Bringing in the Babies - The Idaho Rancher's Wife

Weekend Adventures in Locomotive: Part I

March 24, 2018 by Allison

** We had a fun filled weekend with loads of stories. In order to share them all, I’m going to post them in a three part series. Keep an eye on the blog to get the whole story!

When you can’t take vacation because work on the ranch is true crazy, you find a way to take a working vacation. For us, something like that looks like a weekend in Locomotive to camp out while keeping an eye on the cows. Work on vacation, sounds like win to me!

In past years, the only time that we have camped out with the cows in Locomotive is when they needed extra looking out for. Those times are rare and only happen when it’s so cold and so snowy that we have gathered in the herd to feed and watch the calves through the cold nights. I always felt bad admitting it, but I loved it when we would head down and camp with the cows. I didn’t want to hope or wish that we have some time down there camping because that would be wishing for the cold, lots of snow or poor calving and I couldn’t wish that upon The Rancher.

But this year, somehow, someone saw the light and realized that things do have to be so bad down there for us to go camp out for a few days!

Our story of weekend adventures camping in Locomotive starts on the trip down. Adventure lies not only in the destination but in the journey too, right? In this instance, it’s a resounding YES. Let me set the scene so you can fully grasp the exhausting-ness of this night.

We had already spent the day at the Carter Cattle Co. bull sale in Pinegree, Idaho. And while we hurried to eat some lunch, buy our bulls, settle up, load up, do a little PR with the different ranchers and bankers and such, it was a long day. I had intended to have done some packing and prep work in the camp trailer the day before but that just hadn’t worked out. That meant as soon as we got home we had to scurry to get everything ready. When I say we, I mean me, of course, because The Rancher had chores to do outside as well as to hook up to the camp trailer, load up the gator, and hook that to the camp trailer.

Can you imagine the long list of things that we needed to check off before we could head out? And of course we had to get it all done NOW because we had to stop to get propane at the truck stop before it was too late.

Now, let’s add to the frenzy of getting ready, the kids hyped up for the adventurous weekend ahead of them. They were so pumped and jazzed about the whole thing that they were just bouncing off the walls and begging to take the most random things in the camp trailer (all while forgetting the important things, like underwear and socks…). There came a point they were just too much and I kicked them out to go find their bikes (… still trying to decide if that was a good mom moment or not). To top off the chaos and tension you could feel from all the excitement and stress, the baby was running a fever and all he wanted was to be held. To be more specific, he just wanted his dad to hold him.

I’ll admit that is was stressful getting ready to go- packing bags for everyone, packing food, getting enough bedding, grabbing towels and cooking supplies… and, of course, I forgot stuff. I do every time I go somewhere, I swear… (Ask my sister-in-law, she is always shipping me something after I have been to visit their family!)

But we got on the road.

Finally.

The sun was setting and it was dark before we even got 10 miles down the road. Not biggie, we thought. Sure it will make things a little more challenging, but we could handle it. We made it to the truck stop, figuring it would only take a few minutes to top the tanks off and get back on the road. But we were wrong… so wrong… It seemed everything we tried to do went wrong or took more time that it should have.

As we pull to the back of the station we saw a truck and flatbed trailer parked in the middle of the truck parking lot. There was enough room to move around him, but not enough room to move around easily. Of course he was right in front of the propane tanks, making it especially hard for us to get where we needed to go. With his mad truck driver skills, The Rancher managed to sneak us in to get filled up. After three trips into the store to get everything right, we were filled up and ready to go, except for the truck in the way. He had bottlenecked everything and there was a line of semi’s we had to wait to get where they needed to be before we were finally able to make our wait out.

So now we are stressed, sick, excited, and anxious, with lingering feelings of frustration but on our way.

Phew.

Then I realized I forgot the hot dogs and the roasting sticks. Curses. (I had plenty of food packed so we didn’t starve, we just didn’t get to have our roast out… bummer)

The trip was uneventful as we pulled our haul down the squishy, gravel road to our corrals in Locomotive. We were getting close to our turn off and I was thinking that things were all settling down when something on the road looked off. It was just after the cattle guard and I couldn’t quite tell what it was until eyes started shining back at us.

