Gotta Come up With a Plan B for the Cows

Last week when we were driving back from the hay field, we passed in front of the pasture and I had to stop the truck and get a photo of the cows.  They were all lined up in a row and looking right at us.  It was as if they were posing for an Olan Mills Family Portrait.  (Makes us sad Clarabelle isn't in the photo.)  In the afternoons, the cows like to meander over to the west side of the pasture next to the neighbors and relax in the shade.  Tricia and I were hot and sweaty from loading hay.  The cows were refreshed and rejuvenated in the green grass, shaded by pine trees.

From left to right is: Elsie (Clarabelle's heifer), LuLu (Rosie's heifer), and Rosie.  If you remember, Clarabelle was injured when the cows were going in heat and jumping on one another.  Cows' cycles are 21 days.  It is almost that time again.

This afternoon I contacted the neighbor that lives about 5 miles down the road that we always bring our cows to him to get bred.  Well... bad news.  He informed me that he sold his Jersey bull on the 12th of this month.  It was so darned convenient.  We'd mark off the days and when the cows/heifers were going into heat, we'd drive them down the road for their "date" and then pick them up.

We are frantically calling around, trying to arrange breeding with another Jersey bull.  So far the first call resulted in Strike 1.  The gentleman I called sold both of his earlier this summer during the drought and hasn't replaced them.  He did give us a lead and we'll be following up tomorrow on that lead as well as another.

Dairy bulls are not found in every pasture.  When our cows have bulls, we keep them around for at most two years.  They get real mean.  In fact, they injure/kill more farmers than beef cattle bulls.  When our bulls show the slightest signs of this ornery or bossy behavior, it's off to the slaughterhouse for them.

We will be on the phone tonight and tomorrow, trying to come up with a Plan B for how to get them bred.  We'll take Rosie and Elsie for breeding first and then two months later, we'll bring LuLu.  Hopefully we can find a bull that's not too far away!

Filling the Deep Freeze With Meat

In our post ON DECEMBER 20, 2020 we talked about bring our two bulls to be processed at Elliot's Slaughterhouse in Morse, Louisiana.  After being slaughtered the meat is dry-aged and then cut/processed according to the instructions we shared in the post from December.  They package, label, and freeze the meat and then call us to go pick it up.  My wifey made the short drive in the pickup truck and brought it home.

She actually made a couple of trips, first filling the deep freeze at our house and then filling the one at Russ' house.  Here are photos of the meat picked up and brought to our house prior to fitting it into our freezers.  The bags are huge!  It doesn't look like much meat, but it is.  Here is the ground meat, steaks, roasts, ribs, etc.:

Here is a big bag of bones:

Here is a big bag of fat.  (More on this bag tomorrow)

So, it is a shame that we don't have a scale to weigh the animals prior to slaughter.  That would really tell the story.  But what we have is interesting nonetheless.  

Clarabull, we estimate, weighed 725 pounds.  He yielded 284 pounds hanging weight after shrinkage from dry aging.  Processing cost $0.49 per pound.  The charge for butchering him was $75 and debris (liver, heart, tongue, ox tail) was $12.

Aussie, we estimate, weighed 775 pounds. He yielded 310 pounds hanging weight after shrinkage from dry aging. Processing cost $0.49 per pound.  The charge from butchering him was $75 and the debris (liver, heart, tongue, ox tail) was $12.

Total cost + tax was $486.35.  Taking the cost of processing divided by pounds of retail cuts of meat gives us an average cost of $1.14 per pound.

For comparative purposes, the cost of butchering back in 2017 was $25 and $0.43 per pound of hanging weight.  The cost of butchering this year (2020) was $75 and $0.49 per pound.

Now that we have almost 600 pounds of beef in the freezer from our bulls and 47 Cornish Cross Meat Birds in the freezer, we are seriously considering investing in a generator.  It would be a tragedy to have a power outage and lose that meat!  We have an addendum to this post tomorrow.  Stay tuned!

