own

We have oh so many more “personalities” in our herd, but the animals with a story have been introduced over the past three weeks. They will earn a special watchful eye and attention from this blog-writer.
For now, my husband and I need to stay healthy, store up on sleep and carry on our diligence to care for these precious animals that we are stewards over.
The night-time watches are coming up real soon!!

Calving Capers Episode 3

On February 17, 2016March 21, 2016 By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving CapersLeave a comment

One of my favorite cows is Vanilla Dip, aptly named in reference to her white-tipped nose which looks like it was dipped in vanilla ice cream. She has provided us a nice mix of female and male calves over the past few years. It is actually Vanilla Dip and 3B, as mother and baby calf, that I chose to introduce my blog-posting feature series back on Jan 27. They are also the pair on my Calf Count image on the sidebar to my blog.

The girl she had two years ago is 3B the next in my cast of Calving Capers characters….an aspiring young bred heifer.

Unbelievably, she is almost two years old, about to deliver her first calf, and she still doesn’t have a name! Perhaps my blog readers have a suggestion or two…if so, please feel free to share in a friendly comment.
I look forward to seeing her progeny as her mother has such a nice temperament and so far, 3B is turning out to be the same. We love to keep the quiet ones around, so if she stays with the herd she most certainly needs an imaginative name.

Calving Capers Episode 2

On February 11, 2016March 21, 2016 By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving Capers, Domestic AnimalsLeave a comment

We experienced a sad and disappointing occurrence this past week. One of our fine young bred heifers aborted her calf almost two months early. She may have been bumped or fell on the terrible icy surfaces we are beleaguered with this winter to trigger this loss.
It was a female calf which makes it worse as she would have been a gal we could have kept in the herd.
And to top it all off, making it doubly worse, this was Suzy Q’s first calf!

What makes me extra sad is that she always returns to the same spot on the straw bed where she dropped her calf. This is where I took her picture.

This was not the way I wished to introduce the next character in Calving Capers, our dear Suzy Q [40B], the one and only daughter of our dearly departed Trixie, featured last year in this blog.
Thankfully though, Suzy Q will “be allowed” to stay in the herd and get to try again. In the meantime she’s going to have a pretty easy year just grazing and keeping all the nutrients to herself. She’s a lovely heifer with a chance to be our superstar next year!

Calving Capers Episode 1

On February 5, 2016March 21, 2016 By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving Capers, Domestic AnimalsLeave a comment

During these somewhat routine days before calving starts, a flurry of activity goes on behind the scenes for me. This week has been focussed on completing all the farm
books recording in order to send off to the accountant to compile our 2015 tax returns. It is in order too, I practically do all the work for them but in return they keep their charges down. I prefer that they do the last tweaking anyway.

Along with record-keeping is nailing down all our inventory numbers for year end purposes. So many outside parties need that particular set of information from us. Our government, our banker, our accountant and of course ourselves. It was quite exciting this year to see that my efforts paid off. I reconciled every calf right down to the last head. Small victories create much satisfied excitement for this rancher girl!

So as we approach the busy weeks ahead I’ll take the time to feature my cast of characters in the drama about to unfold. This week meet 12B, otherwise known as Goldilicks.

I named her so in her early days after weaning. She had lost her pretty pink calf tag so we no longer could recall who her mother was. But what made her unique was her willingness to come up to any of us and readily lick our gloves, no matter if we were in the corral or out in the pasture. She is a lighter red in colour, almost goldish under the noonday sun so what better name than Goldilicks?

After a summer of frolicking in our north pasture with her sisters and a couple of fellas (the bulls) she is now an almost-grown-up cow….rather, a bred heifer. She is carrying her very first calf and you can bet I will be keeping a watchful eye over her as she nears her calving date and commences her life as a productive mother cow.

She earned the coveted number 12 (one of Flicka Rancher’s favorite numbers) to go along with the B which represents her year of birth. Most of the letters of the alphabet are used in the cattle industry to identify the year of birth. For example, breeding stock (heifers and bulls) born in 2013 are A, 2014 (like Goldilicks) are B, the animals we had and kept from last year in 2015 will earn a C tag and so on.

Just think, next time you’re walking by a field or pasture with grazing cows, check out their tags … you’ll be able to amaze your friends by informing them almost exactly the age of those animals just by the letter in their ear tag.

Calving Capers continues next week!

Calving Capers

On January 27, 2016March 21, 2016 By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving Capers, Domestic Animals2 Comments

And finally, my final assignment in Blogging 101. I can hardly believe I stuck to it! I am prone to be a great starter of “things” and not always a “finisher” of same so feeling pretty confident now and full of focus.

The final assignment is to create a feature for my blog – something for my readers to return to and to expect on a consistent and repeatable basis. Well, what is more repeatable and consistent on a ranch than calving season! It also happens to be one of our most favorite as well as challenging times of the year…loaded with adventures and story after story begging to be told.

At the same time I’ll be able to keep my calf inventory count absolutely current and up to date on an almost daily basis….something unheard of in my normally “let’s catch-up now” world. [Keep an eye on my side bar over the next few months.]

Our official calving season commences mid-March this year. My feature – Calving Capers will appear every Thursday to satisfy my earlier promise to devote Thursdays to blogging. Look for the first episode of my feature on Thursday, February 4, 2016.