Cows! Black cows, all over the road, lingering and meandering SLOWLY in the middle of the dark night. The Rancher hit the brakes and I silently prayed that the bump wouldn’t be too bad and that we could keep going. Ya, I didn’t even think we would manage to avoid smashing into a cow. You can imagine how a truck towing a 30(ish) foot camp trailer and another 16 foot trailer with a gator on it would be hard to stop or maneuver through cows dotted across the road. By the grace of heaven, a loud horn and good trailer brakes, The Rancher got us stopped and the cows scooted off the road.

Curses! Heart racing, breath holding curses! And then, phew… We refer to those moments as butt-pucker-moments, if ya know what I mean!

I’m starting to think that getting to where we are going can’t happen soon enough but I know that in reality, the hard part was still ahead of us. We had no idea what the road to the corrals was like. It could be fine, but it could also be laden with slimy, greasy, squishy mud and that we would have to park it for the night somewhere else.

We turned off the road and I held my breath to find that the road was surprisingly ok. Not great, but not enough to stop us from going on. We made it through the first gates just fine and continued down the road until the road started to look more like one huge puddle than a road. The Rancher figured that driving along side of the road instead of on it would be a better option at this point and we began off- roading. It really was a good idea because there weren’t any puddles or greasy mud and the grass helped us have a little traction as we made our way across the range.

Our progress was slow but steady and then suddenly The Rancher said, “Uh, oh…” and gunned it. It didn’t take a genius to recognize that we were about to be in trouble. And just like that we sank. When I say sank, I mean sank clear up to our axles. We sank so deep we didn’t even attempt to get out. We sank so deep that when The Rancher stepped down out of the truck there was no down part of it.

Curses… again …

I started convincing myself that we would be fine to camp out here for the night and just deal with it in the morning. I was figuring that my attitude was a good-take-things-as-they-were type of attitude but in retrospect, I was probably just ready to be done with the night. The Rancher, the great problem solver that he is, jumped into action and made up a plan.

To our benefit, and ultimate salvation, the backhoe was at the corrals and we had the gator hooked on to the back of the camp trailer. So The Rancher could jump in the gator, drive up to the back hoe, drive it back down, and finally pull us out of the mud hole that swallowed us. With this being the only real plan we had, he took off down the road leaving the kids and I in the truck waiting. Now, being the God-fearing, religious woman that I am, I didn’t let this moment escape without gathering my babies close and offering up a prayer that everything would work out to our benefit.

It seemed to take FOR-EV-ER (channel your inner “Sandlot” as you read that) but soon enough we saw the lights of the back hoe approach. Yahoo! He made it.

But now, to get pulled out.

I was dreading this moment because I would either have to be in the back hoe yanking on the trailer to pull it out or in the truck feathering it just right as I attempted to steer the truck out of the mud and avoid getting deeper in trouble all while in the dark when I couldn’t see anything except from the lights of the back hoe.

Yikes…

My lot landed in the truck (which was honestly my preference of the two undesirable choices…). My only instructions were to wait until I could feel the jerk of the back hoe and then give it just enough to drive out, without spinning my wheels deeper in the mud. I put the truck in reverse and waited for the jerk. As it came, I began to let off the clutch and slowly push on the gas. To my immediate relief and total surprise, we were moving! I had figured there would be some finagling to get out, but before we knew it, we were out!

The Rancher looked at me and said, “It should NOT have been that easy!” We will take it! And by it, I totally mean the blessings of answered prayers. We loaded back into the truck and made our way to the corrals, following the tracks the back hoe had left as The Rancher made his way back to us earlier.

The rest of the night seemed ordinary after so many other high emotional moments. We made it to the corrals, got cozy in the camp trailer, and managed to warm up some dinner (leftovers never tasted so good!). The beds seemed a little cozier and sleep came quickly after such an eventful night and we were ready for an exciting day come morning.

