Nick Goes Home

Nick is a Jersey Bull that we've "borrowed" from some friends down the road.  He had a very specific job to do and that was to seduce our Jersey cow, Rosie and our two Jersey heifers, Elsie and LuLu.  Exactly four weeks ago today, we picked him up and brought him to Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  He is a big dude and he's not halter broken.  My immediate concern was, "How in the world are we going to load him back up in the trailer when it is time for him to go?"  We don't have a corral or loading chute.  It might end up being an adventure - or impossible.

We're kind of "fly by the seat of your pants" folks.  I just thought that we'd deal with that problem when we had to deal with it.  First things first - we had to get our three animals bred.  Cows have a 21 day cycle.  It's been four weeks.  We see no more 'activity' so we're thinking the romancing is done.  But here's the thing: We saw evidence of the two heifers going in heat, but never Rosie.  Even with the heifers in heat, we never Nick and our cows consummate their relationship, if you know what I mean,  but, we weren't watching 24/7.  There was programming on a TV network Nickelodeon a long time ago called "Nick at Nite."  Perhaps Nick was amorous at night, hidden from view.  We hope so.

So today we had a window of time between morning and evening worship service to load up Nick and bring him back home.  How was this going to work?

We backed the cattle trailer to the gate and opened it up, chaining the gate to the trailer, so there was no way for him to escape.  Then I got a bucket of sweet feed to coax him with, because everyone knows the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

Nick was very suspicious.  I opened an escape door in the back of the trailer and then walked backwards with the bucket, luring him to the open gate.  Slowly, slowly...  I got him to where he got his front two feet in the trailer.  Benjamin ran up from behind to shut the back gate in back of him.  Ol' Nick figured out what was up and he backed up in a hurry.

I'm not one to give up easily.  This time I led him with the feed and let him get a good taste of the molasses-laden sweet feed.  He liked it!  I pulled it away and walked into the trailer, setting the bucket in the very front.  I walked out of the side gate of the trailer and waited.  Nick jumped up in the trailer and Benjamin slammed the cattle trailer gate closed.  Got 'em!  Nick was not happy that he'd been hoodwinked.  We fastened the gates shut with ropes and began the ten mile drive back to Nick's home.

Three ladies bid Ol' Nick farewell.  They'll miss him, but it'll mean more hay and feed for them.

A cows' gestation period is nine months, so we'll hopefully have three calves somewhere around August of 2023.  That means we'll be milking again in September.  C'mon Nick.  I hope you did your job and our cows are carrying.

Introductions are in Order

In three days, it will have been 10 years since we first started this blog.  Where does the time go?  A good friend of our daughter suggested it might be a good idea to introduce the animals on Our Maker's Acres Family Farm.  What a great idea!  Over time, we've talked about each one, but it is a stellar idea to introduce each of them with a short bio.  

We live on a five acre piece of land with 3 acres in pasture.  As we introduce the animal family, you'll have two revelations: #1 That's a lot of animals on a little bit of land, and #2 These are some truly strange people!

Here.  We.  Go...

Here is Ginger, also known as "Gingivitis" or "Fat Cat."  She is an outdoor cat who loves to hunt.  We'll find the remnants of birds, mice, rats, moles, squirrels and various and sundry varmints that she occasionally leave us on the door mat.  Experience has taught us to look before we take that first step.  I'm not a 'cat person,' but Ginger is allowed from time to time to come inside.  

This is Belle, or affectionately known as "Bellie".  She is a Great Pyrenees Livestock Guardian Dog.  The name sounds helpful, but Bellie is a work in progress.  As it turns out, she eats live chickens.  Guarding them is a lofty goal as she's turned out to be the "fox" in the henhouse.  Literally.  She loves to roam and dig gargantuan holes wherever she goes.  She is a sweet dog, though, and we are trying to teach her, patiently, and overlook her shortcomings in hopes that she can be rehabilitated from her wayward proclivities.

This is Rosie, or Rose Ethel, as we sometimes formally address her.  She is a Jersey cow.  She's getting up there in age - about 13 years old.  She's given us many calves and given us gallons and gallons of fresh milk.  She does not like hot weather.  In the summer, she can be found lying in the shade, panting.  Like a pig, if she finds a muddy spot, she's not above lying in it and getting herself filthy.  She's gentle, as most Jersey's are.  

This lady is Clarabelle, or Clarice, for short.  She's also a Jersey cow who is about 10 years old.  She's a sweetheart.  We have been milking her everyday for the last year and four months.  We just dried her off.  She gives A2/A2 milk which is highly sought after.

