Time for a haircut

For the cows that is...  The livestock shows are coming up in a couple of weeks.  This is Russ' final year of showing Dairy Cows.  First there is the Jefferson Davis Parish Livestock show in Jennings.  Then, the Southwest Louisiana District Livestock Show is in Lake Charles.  Then the Louisiana State Livestock Show is the following week in Gonzales.

One of the big jobs in preparing for the shows is grooming the animals by shaving off all their hair.  It seems a little cruel that at the coldest part of the winter, you must shave all the hair off your animals after they've put on their winter coats, but that is protocol.  Like any haircut, you want to give it a couple of weeks to grow out if you make mistakes, so that is why we're cutting two weeks prior to the Show.  We have to trim Rosie, Daisy, and Magnolia.  Here is a before shot of Rosie with her winter coat.  She has a red tinge as compared to Daisy.


Before the haircut

First Russ secures Rosie to the trampoline.  The buzzing of the clippers makes her nervous.  She especially doesn't like when we cut around her head and ears.  Tying her to the trampoline ensures that she doesn't run away when the cuttin' starts.

Tying Rosie down

And now Russ commences cutting.  When you do this you want to go in the opposite direction of the way the hair lays.  It comes off and flies all over the place and makes you itch.  The first thing you want to do when you finish this task is to go take a shower.


Clipping Rosie

This is a slow process, taking several hours.  It is sort of hard on the back, too.  It teaches you patience.  Russ and I would trade off with one cutting for a while and one holding Rosie and then switch.

Cutting off Rosie's winter coat

You really have to pull her skin tight around her "under-arms" and around pin bones and ribs to get a close cut.

Close clipper cut

You also must clip her udder and all around her teats, so you must be real careful.  You must stay on your toes as she swishes her tail and kicks when she's annoyed with the barber.


Finishing touches

Rosie is posing with her new haircut in the photo below.  This is the rough cut.  We have another set of clippers that cut closer and we'll use that to 'fine tune' the cut.  We did this on January 12th and it was 73 degrees.  So the cut was okay for that weather, but not for the near-freezing weather we have forecast in the next several days.  We'll keep them out of the wind and feed them some extra hay to help them stay warm.


Posing after the haircut

You can see all the hair on the ground after we were done.


Need to sweep up the barber shop now that we are done

When I was a kid, they would joke around with me at the barbershop that if I didn't sit still in the chair, the barber would cut my ears.  Well, it happened with Daisy.  She was moving around and very nervous due to the buzzing of the clippers and I nicked her ear.  She'll be okay, though.


Ouch!

We got Rosie and Daisy all clipped and started on Magnolia but the clippers either got dull or need adjusting as they stopped cutting.  We're going to see if we can get the clippers fixed in the next couple of days so we can finish up with Magnolia's haircut.