Calves on the Ground

February 28, 2018 by Allison

Calving 2018 is well under way here at Eliason Livestock! The few weeks before we start calving, I get all sorts of excited and just long for those cute, cuddly babies to be born. There is just something so exciting about new babies! Everything from their wispy tails to their soft noses to their wobbly legs screams “SNUGGLE ME!”

Of course their mommas are sitting behind them, snorting up a storm saying, “Get back before I eat you alive!”

Its not really like that. Too often at least. And in some regards, we like it when mommas are protective. Its their instincts teaching them how to mother and protect their calves. Them being a little feisty is better than them ignoring their calves completely!

For the longest time, we thought that we would be calving in the most ideal weather. January couldn’t’ have been more perfect- warm (ish… for Idaho at least), no wind, no rain or snow… But good things never last, especially when it comes to weather. Within a week of our first calf hitting the ground, we’ve had storms roll in, temperatures hit the single digits, and the wind blowing like it was going out of style.

So what do we do for the cold?

The Rancher takes a lot of time to prepare the pen that the heifers calve in. The pen itself is on a large hill which is so great for naturally protecting mommas and babies from the wind. On top of that, the guys push the dirt and poop around to make hills for additional wind breaks. Right up against the breaks and in a few other places throughout the pen, they put out straw for a dry warm place to snuggle down into. Then to top it all off, we have a few calf sheds that are a perfect nursery to keep the calves warm and dry.

So long as it is dry, we can do a darn good job at keeping the calves warm. We only really have to worry about them getting cold in the first few hours after birth. Naturally, those babies are wet when they come out. So naturally, they are going to get cold. Of course, their mommas help them get warm as they clean them up. A belly of warm milk goes a long way too, to getting warm from the inside out.

Once in a while, those things just aren’t enough to keep a baby warm. So we go in and scoop that baby up to bring it into the warmer. Its amazing how just a few hours in the warmer can perk a calf right up!

Calving in the winter is hard but we hope for the best and plan for the worst. Instead of waiting for the bad to happen, we try to be prepared and proactive to give our calves the best chance possible. And then we watch and hope and pray that we can make up the difference when it just isn’t enough.

Momma-Cow Turned Momma Bear

April 5, 2017 by Allison

Before we moved to the family ranch, we worked our way through college at few different ranches. Of course nothing compares to working your OWN ground or your OWN cows, but we still had some great times and some great memories on the operations we were a part of. Once in a while a story comes to mind from those days and we have a little fun reliving those good times. Every year when calving season comes along, there is one story that always comes up. One of those remember-whens that you actually don’t want to remember.

Any rancher will tell you that a momma cow can instantly turn momma bear real fast. A cow that seems perfectly harmless suddenly becomes anything but as soon as you lay hands on her baby. And really, who can blame her? I think that sometimes I turn into a momma bear when I have sweet little babies, and they aren’t even getting tagged!

But… Even if I do relate to them, sorta, that doesn’t mean they need to eat my husband for lunch!

Actually this story was before we were married. Even before we were dating. I was in the midst of my sophomore year of college and my only sanity was heading up to my brother’s near Salmon, Idaho. He had my horse, cows, and a population of about 50 and it called to me after long hard days of school and work and SO many people. Ironically, I didn’t have a car (probably a good thing or I would have spent all of the money I didn’t have driving up there all the time) and I had to convince friends and roommates that we should take a trip up to the ranch to have a little R&R.

It was on one of these weekends that I met The Rancher. He was doing his internship up there, partially in an effort to avoid the school work and people like I was. Truth be told, I had no interest in him at first. I had sworn off boys because they just caused frustration and heart ache. Cows and horses, on the other hand, only caused frustration. I was determined to take advantage of the little time I had on the ranch and soak in as much fresh air and get as much poop on my boots as possible. To that end, I got brave, and asked The Rancher if I could ride along with him to check cows on his late night watch. Being the player he was at the time (haha…) he shyly agreed and I hopped in the truck.

For the most part, it was uneventful. There was a calf or two born. We tagged them, gave them shots, wrote it all down and moved on. It was cold and bumpy but it was fun. We went out checking for a few nights and it was all the same every night. Until we found one of those momma-bear momma cows.