And Then There Were Two...

Now that Aussie and Clarabull are gone, that leaves only two cows left on our homestead farm - Rosie and Clarabelle.  For the past couple of years we've have five Jersey cows on our little pasture.  To be honest, that was a strain - a strain on us and a strain on the land.  By employing rotational grazing you can increase the number of head of livestock on a pasture, but we have learned that five animals is too much, especially when that pasture is also shared by a flock of goats and chickens.

Feeding time now is less of a 'rodeo,' trying to separate animals all trying to eat at once.  It is just the two old faithful milk cows, still bossy, but overall gentle and easy-going.

Both Rosie and Clarabelle should be bred.  We haven't had them palpated yet, but we're pretty sure that they'll both be dropping calves next year.  With fewer animals on the pasture, the carrying capacity will greatly improve, leaving more green grass for all.  Additionally, the animals won't eat the grass down as far to the ground.  This will reduce the parasite load and eliminate or greatly reduce the need for worming.  The pasture will be healthier and, as a result, the cows will be overall better conditioned and healthier.

Since November when we started feeding hay, the five cows and four goats were consuming a round bale of hay anywhere between 4 - 6 days.  Now, the bales of hay will last longer!  We buy a minimal amount of feed (just sweet feed - we buy no dairy ration when the cows are dry), but our feed bill will go down.  Overall, things will be more manageable, and for that, we are happy.

Pasture management is key.  We may like to think that we are raising animals, but what we really are, when you think about it, is grass farmers.  For the health of the pasture is what the health of the cattle is dependent upon.  This upcoming year, with fewer cows on the pasture, I want to aim to improve the health of the soil of the pasture so that we can grow better grass and sustain our animals.  I have got to figure a way to lime the soil.  

That'll be on the list for 2021.  I wonder how many other people have "Lime the pasture soil" as a New Year's Resolution?  Crazy, I know.

The Burn Pile - Hurricane Laura Edition

A full month and a week after the hurricane, I had a Saturday off where I could take care of some things that sorely needed some action.  We don't live in town so we don't have curbside pickup of trees and debris.  Or so we thought.  Tricia got word that they would be picking up limbs and storm debris for rural citizens.  We burned a whole bunch of limbs and sticks in the pasture, but we still had a bunch left.  Tricia and the boys had stacked a huge pile by the road in anticipation of the truck to come pick it up.  We waited and waited and waited, but it the truck never came.

Finally, we gave up hope.  I figured I would do it myself.  I backed up our truck to the pile and slowly gathered the debris into the bed.  I took the photo below after I had already picked up about half of the pile.  It took a long time.  I started around 9:30 and finished at 3:30. 

Despite not having roadside pickup of debris, I am still grateful to live in the country.  So many neighbors waved while passing by.  Others stopped to talk.  Just friendly country folk.  One neighbor rolled down her window to let me know she had just stopped by and put a bag of oranges and two bags of grapes "just to bless us."  I wouldn't trade simple, country living for anything.

It was such a beautiful day, I didn't mind working.  Not one bit.  I wish I had counted the number of truckloads I took to the back for burning.  Slowly, I began to put a dent in the pile.

Before too long, I was done!  The grass under the pile was dead from being covered by branches and leaves for a month, but it will grow back.

After the second load to the back, I set the pile on fire.  Despite being a little green, the fire roared, quickly consuming the leaves and branches.  Each time I would bring another truckload of sticks and limbs, I would dump it onto the fire and the flames would reach back up to the sky.

As the pile in the front of the house by the road got smaller, so did the pile in back of the house as a result of the insatiable appetite of the fire.  Pay attention to the Rubbermaid water trough lying on its side in the background behind the fire.  It becomes a central character in the rest of the story.

The nosy animals came to check out the happenings.  Each time I would open the gate to back the pickup truck in and unload yet another load onto the fire, the cows and goats would gather at the gate.  I had to be real careful to quickly close the gate or they would get out.  Sometimes the cows would sit right in the path of the truck, and I would have to honk the horn to get them to move.  Pay particular attention to the head of the bull in the bottom right-hand side of the photo below.  He plays another leading role in the story that follows.

