While changing my water on the irrigated pasture this morning, I was met by last spring’s hatch of young turkeys coming out of the riparian of Dry Creek to have their breakfast of bugs on the pasture. Though I never saw a tom, I watched a couple of hens that seemed to be nesting last spring. This is the first successful hatch on this portion of Dry Creek to my knowledge. The thick riparian jungle should offer ample cover in the years to come.
Posted in Photographs
A welcome weather change with high temperatures dipping down to 78 degrees yesterday with a low this morning of 49. If you look closely or click to enlarge the photo, you may see the Shadequarter Fire lookout Station.
Posted in Photographs
Not an insignificant weather change yesterday as we caught the tail-end of a northern storm, dropping temperatures ten degrees or more to clear the air with blustering breezes, clouds stacked along the foothills and a little rain in the Sierras. Typically too early for rain to help our country as the germinated grass seed won’t survive our warm fall days, but we’re tickled nonetheless for the change. I did see my first Bald Eagle this morning that apparently came south with the storm. I don’t recall Bald Eagles showing up so early, this one in the top of a Valley Oak watching some Teal on our irrigation pond. The heifers above were coming into the feed ground this morning, as a few clouds still trail the cold front. Beautiful day!
Posted in Photographs
Feeding somewhere everyday around the house, we occasionally get a hawk’s eye view of home.
Posted in Photographs
After a week in Madera before and after her Mom’s back surgery, Robbin wanted to see a different landscape when she got home yesterday. And having missed 20 some-odd head when I fed Paregien’s on Thursday, we decided to make another pass through those cows, put out some mineral and the last of our supplement tubs while getting another count this morning.
At the Ides of September with a half-waxed moon, the calves have begun to come. This fresh one hidden, not moving a hair, doing exactly what he was told while mama came to greet us.
Portrait of a four year-old cow not too far off from having her third calf.
Our cows are in pretty fair flesh for the moment, but as they calve they’ll lose much of their fleshy look, compounded further with having to nurse a calf. Feed and water is short after our dry spring, and though we tend to understock our pastures, we will have to keep plenty of hay in front of these cows until it rains. We’re currently feeding 25 lbs. of good alfalfa per head per week, but I suspect we will be doubling that in October. As E. J. Britten used to say, ‘You can’t starve a living out of a bunch of cows.’
Posted in Photographs
2013 National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Wrangler Awards
Posted in Photographs
Checking on our first Wagyu X calf Tuesday morning, I could see from the gate a considerable flapping of black wings beneath the hillside oak tree where I left our new pair with a couple of flakes of hay the day before. My heart sank, then rose again as the calf seemed to come alive beneath a dozen Ravens hopping, vying for position over the lifeless black lump with an empty hole in its abdomen, the heifer standing off to one side.
The Ravens had either badgered the calf to death early that morning or late the evening before while the heifer was away getting a drink or it died while its new mother was off with the other heifers grazing socially. In either event, the new mothered suffered from what I have recently acronymed as IMI, insufficient maternal instincts.
Looking back, I had sensed it from the beginning. Beyond the monetary loss, the two-year investment to get a live calf on the ground, it’s always terribly sad and disappointing to lose a calf, but its part of the cow and calf business. The heifer passed the fertility test but failed as a mother, for whatever reasons. In our selection process for replacing older cows, we strive for genetics that can raise a calf and make a living on our native feed. She’ll go to town this spring when she is fat.
As part of the Age & Source verification process, we keep track of the birthdays of our first and last calves. Yesterday’s number 2 heifer (Tag # 2068 above) is now number 1, August 28, 2013.
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