This brilliant momma, had decided to have her calf in the snow. Something not all that conducive to life if you were just born and wet and cold. We had been checking around the different fields and found this cow exactly where she shouldn’t have been. Labor does strange things and apparently with her, it made her want to climb through a few fences and birth in the privacy found in the wheel-line stock pile. Not knowing that she was calving or had just had a calf, we drove over to get her back in where she was supposed to be.

The Rancher hopped the barbed wire fence, figuring it would only take just a minute to get the cow back in her field. That’s when he saw the baby and plans changed. Getting the two of them back was totally on the back burner and keeping the calf alive was all that mattered. The momma was loving on him, but he had yet to get up and out of the snow. So being the nice guy that he was, The Rancher grabbed a leg and started dragging the calf out of the snow.

It only took a second for that cow to turn momma-bear. For all she knew, someone was messing with her baby and she wasn’t going to have any of that.

Now put yourself in my shoes, or rather my seat. Here I was, sitting in the front seat of an old, beat up ranch truck, riding around with a kid I hardly knew. He was across a barbed wire fence, through drifts of snow and there was a momma cow about ready to have him for a midnight snack.

What was a girl to do?

It was dark and the only light was from the poor headlights (calling the headlights as poor was a compliment!), and he was far enough away I really couldn’t see well enough to know what was happening, just that things were getting a little (or a lot!) intense over there. But, was he ok and wouldn’t need any help? Or was he only seconds away from broken bones and smashed insides? Was there even anything in the truck that I could use to help him? Should I risk life and limb for this kid? I could see myself jumping out of the truck, slipping a time or two as I trudged through the snow, getting tangled up in the wire fence as I tried to cross it in the dark and finally make it to him only to find everything ok and totally unworth my efforts. Or I would do something embarrassing like fall on my face in the snow or rip my pants on the barbed wire…

So I just sat there.

Heroic, I know. But before I made a move, I wanted to know what that cow had in mind. It didn’t take long for her to prove that she meant business. She took off straight for The Rancher, covering the 10 yards between them in seconds. At this point all I could do was pray. Pray that he got out of there in time. Pray that she changed her mind. Pray that even if she did get him, it wouldn’t be too bad. Pray that he wouldn’t need mouth to mouth…

It must of worked because just as she was about to him, a snow drift popped up in front of her and she dropped to her knees. It was the few seconds The Rancher needed to get clear of the calf, sail over the fence, and finally take a breath!

And then, to be terribly honest, I don’t remember much that happened next. I know we had other cows and fields to check and so I’m sure we just moved on with the night. The Rancher might have been a little more weary and a little more spry in case any other mommas had a little bit of momma-bear in them.

Reliving that story every year always brings new things to light, like how The Rancher was actually grateful for the chance to look so brave and he was a little sad that I didn’t need to give him a little mouth to mouth… I, on the other, hand, am just glad that he managed to survive that night so we could have our life together now. Do any of you have a good momma-bear story?

Spring-time Babies

March 22, 2017 by Allison

Is it spring at your house yet? We are nearly there out here on the ranch. I couldn’t be more delighted! There is such an energy with spring. Its full of potential! Everything is just so fresh and new. New crops, new flowers, new leaves, new grass, new weeds (for a minute they can be pretty!)… And of course new babies!

Ya know, I figured out why we have new babies in the spring. I’m sure its Mother Nature’s way of giving us a little something cute while the pretty-ness isn’t in full swing. We are right in the kind of ugly spot between winter and spring. The snow has melted, but all we can really see is the gray-ish brown and brown-ish gray of the fields and hills. The creeks have that muddy murky look to it still and even the sage-brush is looking a little more dull.

The green is coming, you can see it struggling to pop through the bland vista. But it still needs a good shot of warm sun and spring rain to really get going!

That’s why I thinking the cute babies come to distract us from the ugly in between season. Because really, who can’t smile at a cute baby?! Ok, I recognize that it isn’t the real reason babies come when they do, but its an added bonus for sure!

