In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Clarence and I put the Wagyu bulls out to the heifers yesterday morning. They arrived early Tuesday from Snake River Farms in good shape, but we fed and let them rest before putting them to work anyway. As an answer to the often asked question as to what a Wagyu bull looks like, I’ve included some photos. These are yearling heifers and yearling bulls. And the cycle begins again.
Having pulled the Wagyu bulls on February 8th, Monday and Tuesday we moved the first-calf heifers with Wagyu X calves up the hill where there’s more dry feed, after sorting off the heifers that are open or haven’t calved yet from our Angus clean-up bulls.
The Wagyu bulls were with the heifers for 80 days, providing 70% live calves as of today, one born dead and three unaccounted for. In the range of 3%, more than likely these MIAs fell prey to coyotes or the young Golden Eagle that hangs close by. Some of these heifers may have misplaced or forgot their calves, as the three mothers without calves are still wet, nursing someone else’s calf. In the mix with the numbers, the Wagyu X calves tend to be milk stealers, much more persistent than straight English calves, that also contributed to our MIAs. But all in all, we’re pleased with the percentages from our two year-old heifers.
Our remaining heifers have already begun having Angus calves, fairly easy to differentiate from the Wagyu X. When we brand the Wagyu X, we will tag and take a nasal swab of each to send to Snake River Farms to confirm what we think with DNA testing.
Douglas Thomason, Robbin, Zach and Clarence – November 13, 2012
I ran up into Paregien’s yesterday to put mineral and salt out to the cows, plus look for the hay hook I lost somewhere the day before. Found these two instead along the road.
The coyotes are with the cows almost everywhere I went, waiting to catch a newborn calf alone. The cows told me where two of the three less were.
Posted in Photographs
With the increasingly lower angle of the sun, October brings fiery color to the foothills, longer shadows crisp with contrast as well as a welcome relief from the summer heat, persisting, this year, with 90+° into its first week. As the angle of the sun also drops below the brim of my hat, I notice renewed impacts to my face.
But aesthetically, it’s one of the loveliest months of the year, and psychologically positive as it precedes our rainy season and the beginning of green grass through winter and spring. With rains too early, the new green fades with the heat before the next rain arrives. Typically, the first of November is ideal for our first rain, and our best chance this year, based on the Farmer’s Almanac and my own forecasting methods, looks to be the 11th or 12th of November.
But October is a tough month on cows, two-thirds of which have calved in the last sixty days. The flat ground, where we watch and keep our first-calf heifers is short, but with access to ample dry feed at the higher elevations. Supporting calves for sixty days draws the heifers down despite supplementing with alfalfa regularly. Even in our upper pastures, both young and old cows tend to be thin. Furthermore, everyone and everything is on the acorns including deer, bear, feral hogs, woodpeckers, turkeys, Mallards, Wood Ducks and quail, a diet that keeps cows thin, and changing, I suspect, the pH in their digestive system to make efficient conversion of the dry feed more difficult. Moreover, the acorns seem to have an addictive quality. Bottom line, October is not a month to show off your cows.
October is a month of tough choices, also. Whether to feed more hay, or not, as we make our rounds in the upper pastures, will require more physical work, more time and money, more fuel, and wear and tear on the 4-wheel drive. But supplementing after the cows have gotten thin is often too late, especially if the rains don’t arrive on time, so we watch the weather patterns closely. Anxiety can be high, but not near the panic level as in November and December without a start to our new feed.
October is a transition month in the Southern Sierras, and we are there.
Posted in Photographs
Alta Peak & Morro Rock- October 25, 2012
Just enough snow to see the elephant on Alta Peak (11,208′) with Moro Rock (6,735′) in the foreground, redwoods of Sequoia between them, from the Top in the Greasy Creek watershed @ approx. 2,000′.
Posted in Photographs
Rabbit Flat – Top Greasy
Buckeyes – Rabbit Flat
Great Western Divide – October 24, 2012
Posted in Photographs
Dry Creek Canyon
Showy Milkweed – Greasy Creek
Big Yellow Mushrooms on Tree – Sulfur Shelf (Laetiporus sulphureus) – Dry Creek
Sulfur Shelf (Laetiporus sulphureus)
Spanish Flats
Robbin and I fed the bulls, plus the yearling, first and second-calf heifers this morning under a partially cloudy sky, hoping for rain tomorrow and/or Tuesday.
Posted in Photographs
October 16, 2012
FERRUGINOUS HAWK
I round the rock pile bend in the dirt road
where he waits atop a different oak tree
than yesterday, checking heifers calving
on uneven ground. He lets me try again:
a bigger lens to capture his assurance
as I edge closer, slower than a cow
but easier than a bobcat in squirrel town.
He knows me better than I know him
Googling photographs of hawks. Come
for a warmer winter than Alberta, he
owns the sky and the short-cropped flats—
pile of pigeon feathers in the horse lot.
for Dave
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2012
With a delightful overcast clinging to the foothills after our first showers of the season, I went up into Greasy to check the rain gauge to see if we received enough precipitation to start the grass there. Brisk and cool, I knew I’d see something else ‘out and about’ yesterday morning.
Usually when we see wild turkeys, they are leaving. Pleased to see this bunch, part of the same flock of turkeys we saw at weaning and photographed again on August 22nd in this journal, they were unabashed as they took their communal dust bath.
