Category: Domestic Animals

The Ranch Gate

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Countrified Blessings, Domestic AnimalsLeave a comment

Much of my day is spent out in the great outdoors fulfilling my ever so important role as gatekeeper…or go-for runner, or….open the gates…or close the gates….or stand by the gate…or watch the gate….or watch out! Gate!

This brought me to pondering. You know, there is alot of psychology (or rather – drama) that centers around the ranch gate.
Many a heart and spirit has been broken at those gates. Mostly mine as I hate being yelled at. But dear hubby told me long ago that ” what happens in the corral – stays in the corral.”

A day’s plans can be altered in a split second if you miss latching the gate by some innocent oversight or you can’t run to the open gate fast enough that you’re supposed to be “watching” and a rogue animal gets through it or the entire blinking herd heads for it.

I contemplate these things now as we are in the process of bringing our herd home from their respective pastures over the next few weekends. The herd that will be my sole responsibility for most of the winter as my hubby continues to truck up and down the Alberta highways. As long as I know the status of every ranch gate – whether it be open or closed for it’s intended purpose – then I know we’re all going to get along just fine.

So Proud

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Countrified Blessings, Domestic AnimalsLeave a comment

Yes, I’m so proud of my girls. The group I once called “goofy” performed like perfect ladies (and gents-still have a couple young bull fellas with them) as they followed me gracefully down the gravel road to their new grazing grounds.

Here they remain until we have a few more rare and precious free hours to load them up and bring them home to me for their pampered winter life along with their cow “sisters”.

Bull Power

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Domestic AnimalsLeave a comment

Some of the chores Patty and I get assigned to around here can be fraught with danger and excitement.

We had been pushing/walking the herd into the home field until these two yahoos decided to go at it. That was my que to back up the buggy and wait and watch at a distance ’til they worked it out or wore themselves out. My hard workin’ Patty though, still tried to do her best to keep them moving along.

The reason she and I had the job of moving critters today was to get those bad boys close to the sorting pen so they can be loaded up and taken to market. It’s time for them to go down the road after a few good years of fathering a number of great calves. A bull’s productive life on our ranch runs an average of five years. They have a good life with us…well-fed, pampered and never given too many “girls” to over-work themselves. Their “working” season runs from July to September. Otherwise they only have to graze, rest and sun themselves under the great big beautiful Alberta sky. Trouble is, when they get to the end of their years with us, they seem to get cranky and pick fights all too easily with each other.

And now the day has come to say farewell to these two…it’s definitely time…they’ve crashed through a pen and tore up a fence in recent days. I’m quite ready to say good-bye.

Although I say that now, when it comes to loading them onto that trailer, I know I’ll be a bit sad. I always am whenever my animals are taken from the yard for the last time.

Heifer-Quieting – Day One

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Domestic AnimalsLeave a comment

Loaded up the feed truck with tubs and pails of grain and headed west to our pasture to visit those lovely heifers. What a beautiful warm October week I have been blessed with to take on this mission. To think that just barely a week ago we were blanketed…no, almost buried under 9 inches of moisture-filled snow just flabbergasts me. But this is just how Alberta can be….blink or sneeze and our weather will do a full 360 turn!

My first solo visit out to these girls was not without it’s anxious moments…which is not uncommon for me and my predicaments. As can be seen by the deep tire tracks in my short video clip, I almost got my big old 4×4 stuck in the soft moisture-soaked terrain of the pasture.

 

Happily, the heifers came from the other end of the pasture to my voice…my non-descript call that has morphed into what you hear in the clip and what used to be “cu-bus”. As I said, non-descript word and non-descript sound but they do recognize me and they do come a-runnin’ from way across the field. THAT was a reward to start. I chummed around with them for a bit while they snacked and even had a few gals come up for a selfie with me (see above).

The weather continues to summer-ize for the next few days so hoping for drier conditions at next visit and even more besties in my domain.

P.S. I should maybe clarify that what you may have heard me say at the end of my video was not “a swear” but rather I was declaring “as they should”.

Goofy Girls

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Domestic Animals3 Comments

I have an important self-imposed assignment this week. I have taken it upon myself to quiet down our herd of bred heifers that are presently out on their own pasture an hour away from the homeplace. We want to be able to “quietly” trail them from one pasture to another pasture next Sunday, along a public gravel road, to get them to the corral system we use to eventually load them before the real winter snow arrives. We have become highly motivated to start this “moving” activity since the recent, unwanted snowfalls have hit home.

My assignment then is to travel to them every couple days this week with grain in pails and hang out with them and talk “softly” to them – get them in a mood to “want to” follow me whenever they next see me again. This, because I will be the one to lead them to the second pasture as my hubby takes the tail-end and pushes them to me.

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We visited them today and realized we hadn’t been visiting them enough over the summer…they are a goofy, jumpy, flighty bunch of girls. I’m trusting that by hanging out with them quietly and serenely with my pails of grain and soothing conversations we can all become the best of besties and that they will behave with charm, grace and compliance during their short journey next Sunday.

Photo Challenge – Beloved

On By colleengbergIn Domestic Animals, Photo Challenges4 Comments

Beloved

Of course, the second living being (beyond dear hubby!) that I thought of, after seeing this was the weekly photo challenge, was my dog. To clarify, that would be dogs we have now and dogs we’ve had that have since passed on. Our canine friends, companions and working partners on this ranch are absolutely our beloved treasures.  We could not function without them!