In ranching there are a lot of different calving seasons and its all dependent on what that rancher expects from his calves. In Montana where I grew up, there were a lot of ranchers that switched over to summer calving because it was so much easier calving in the non-sub-zero temps. I don’t blame them for not wanting to go check calves during those long and cold Montana nights. There are seed stock ranches that push their calving as early as they possibly can, to give their bulls just a little more time to grow and mature before they head out to the pasture to breed.

At our ranch, we take the late winter, early spring approach. Early enough that they sell well in the fall and we don’t have to keep and feed them all winter long, but late enough we miss most of the cold and snow of winter. Of course, crazy things happen and sometimes winter drags right on through winter, but for the most part, this plan has worked well for us!

I couldn’t let this calving season slip by without taking the camera out and capturing the cuteness and sharing it with you! I almost caught one baby as it was just being born, but that momma was camera shy and kept running away (I don’t blame her!). Even without those play-by-play shots of birthing, there was still so much see and love with those new calves.

I love the little kisses and licks from mommas. I love the tired sleepy calves nestled in the straw soaking up the sun. I love watching the calves running and jumping with their tails up high. I just love all the babies!

Weekends at Locomotive

March 17, 2017 by Allison

One of my weekend highlights is always heading down to Locomotive. There is something about the wide open and empty range that soothes my soul. And maybe its just because I love getting away from the house work and cleaning, but I’m pretty sure its more than that.

Working down to Locomotive isn’t anything crazy exciting. We all pile in the gator and drive around checking the water and cows. We tag a few calves here and there and we make sure every baby has a mama. Until the snow melted, we took some time to dump a little hay around. Every once in a while we find a baby that has been abandoned, usually they were a twin, and we bring them home to the ranch with us. After we give everything a good once over, we load up and head home.

See? Nothing crazy. But I love it!

I love it when my kids get to spend time with their dad. What better way to learn how to be a rancher than to see their hero do it. They ak question, jump in to help, and soak it all in. Its a chance that they have to disconnect from the world that is happening around them. Even as little as they are, they can still get sucked into the tv and computer and what not. But when they are out on the range, they are in a whole different world of their own making. In seconds they can find adventure.

I love it that we can go somewhere and its almost like time stops. The rush and hustle of life just disappears. That is something precious when you are a mom that lives by a never ending to-do list that keeps you hopping from job to the next. Somehow, the list doesn’t matter out there.

I love it because we can just be ourselves. There is no judging that I didn’t put makeup on that day. In fact, if I did, it would only get covered with the layers of dust so no one would see it anyway! The cows don’t care what clothes you wear. They don’t care how rambunctious and rowdy the kids are. We can just rock it how we like to!

Everyone needs a place like Locomotive. Somewhere that they feel safe and at peace and totally confident. Somewhere that provides a little perspective when we get so consumed with what keeps us going from day to day. Somewhere that when we go home, we feel a little stronger and ready to take life on again.

In this crazy world, that can be hard to find.

Where is your “Locomotive”?

Expanding the Herd

December 8, 2015 by Allison

With all the preg checking done with for the fall, we look to be having a great calf crop on its way. The heifers are set to begin dropping calves towards the end of February and the cows to start shortly after that. As always, March will be a busy month for us, but that’s ok… Springtime babies are so fun!

The cows won’t be the only ones to expand their herd in 2016. You guessed it- our little ranch family is expanding by one! As any good ranch wife would, I’m due to calve right with all the other cows the beginning of March. The Rancher has already said that it will work out great to check the cows and check me all at the same time. That comment only got him a swift kick in the pants!

We are delighted to have a another little cowBOY on the way, something that The Rancher’s Sidekick has known from the beginning. Before we even knew pink or blue he was telling everyone that he was going to have a new baby brother. The Ranch Princess is loving the prospect of a baby around the house and tells me everyday that my tummy is getting BIG. Thanks…. The Rancher is excited too, but I see it only through his comments of me being in good shape for calving or that he will be sure to bring the chains along the way to the hospital, just in case. And of course I am excited, and terrified all at the same time. What if The Rancher is in the middle of pulling a calf when I need to go? Who is going to do night calving while we are at the hospital? What if he gets stuck in Locomotive were I can’t call him? Ya know, normal pregnant wife concerns…. When I try to get some answers out of my cowboy, he just says that I don’t really need him anyway and it will all work out.

