Dilated and making bag,
first-calf heifers choose to graze,
closer to our familiar voices
over morning coffee. Perhaps security,
or our loving pride they feel
long distance as we imagine
a pasture full of calves clinging
to a mother’s shadow, the buck and run
as they get older like the thirty years
before them. We begin another season
of grass with rain, with feeding hay
ready to face the future with them.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2024, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, Calving, family, first-calf heifers, photography, poetry
I’m watching black heifers
on dry blond grass
mill around water, salt and mineral —
slow motion contentment,
they have begun
to move like cows,
bodies thickening,
they plod deliberately
towards the open gate
to the near hills where
tall feed waves
for their attention.
I imagine turning the virgin
bulls out in ninety days,
the teenage antics,
the final settling of the seed
and the cash-flow we’ll surely need
twenty-one months from now.
Posted in Photographs, POEMS 2023, poetry, Ranch Journal
Tagged autumnal equinox, first-calf heifers, photography, poetry
Though not short of feed in the flat below Terminus Dam, we keep plenty of alfalfa hay in front of our replacement heifers this time of year. The old feed is mostly filler without much strength and we want our yearling heifers to continue growing and be in shape to cycle when we turn the Wagyu bulls out three months from now. Protein licks and balanced minerals are also available.
In addition to the yearling heifers on the flat are some first-calf heifers bred last year to Wagyu bulls. Close enough to keep an eye on, all this special attention, (I’m afraid we spoil them), will help with the health of these coming first-calf mothers. It’s what we do before our rainy season begins, that time of year when it might rain.
This photo was taken Monday, September 16th as the clouds rolled in, confirmation of our second weather change of August, based on a thirty-day cycle.
Posted in Photographs, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, cows, first-calf heifers, photography, weather
I’ve lost touch, deaf
to the muses, immune
to the need to wrestle
words into a gravid line:
heifer down
with a dead calf
too big to bear—
winch
prolapse
bullet
to feed the coyotes
and golden eagles.
Our fuzzy recollection of the sire
through the wire
surrounded by a milling herd
of virgins for a day—
thick-necked brute
whose dreams came true
how many times?
No romantic whispers
in the breeze, acorns
and oak leaves falling—
we feed hay,
look for trouble
and pray for none.
October 29, 2015
There is much to envy
cows content with fate,
grass at their feet, shade,
water, friends close—
no one preaches more
nor promises relief.
They’ve left irrigated
green for dry ground,
tall, brittle stems
fold beneath bellies
growing with calves
for the first time.
Under sycamores,
112° churns,
burns on a breeze
out of the south,
too hot to find
the open gates
to their new home
as mothers nursing
new life, new love,
devotion on the fight.
There is a place they go
if need be: head low,
blood in their eye,
red swirls in brown
pulsing towards crimson.
They will learn
to bellow and bawl,
shake and salivate
and come to the call
of others, like family,
within 45 days, well
before the vote
and victory dances
beyond this world.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2016, Ranch Journal
Tagged first-calf heifers, photography, poetry
We know the ones up-close,
go looking when they’re missing
from the bunch lined-out on hay.
Most girls like their privacy,
find draws of rock and brush
that feel good, secure apart
from any other day. It changes
them, this first motherhood—
some find the carriage of a queen.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014, Ranch Journal
Tagged Calves, Calving, cows, Dry Creek, first-calf heifers, photographs, poetry, Wagyu X
Early morning gather,
we occupy the foreground
close to corrals, the road,
a truck—short April grass.
Sort cows from calves—
weigh, wean and load
for fifty years since
they dammed the Kaweah
with another layer of man
we no longer notice
as we adapt like livestock
to the landscape.
Posted in Photographs, Poems 2014
Tagged Drought, first-calf heifers, Kaweah River, photographs, poetry, shipping cattle, Terminus Dam, Wagyu X, weather
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.
drycrikjournal 