May we also introduce you to Elsie.  Elsie is Clarabelle's heifer.  She's quarantined in a separate pasture as we're weaning her.  If allowed to be with Clarabelle, she'd nurse her, so she stays by herself.  That's why she looks forlorn.  The rest of the animals are just on the other side of the fence and we do put the goats in with her to keep her company from time to time, although she and the goats aren't fluent in the same language.

This little lady is LuLu.  LuLu is Rosie's heifer.  You may be wondering about the contraption in her nose.  It is a weaning plate.  The plate keeps her from nursing on Rosie while we dry Rosie off.  The plate doesn't hurt her (other than her feelings, perhaps).  She is industrious and figured out the first day how to continue to eat grass with it.  In a month, we'll loosen the wing nut and pull it out.  

We are watching the cycles of Rosie and Clarabelle.  When they go in heat, we'll mark the calendar and bring them down the road to be bred by a registered Jersey bull.  Late this fall or early winter, we'll bring Elsie and LuLu down to be bred by the same bull as they'll be of breeding age by then.

Meet Annie, the Nubian goat.  She's a dairy goat, originally from Africa.  Despite being black in color, the heat doesn't bother her.  She's the oldest goat on the farm and has given us many kids.  Her momma was Nellie, our first Nubian we ever got.  Goats multiply almost like rabbits since they lots of times have twins or triplets.

Here's Matilda.  We call her the "opportunistic one," because she'll always find a way to sneak stealthily into the barn and clean up any sweet feed the cows left behind.  She's fast.  Poor girl just lost both of her kids during kidding.  They were her first kids.  

This fellow is named Buckwheat, or Buckster, for short.  He's our Nubian buck and is quite a prolific gentleman who has fathered more animals than we can count.  He uses his head as a battering ram.  He also stinks something terrible!  We try to keep our distance from him.  He has an impressive beard.

This doeling is named Kaleidoscope.  We call her Callie, for short.  She's named appropriately for her multicolored face.  She's Annie's kid and was a bottle baby, since Annie had mastitis.  She cries incessantly for a bottle whenever we see her and like to jump up on you and get right in front of you when you're walking.   

May we introduce you to Mocha.  She's named for her light coffee latte colored spots that cover her body.  She's Agnes' daughter.  She and Callie are besties and they run around all day getting into all sorts of mischief.  If I had that energy, I tell you what...

Here is Popcorn, or Poppy, as we call him lots of times.  He's named that because when he was just a little guy, he'd jump around just like popcorn in a hot skillet.  He is the only other male ruminant on the pasture other than Buckwheat.  

And the last member of the goat family, Agnes, or "Horned One."  She was picked on mercilessly by the other goats when she was just a kid.  We did not de-horn her.  Now, despite her small stature, her horns have enabled her to gain prominence and now she's the de facto boss, exerting her will, by ramming the others with her horns.  The others have paid a steep price for their earlier bullying of her.  Agnes has never forgiven them.  She can be a mean little momma, for sure.

We have more chickens that we can name, so we call all the hens, Sally, after Sally Henny penny from Beatrix Potter stories we read to the kids when they were young.

And finally, here is Sally and Sally putting in a hard day's work at the office, laying fresh eggs for us.  Happy hens, to be sure.  It's a good life.

And there you have it, the animal family that make up the menagerie at Our Maker's Acres Family Farm!

Cows Back on the Farm

We've had cows on the farm in Oberlin far as long as I can remember.  My grandfather always had them and Dad kept the tradition going.  After a calf crop we'd bring them to the Sale Barn in Kinder.  It is a good way to create a very modest income stream coming off of the farm.  This past year the fence around the pasture fell into disrepair.  The cows were always getting out on the road and Dad would get calls from the Sheriff's Department regarding cows on the road.  It is a dangerous situation as cars hitting a 1000 pound plus animal is never a good thing. 

We sold our existing herd and for months the pasture grew grass almost neck-deep with no cows to eat it.  There was no bovines loose on Cottongin Road.  No moo's to be heard.  That changed two weeks ago.  Dad and I decided to go in halves on a much smaller herd - 16 momma cows, to be exact.  They are all black cows - two year old heifers that are five months pregnant.  After Christmas lunch, we drove out to the farm in Oberlin to look at 'em.

They were all bunched up, eating grass, when we came upon them...

They stared at us, curiously, with grass hanging out of their mouths.

All sixteen cows were in the pecan orchard.  It was planted by my great grandfather many years ago.  The old family homestead was located directly behind where the cows are standing.

The cows are all fat and conditioned well.  The grass in the pasture has been burned by the freeze, but underneath the top layer, it is still green and full of nutrition for the cows as they prepare for delivery in four months.  I mentioned they are all black cows - two of them are baldies.  I like the way this one holds her head high with pride.

And this one has a white face with black circles around her eyes.

