Tag: cattle

Calving Capers 8

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving CapersLeave a comment

What happens, more often than not, during springtime on the ranch in the early stages of calving is – a winter storm. We just departed from probably the mildest winter in decades to be greeted, on the second day of spring with a blizzard.
Also, what happens, more often than not, a blizzard-y storm brings on the birthing! Our heifers started to calve one after the other. Between hubby and myself we were getting up to check the herds every two hours.
We are so fortunate to have a big old hip-roof barn for shelter and warmth for the critters and their babes. It doesn’t take long, however, to fill it up when these girls just keep dropping their calves! We are at full capacity!

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My heart goes out to these young females, on a good day, when they experience motherhood for the first time. Throw in this nastiest of nasty weather to compound their new adventure – all I can say is….it builds character! For animal and human alike! So far we are very gratified to see they have taken to their calf almost immediately and become the strong, quiet mothers we have raised them to be.

This gal was so quiet in fact that we were able to pull her calf right in the barn pen where she lay. Here you go….freshly pulled!

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Calving Capers 7

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Calving CapersLeave a comment

Recent events have resulted in bringing our cows in from the field this week…TEN days early. Our official calving start date was “calculated” to commence March 26. Wellll, as I started to say…recent events have encouraged us – most strongly – to bring them home within eyesight and a close by stroll from the house.
So this is my new view from the kitchen window. Suits me just fine. It has been a chilly few days, during the snow squalls and winds, riding the quad out to the far field to check on these girls.

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“The Watch” is now underway. Flicka Rancher does the midnight check as I am the night owl and like the quiet evening hours to tackle the paperwork projects back inside until it’s my turn to head out. Then hubby checks whilst I sleep…..but the deal is….if there is a hint of trouble….I am to be rousted from said slumber!
And so…it begins…

Photo Challenge – One Love

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Photo Challenges1 Comment

The love and connection between a cow and her calf is ultimate. The mother cow will watch over her babe with earnestness and gentleness, fierceness and protectiveness. Should they become separated either by man’s choice to offer assistance, or regular maintenance or if they should become separated in the pasture, that mother cow will do everything in her power to get to her calf or to find her calf. She can in fact sniff the little fella out from a mile away or more as I’ve seen happen over the years watching these girls.
This same consummate oneness of love repeats itself as she continues to deliver us a calf year after year as long as she stays in the herd. Every calf she has becomes her One Love.

Calving Capers 4

On 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”….

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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 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.

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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 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.

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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

On 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.]

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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.

Market Optimism

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture, Domestic Animals, Photo ChallengesLeave a comment

In the waning days of Blogging 101 we are to select a wordpress event to participate in. Of course I would select The Weekly Photo Challenge. Because, that’s what I like to do…take photos!! We are to enter the next cycle of events. The challenge this week, commencing Friday January 22, is to depict an interpretation of “optimism”.

Our market calves….make me optimistic that the bills will be paid and that we will have female progeny to hold back in the herd to carry on production of calves…more calves ..always more marketable calves to produce delectable beef, to pay the bills….
Just a few days ago though, listening to their coughs and watching their lethargic behaviour, I was filled with worry and concern for their well-being and ultimately…ours! They were sick! The lot of them. They needed treatment fast!! Somehow a respiratory illness had started spreading through our herd and was affecting the young female calves the worst. Hubby and I rounded them up and for the next four hours sorted and vaccinated and bedded them down for the night and hoped and prayed we had caught the problem in time.

I took this picture the next day to support my happiness and ultimate optimism in the power of modern veterinary medicines we rely on to maintain the health and wellness of our animals. They look ready to take on the world!
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Love of Livelihood

On By colleengbergIn Agriculture1 Comment

I’m back in class again. Blogging 101 is underway. I have tried to get going with this course offered by WordPress more than once but this time I have no excuses. Assignment #1…Say Hello to The World. Well, since I’ve been writing this blog for a little over a year now…albeit, sporadically….I’ll just reintroduce my self and why I’m blogging.

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My husband and I operate a 300 head cow/calf operation in Alberta, Canada. Up until a year ago we both held off-farm jobs and still ran the ranch. After this past year, I still shake my head in wonderment as to how we did it. How did we care for all these critters as well as ourselves and children and the jobs that kept us constantly driving away from the ranch?

It is time now to enjoy our livelihood. We now can stay home together and care for these animals that mean so much to us. Thus the reason for this blog. I’ve always liked to journal life events and I am passionate about taking pictures to support those stories….sounds like the kind of stuff that makes a blog perhaps?

The simplicity and pure pleasure of rural life is what my blog Flicka Rancher is all about. The female perspective behind the life we live out here on the ranch.

 

Branding

On By colleengbergIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Being more involved with ranching duties means being involved with more of the unpleasant but necessary tasks. Like branding our replacement heifer calves. Hubby caught a shot of me working the brand on my prize tan heifer. I had picked her out as a keeper when first born. I love being able to identify her from the rest of the dark red animals in our herd. She’s one of those “pretty” animals.
  
So I was temporarily concerned about being the one to be applying her permanent mark….but then again….who better than I to be just a wee-bit more on the gentle side. I paid attention to rocking the brand with just enough pressure to evenly distribute the brand and after the few required seconds, I think I did a passable job. I was pleased that she didn’t struggle in the squeeze chute during the procedure. I’ll be less nervous about this part of the ranch chores in the future.
Branding is more important than ever now that the value of our animals is so high. This ensures our ownership is intact should we ever suffer loss or theft. We use an electric brand now that moves the process along so much more quickly and efficiently and humanely. In the past, using hot irons for each separate image on our brand…the L, the Z and the bar (-), would have required three separate applications.
The “girls” got a real treat after the branding session. They finally got out on grass from the pen they’ve been sharing for months. It’s such a pleasure to see them out on the range where they are meant to be.