On Saturday afternoon, the job was done.  I was tired, but happy. It is rewarding to finish a job of an honest day's work and see the fruits of your labors.  The fire burned all Saturday night.  By Sunday afternoon, all that remained of the pile was a heap of smoldering coals.  

Sunday night at 10PM I was turning off the lights to go to bed.  Something didn't seem right.  I looked out of the french doors and saw a huge fire in the pasture.  It looked like the barn might be on fire!  I yelled to Benjamin to meet me outside.  We both ran out in time to see flames leaping 15 feet into the air.  When I determined that it was NOT the barn afire, I thought it may be a ruptured gas pipeline.  It was burning with such vigor.

As we ran closer, we were able to identify that it was the Rubbermaid trough burning.  And boy, did it burn!  There was nothing we could do but stand and watch it as the flames lit up the surrounding area and thick black smoke filled the air.  We determined what happened.  Bulls, as they are apt to do, like to push and rub on things with their heads.  The empty trough is used as a feeding trough.  The other two catch rainwater off the roof for drinking.  The bulls had pushed the empty trough into the smoldering coals and it caught on fire.

Now we'll have to find another bucket to use as a feeding trough come feeding time!  Good news: the burn pile was gone.  Bad news: So is our feeding trough.  Oh well, it could always be worse.

  

When "That'll Do" Doesn't Do

In THIS POST from July, I put forward a tactic we many times employ of not necessarily going to all the expense, time, and trouble of doing things perfectly on our little farm.  Sometimes, a quick and dirty fix works just fine... and sometimes it doesn't.

In that previous post we showed how a Chinaberry tree fell across a fence that separate the bulls from our cows.  When it is not breeding time, we like to keep the bulls in the 'bull pen.'  There are just too much hormones and rough-housing going on to have the bulls together with the cows.  When the tree fell across the fence, it was hot, humid, wet, muddy, and I didn't feel like fixing the fence properly.  Instead, I got some tie wire (there is nothing that can't be fixed with tie wire, duct tape, a cheater pipe and a big hammer!) and simply tied the fencing to the fence post with the wire.  There.  Done.

Except it wasn't.  We arrived home from vacation and the first thing we noticed was one of the goats (Matilda) had wire wrapped around both back legs (she's fine now) and the second thing was that the bulls were with the cows.  They broke down the fence in its weakest point - where I patched it with tie wire.

This weekend I had to fix it right.  I did have a problem.  I got my come-along and tried to pull the hog-wire fencing to the post.  No matter how tight I pulled it, I couldn't get it to a point where I could staple the fencing to the existing post.  I thought of several options.  Should I put a gate there?  No, I don't need another gate.  Should I splice in some fence?  No, it would be weak, and I wouldn't be able to pull it tight.

I decided on putting another post in the ground, pull the fence tight to the new post and staple it.  Then I made a ladder.  It fixes my problem.  It is cheaper/easier than erecting a gate.  It provides a tight, strong fence, with quick access to the bull pen. 

I kind of like the gate fix/ladder.  Clarabull isn't enamored by it.  You can see him looking at it with disdain in the photo above after I moved him back into the bull pen.

Aussie will join Clarabull in the bull pen shortly as soon as we can either determine that the cows are bred by seeing them NOT come into heat during their cycle, or if we decide on having them palpated to confirm pregnancy.  Aussie is staring at the new ladder, too, possibly scheming the next jail break.  I don't think they'll be able to break out again.

The Escape Artist

Here is the door to our barn.  We always keep it closed and locked as we don't want the hens scratching around in there.  We'd rather them be out on the pasture searching for worms and bugs.  The only time we open it, of course, is when we bring the cows and goats in for feeding and milking.  In the evening, it is a real rodeo in the barn.  Rosie, Clarabelle, and Luna come in with Aussie and ClaraBULL following closely behind.  Then Buckwheat, Annie, and Oreo come in, followed by Oreo's kids, Salt and Pepper.  That's a lot of animals in the barn, but it is necessary.