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Photo Challenge-Variation

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Domestic Animals, Photo Challenges, Uncategorized1 Comment

Variations on a Theme is the official photo challenge this week put forth from the team at wordpress…the engine behind the world of bloggers. My domain of agriculture never fails to provide me a response to these challenges.

This time it’s our young heifers. Normally they line up nice and orderly to the table for their morning “breakfast” but here comes my variant. Not content to just come and dine this little cowgirl literally came UP to dine!

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A Snow Day

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Countrified Blessings, Domestic Animals1 Comment

Back in the days when I was working and I had a half an hour highway drive in to and back from town, there came a day now and then that would compel me to wish that I still lived in town.  The dreaded country SNOW day. Because I would hunker down and head into town along with my rural peers. There was no way I was going to be the pansy that stayed home, while everyone else found their way into town and put in an honest day’s work! I do recall, with absolutely no fondness at all, the terror-filled white-knuckle journeys these proved to be.

When the dreaded SNOW day hits, like today, I’m relieved to have the “privilege” of staying home. But now, the dreaded SNOW day means “extreme” chores. Every little task just becomes ten times harder as the wind whips through the coveralls, blowing snow stings the face and eyes, the trudge back and forth to the routine spots feels like a marathon through the accumulating white stuff. You know, it may look fluffy and puffy and even pretty but no, it feels like cement especially as we push our way back and forth to the troughs with our barley chop pails. Oh how I wish we still had oats in the bin to mix chop….this barley is blasted heavy stuff!

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I protest too much though. A day like today, reminds me just how much our animals rely on us. We started the morning feeding our young heifer calves and they were absolutely delighted to get out for breakfast. It had been a long snow-filled night for them and it’ll help them tolerate the long white day ahead with a full belly of barley and pellets. I see my dog Patty was overly excited to escort them to the dining area!

Today of course every pen needed bales replenished. Thank goodness for a warm barn and plenty of cats to cuddle with as I waited for hubby to come back and forth with more and more bales for me to cut twine from and to open and close gates and to fill and refill chop pails. I was actually contemplating the title for this blog post as “Chore Girl Fitness” or something…….

The most rewarding ending to our day though was to bring in our cow herd from the far east field…another big group of gals that had endured a long, dark, blizzardy night waiting for their next feeding time. They needed no calling and as soon as they heard us in the tractor from a distance, they were on the move!

 

All our critters are tucked away in the corrals close to home and we can rest knowing they are safe, sheltered and fed. Let the snow come on!

 

The Return

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Domestic Animals4 Comments

Now, either I can say I became lazy or I became too busy. I am going to go with “too busy”. It’s true, just as my Twitter page says….an over-active retiree. I really didn’t mean to neglect my Flicka Rancher blog over the past few months, but starting with our ever-most-challenging calving season at mid-February, I found I had to redirect my energies to the goings-on on our ranch….and we were certainly going and going on!!!

Right from the hop we ran into a series of nightmares with our heifers. The end result was just about every calf had to be either pulled or we had to call in our vet for C Sections. Every calf was saved but at such a cost…financially and emotionally…we were exhausted by March and still had the mature herd of 200+ yet to start calving.

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Had you visited our place back then you would have seen a number of our poor young gals sporting these fancy stitches on their left side. Anatomically, a C-Section is performed on the left side after the vet carefully cuts through the layers of tissue until she reveals the calf in the uterine sac. Unfortunately, this delicate surgical procedure became almost routine in our barn and subsequently hubby and I became very familiar with the steps and ultimately reliable assistants to our mobile vet….securing the cow, disinfecting, shaving, cutting, pulling out the calf, resuscitating (when necessary), suturing and monitoring and medicating both mom and calf for days thereafter. And yes, some pretty cold nights and days were happening all the same time. We were pretty pooched by mid-March.

And then the moisture came….we love moisture…so I hesitate to berate the chaos that presented but even the old-timers around here would tell us never had they seen so much wet and mud and muck and turmoil from this element of nature that is so necessary but rarely so excessive! So again, we were doubly pooched by the end of spring.

Seems funny to be writing about all that past drama now. Now, while the “lazy” days of summer draw to an end. I call them lazy with tongue in cheek….as this is when our cows and calves are out on their own in the pasture …the only time we aren’t watching their every move when they’re home with us for the winter into spring.  But a flurry of activity continues as well during the summer as we put up hay for feed.  We pray for rain and sun, we bale, we haul, we stack, we clean the barn and corrals, we check pastures, we treat sick animals. Did I say “lazy” days? More like “catching-up” days. And today I have finally caught up the return to my blog.

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And so, I am happily anticipating an “easier” season of winter-feeding our animals once all are home and the snow has fallen. Hubby has gifted me with fields of bale-grazing. The idea will be to let our cows in and out of these fields which are filled with standing bales spread out for easy grazing. Along with my dog Patty, I will just have to call the girls, open the gates, they will follow and I close the gates behind them whereby they munch away until Patty and I return before sundown and call them out, they will follow, head for water and then go to bed. The next day Patty and I will repeat the process. Sounds too good to be true, right? Stay tuned for our adventures to follow.