He is right, it will all work out… Somehow it will all workout…

So Many Calves, So Many Tags

March 20, 2015 by Allison

Having tripled the number of cows that are calving on the ranch that means we get to spend a significant more time tagging. And if we don’t spend a good chunk of tagging every day the number of calves needing tagging really piles up. In fact, we did have a few days pass by where we didn’t get to the tagging, which meant The Rancher and Rancher Sr. spent nearly the entire morning getting caught up.

The hard part isn’t necessarily that there are so many to do. Yes, it takes more time from their day, but they just expect that in the midst of calving and tagging season. What really stinks about missing days of tagging is that the calves get bigger and faster in such a short time. If we get to them within the first day of being born, they don’t really take off or aren’t too fast on those new legs. But give them a few days and they get a little stronger and a little wiser and take you for a chase! I tease The Rancher that its the best way he gets his running in. If he really wanted to go running so bad, he could just come in the mornings with me rather than letting the calves get too old. As you can imagine, he just rolls his eyes at me…

Tagging for us is pretty simple. With the heifer calves, we match the momma’s number to the calves. That’s mostly because they tend to forget which calf is there and need a little help (I’m so funny…). But its helps us to make sure everything is pairing up ok. With the older cows we are tagging the pure bred calves with an orange tag vs the sem-angus cross calves with a black tag. We differentiate which ear heifers and steers get tagged. Just a few things for us to see about the calf when we look at it. They all get their first round of shots and then the boys get castrated with a rubber cheerio.

When I write it all out like that, it seems like a lot more than what we do in reality. It only takes just a minute. And that sure is a good thing with so many babies and so many tags!

Late Night Babies

March 16, 2015 by Allison

Life would have it that whatever crazy that could happen, will happen at just the wrong time. I mean, we all live a life with Murphy stopping in for a visit. Some even have a spare room for Murphy… Calving always brings good ol’ Murphy along for a stop in, but fortunately for us it hasn’t been too frequent!

Really our calving is going great! (but now that I have spoken it out to to the blog world we are doomed, I’m so sure…) These first time mammas are doing terrific. There is always an occasional issue of one heifer trying to claim another but that’s easy enough to handle. And not too many have needed help birthing. Only a handful have had calves big enough that the cowboys have stepped in to pull it. And then all of the babies are doing well to jump up just as soon as they splat on the ground. We really can’t complain.

But there are those couple of times of craziness that keep us from letting our guard down. There was a freezing, moonlit night that particuarily comes to mind. It was a cold night, but I’m sure that it seemed so much colder because as late as it was, I was all so cozy and ready for bed. But every calving season we need one bed time calf pull.

The Rancher had gone out for a meeting just as dinner was ending, promising it would be quick- only like a half hour or hour at the most. I knew better but it wasn’t a big deal because I would just put the babies to bed and have some time to myself. The kids bathed, we cleaned up toys and settled in the chair for some stories before bed time. It didn’t take long for sister to fall asleep and I was left to snuggle with The Rancher’s Sidekick. We had just finished Curious George when The Rancher came home, two hours later! He said a quick hello, grabbed his flash light and headed out again, this time on the 4wheeler. It was his week for the late check, so it wasn’t a big deal. It turned out to be a big deal when he came right back home. A check that quick means something is up and required icky clothes.

My suspicions were confirmed when I heard him on the phone calling Rancher Sr. asking for help to pull a calf. The heifer had started before he had left and it had been long enough that it was time to get the calf out. Of course she would need to be pulled just after I had pulled on my pjs and was minutes from getting The Rancher’s Sidekick to bed. But the ranch girl in me wouldn’t miss a chance to help. So we bundled up, pjs and all, to help dad pull the calf.