In the afternoon, once the animals are fed, we escort them all out except for the two bulls.  They stay locked in the barn at night so that the cows make milk all night for us.  We don't put them together with their moms until after we've milked them.

We mentioned back in March that Annie, the Nubian goat, had figured out a trick.  She turned into a goat version of "Pop-A-Lock," using her nose to push the latch upward to enter the barn.  In doing so she allowed the bulls to escape during the evening and drink up all of our milk.  Imagine our surprise to go out to milk in the morning, only to find that their udders were empty!

IN THIS POST BACK ON 03/31/2019 I posted that I had discovered a goat-proof 'fix' for the latch, but I never explained what the fix was in detail.  As I moseyed down the aisle in Tractor Supply, I found a latch invented especially for nosy goats.  Here it is:

It's a little fancier than the original latch.  As you'll notice, the new latch has a clip that falls (using gravity) and effectively locks the latch in place.  One must lift the clip with your thumb and push upward in order to unlatch it.

As crafty and clever as goats are, they don't have thumbs and/or the coordination to perform the two-step function of opening the latch. 

At $7.88 per latch, it is a little more pricey than the normal latch that we originally had on the barn door, but the new latch quickly pays for itself once you consider the value of the milk we were losing due to Annie's escape artist routine in which the bulls were sprung free to drink up their momma's milk.

Problem solved.  Now if we could only find a fool-proof rat trap, we'd be in business!

The Electric Fence Grounded Out - Solved It!

As we drove into the driveway from church today, I looked out in the pasture and saw our two little bulls, Junior and Astro.  They were in the wrong paddock.  How in the world did they get through the electric fence?  Two strands of electric fence, actually.  The animals have been trained (by being shocked) to be fearful of the electric fence.  They normally keep their distance, but today, they went through the fence like a hot knife through butter.  Either the charger stopped working or the fence is grounded out somewhere.  I had to find it.  I went to the drawer that holds all my fencing materials and picked up my electric fence tester and headed out to the pasture.

My normal course of action is to walk out and trace the entire electric fence, looking for a place where I can find that the 'hot' wire is touching the fence wire, or a t-post, or maybe a limb has fallen across the hot wire, grounding it.  As I started walking toward the perimeter fence that runs north and sound and then east and west, I noticed that an oak tree in the neighbor's yard had fallen.  It is a water oak tree, one that is susceptible to borer beetles and rot.

This could be where the problem lies.  I walked closer to the downed tree.  You can begin to see the cross-fencing.  Oh, no!  Did I have a big fencing job today that I wasn't expecting?

Fortunately, the tree didn't fall across the fence, but fell against it.  The fence was still intact and standing, but we needed to investigate further.

As I surveyed the scene closer, I think I can spot the problem.  The treetops poking through the fence appears to be pushing through, perhaps touching the hot wire.

Here is a close-up shot of the problem.  This is just one of many places where both branches AND fence wire is touching the hot wire.  In these cases, the fence is "grounded out," and this results in the electrical charge going into the ground and not down the fencing.  This is precisely why the bull calves were bold enough to go through the electric fence.  No electric charge to pop them.

I had also brought an ax out with me and I began to chop all of the branches that were pushing against the fence, throwing them back across into the neighbor's yard.  With more chopping, the fence began to be free of all of the branches causing our problem.

At last the hot wire that runs along the perimeter fence was freed!

One last thing to do.  I hooked up my tester to see if the fence was conducting a charge.  Yes!  All five lights were flashing, letting me know that the problem was solved.

I put the bull calves back where they belonged.  They'll test out the fence soon enough and will be shocked (pardon the pun) to discover that the fence works again.  They'll once again build a healthy respect for the fence and stay where they are supposed to stay.