It is nice to have livestock back on the farm.  In the Spring, hopefully we'll have 16 baby calves on the ground.  Spring calves are a joy to behold as they run around the pasture with tails in the air.  Currently, electric fencing powered by a solar charger keeps the cows where they should be.  We will have a work day or two to fix the fences so that we don't have to worry about cows out on the road.  Where's the Beef?  Well, it's back on the farm!

"Weighing" Luna

Luna, our little Jersey heifer, was born in late October 2015.  She is small in stature. We have a registered Jersey bull named "Chuck" on the herd, but we have had Luna separated from him until she was big enough to safely breed.  Chuck roams with Daisy and Rosie and Clarabelle.  We recently had our veterinarian make a farm call so that he could palpate the cows.  We found that Chuck had successfully bred both Rosie and Clarabelle.  Daisy was still 'open,' but we saw activity during Daisy's last cycle and think she was exposed.  Hopefully she is now bred.  We'll have to wait and see.

Here's the thing: Chuck is getting big and is starting to get mean and ornery.  He likes to hit you with his head when you walk out in the pasture.  Jersey bulls can be very dangerous and we don't want him on the pasture for much longer.  Our goal (and why we named him Chuck) is for him to breed all of our cows and then send him to the slaughterhouse.  This leads us back to the subject of this post - Luna.

As I was saying, she is small.  Tricia is concerned that she is too small to breed.  The only way to know for sure is to weigh her.  Since we don't have a scale, we use the next best thing - a weighing tape.  This tape has weight markings on it for Holsteins, Guernseys, and Jerseys.  The Jersey markings are the markings on the bottom row. If you look closely, the verbiage along the bottom says, "Lightest Jersey Breeding Weight."  The black line says that the lightest weight for Jerseys is 530 pounds.

You are supposed to put the weighing tape around her body right behind her front legs.  Then put the tape together and the weight is where the tape meets.  In this case, we see that Luna weighs 550 pounds.  She is 20 pounds heavier than the lightest Jersey breeding weight.  Although she is small, according to this, she can safely breed.

This is good news to us.  At some point next week, we will likely put all the cows and heifers together on the pasture.  The next time Luna comes in heat and if Daisy comes in heat again, Chuck can service them.  If successful, we'll have four baby Jersey calves within the next year, some coming as soon as in about 5 months.

Luna has been cordoned off it her own pasture up to this point.  Now that she is of calving age and size as confirmed by the weigh tape, we can introduce her to Chuck.

The little heifers are growing up!

If you remember, back on September 18 Maggie gave birth to her little heifer that we named Lili.  A little less than a month and a half later, on November 1, Rosie delivered Amy.  After about a week of allowing them to nurse on their mom's at will, we began sharing the milk with them.  We try to separate them from their moms so that we get the milk when we want it and then give the little girls what's left over. There is plenty to go around.

We've experienced success in the past with this arrangement, but with these young uns, we're having trouble. After milking out the mommas at 5 am, we allow the calves to nurse on their moms and then we put them in a separate paddock than the moms, so we can get afternoon milk from Daisy.  The thing is with these girls, they go from mom to mom drinking milk.  In the past, our cows would only let their own calves nurse, but not with these girls.  They seem to go from mom to mom drinking milk.

Lili (on the right in the photo below) is well-behaved.  Amy (on the left) sees herself as some sort of a Houdini.  At around 4 o'clock she'll get hungry and start moo-ing.  Somehow she's figured a way to get through 3 strands of electric fence and get to her mom and will empty out Daisy as well.  There is a device I've used in the past that you attach to their nose that hinders their ability to nurse.  It works pretty good, but past calves have figured out ways to pull it out.

This device is used for weaning.  The problem is, we're not ready to wean them yet. Weaning is a big step. When you wean them, then you must milk the cows twice a day, every day.  This definitely limits your movement as you must be home every morning and night to milk.  Ah, the travails of a dairyman!

Amy and Lili (growing like bad weeds!)

The picture below shows the 3 strands of electric fence the Amy gets through.  All the strands are 'hot.'  In fact, the other morning I accidentally brushed up against it with the milking bucket and it popped me - hard! I screamed out loud.  The photo also shows Amy with her tongue up her nose.  What a neat trick!

At 4 pm, I'm bustin' this joint.  Alcatraz can't hold me...

I have a goat halter on Amy's head right now, but I'll soon have to purchase a couple calf halters as I intend on halter breaking them before they get too big to handle. These girls are registered Jerseys and if they are like their Mommas, they'll be good milk cows.  Our current plans are to let them grow for a bit and then sell them.  Our little 5 acre farm is just not big enough to maintain any more animals than we currently have. 

They sure are some cute little heifers!