Getting the heifer in the maternity pen proved to be an issue of itself. They generally go in pretty well when they can see where they are heading, but getting them in during the night has its own issues to be dealt with. Just imagine a cow in labor running while you chase her having only a spotlight to help you see all while still trying to drive the 4wheeler… fast… When the chase gets that intense, I opt to sit out because experience has told me that The Rancher can get a little crazy. I choose life, thanks… I think that they traipsed across the heifer hill so many times that they hit all for corners, nearly went out the gate, and then finally made it in.

Looking at the heifer we were pretty worried because things did not look normal. There wasn’t a bubble showing or feet poking out. It just looked weird. Lucky for us, everything was going fine but it was just a huge calf. A LUNKER of a calf. After some intense pulling and pushing and groaning (from the cow, not just me) we had a baby. Having babies of my own has made me quite sympathetic and I think that every time I watch those heifers calve I push right along with them. Its tough work!

The happy arrival of this baby heifer wasn’t the end of the night. Yes this story had a happy ending, the momma licking the baby and baby struggling up. But while The Rancher and Rancher Sr. were getting this momma in, they noticed another calf. A hardly licked off teensy baby without a momma. Abandonment is not really conducive to survival. Kinda common sense, but not all heifers have it. We buzzed around what seemed like forever until we found who we figured was the mom. We tried chasing her over to the baby. We trying just letting her go over to it herself. We tried getting her into the maternity pens. And all she would do was run. If it were me, I’m pretty sure I would park myself and not move- going for a run after birth doesn’t sound good to me! But this cow had something else on her mind and just did not want to take care of her calf.

At that point there wasn’t a lot we could do but wait and see. The calf was in a good place for the night so we opted to let them play things out and we would just keep checking in on them. We headed into the house to thaw our frozen cheeks. Come morning the darn cow STILL hadn’t claimed her calf. And with the morning came more attempts to get her in and get the calf on her. At that point we opted to just take the calf and put her on the milk cow.

Now why couldn’t all of this craziness have happened in the sunshiny day rather than the freezing night? I dunno… There must be some sort of quota those cows have to fill of keeping us up in the night. On the plus side, at least we only had to go out once. And we got to finish Curious Gorge before our wild night began!

Bringing in the Babies- The First Look of the 2015 Calf Crop

March 11, 2015 by Allison

There are so many babies at our house! I love it! In fact, I almost don’t know what to do with myself… Actually… sadly, I haven’t run out to frolic with the new babies as much as I would like. But I still get to drive by them every day and see them enjoying the hot sun. Occasionally I’ll get the privilege to run through the cows to check for any newbie (that really means that everyone else is gone and I’m the all they got to keep an eye on things.. HA!).

And when I do go out I grab the kids and the camera and we enjoy a few minutes in the nursery. There are a few fresh babies we have found, some very protective mommas that we have kept our distance and lots of cute squeals from my babies about the new cuties!

A Herd of (cute) Baldy Calves

April 16, 2014 by Allison

Our herd consists of mostly black cows. That’s not really as surprise since we run black angus cows. But every once in a while I wish we could have a red one or a nice gray. Just to change things up a little, ya know? Its really not likely to happen unless we strait out buy one. Its just not in our gene pool.

Something that we do have thought, are some darn cute baldy face calves! So we can’t have a little extra color in the herd, but at least we get a little white face here and there. Not to long ago we bred our heifers to some hereford bulls (they are red with a white face). It seemed like we didn’t get a single baldy calf out of those batch of babies. Maybe the genes just needed to flow down a few generations before they started to show because these days we have a nice little herd of baldy faced calves.

We weren’t cross breeding just for the looks, if you can believe that. There is something awesome that happens when you cross breed. Heterosis. Instead of getting what you would think is an average performance of both breeds, you end up getting increased performance. The strengths of both breeds come out!

And in this case we get an extra bit of awesome in the cute calves. I’m not sure why, but don’t you think they have an extra bit of cuteness to them? (Should we count how many times I said “cute” in this post?!)