Next

The cows spent the summer at our neighbors munching down his 8 acres of weeds.  We brought them home last weekend and so instead of giving 9 cattle 3 flakes a day, just so they know who their parents are, we went up to 1 bale of hay a day.  

The sheep had to get used to sharing space with the cattle and figure out how to get around the electric fence now that it's charged.  One of the steers is a real dummy I have decided to name  him Next!  He wandered under the fence the same place the sheep go under and then wandered the property mooing the other cattle would answer him and he wouldn't go to them he just kept mooing like he was lost and no one answered him.  Normally I just open the gate and the cattle that are out just walk right in.  Not Next, he charges the fence on both sides of the gate.  I end up letting out a cow to show Next how to walk through the gate.

Next isn't in this picture.

Next has decided he will not share hay with the sheep so he gets food protective and pushes the lambs away. 

Not here either.

 He isn't a fan of sharing with the other cattle either he wanders from flake of hay to flake of hay any time another cow joins him at his flake.  

Today we moved the cattle to another neighbor's flower field.  Stick Boy and I set up the temporary

electric fencing in the space the neighbor wants cleared.  We made a narrow ally for the cattle to walk from our property to the neighbor's field without eating of the flowers that are currently growing.  I was so confident that this would work I didn't even wait for Darling Husband or College Boy to come home.  Instead Stick Boy and I got the help of 4 neighbor boys 6-10 years old only 2 speak any English.  What can go wrong?  

I get some hay and convince the cattle to follow me from one end of our pasture to the other and part way to the gate to the neighbors.  About half way to the gate the older cows that have been on this trip the last 3 years saw where we wanted them to go and took off running.  The snapping of the electric fence and those brave boys kept the wonderful girls in the ally I exactly how I wanted them to go.  The bull wasn't as sure of this adventure so was a little slower.

The gate all the cattle needed to go through.

  Just as Mooney, the bull, starts to go through the gate Next freaks out and pushes Mooney so he goes to the left of the gate and around the corner.  Next careens along the fence line not even looking at the tree he almost crashes into.  Mooney runs frantically at the fence crashing into it then he joins Next.  They start running up and down the lower fence but never going as far as the gate.  I work my way around the foolish animals and convince them to go toward the gate.

 Just as Mooney starts to look at the gate and start waking that way calmly, Next decides to chase Luca, who until this point had been a good dog and watched the craziness without adding to it.  Now Luca starts barking at the completely confused cattle and they all run the whole length of the bottom of our fence two times before I convince Luca he isn't helping.  I get the boys to stand along one side of the gate and Teen Daughter comes to help me calmly walk Mooney and Next toward the gate. 

 The boys worked perfectly moving just enough to convince the steer and bull to look at the gate where the rest of their herd was happily eating. 

 

Mooney 

Rolo

Cows and Cattails

The problem with being a hobby farmer, having 5 kids, being married, working, having animals, having property, having kids, having property, going to school, animals, and did I mention having animals is EVERYTHING takes time.  I love almost everything we have in our life and wouldn't give it up but between time and money we often are a little short on being able to do everything we want to do.  Pond maintenance is one of those things.  

In 2012 we had a wonderful adventure getting all the cattails out of the pond and dredging it.  It was expensive but well worth it.  We used a dump truck to haul the pond muck and cattails into the pasture hoping the Lowline Cattle we had on loan at the time would eat the cattails.  

Since then we have tried to keep the cattails under control by pulling them by hand, wrapping ropes around them and dragging them up with a forklift or tractor, and even tried to get the cattle to eat them (http://cluelessranching.blogspot.com/2014/10/feeding-cat-tails.html).  Nothing has worked.  

 The cattle spent the last 2 months in  my neighbors pasture until they found a weak spot in the fence.  I have some temporary fencing on order to move them to another neighbor's house next week, then they will probably spend most of the summer at another neighbors.    

I need to repair the fencing the cattle belong in but I am waiting to do it. We all hope that by the time they come home we will have time and money to fix the fences right.  Right now I am letting the cattle wander around the property.

Today I came home and decided I LOVE my cattle!  

Yes they are eating the cattails!   

Crazy Ruby isn't willing to get her feet wet.

September and Porter

Introducing

Aprils heifer September

And

Ruby's steer Porter.

The calves were born September first and September second.

In the beginning September was much more energetic and curious while Porter was content to hang out with his mom and the other steers.

When the calves were about 2 weeks old we moved them to clean out a neighbors flower field.

Of course September had to check the fence in several places.

Yes it is shocking.

Electric Fencing

Electric Fencing

The advantage of being a modern farmer is the ability of using electric fencing.  With zip ties, a few posts, a car battery, solar power, 2300 feet of wire, and a willing neighbor; we can save our neighbor from having his pasture mowed and our cattle are happily fed.  

I continued to feed the cattle fodder while they were in this pasture because it was so dry.  Fortunately we were able to stop buying any hay for  8 weeks while they were in our neighbor's pasture.  

I am adding the video below because often people post a video of poor cows that were released from being butchered and the cows are skipping and kicking their feet in joy.  

These cattle are 1 year old to 14 years old and are in a new pasture for the second time this month showing the same joy.  

Tree Fodder

We are always searching for ways to cut down on our feed bill.  Luckiy we have a lot of trees on the property.  So every few days I like to cut a couple branches of the trees. 

 The cattle LOVE certain trees and just nibble on others.  Eucalyptus trees are fast growers and the animals love to eat it.  It also has the advantage of seeming to be a fly repellent.  If I can give the cattle several branches of eucalyptus every few days I don’t worry about flies causing problems for the cattle.  The problem is Darling Husband and I have 2 very different styles of cutting trees. 

I like to cut 1 or 3 branches and give that to the cattle every couple days.

  Darling Husband wants to cut a couple big trees and not have to do any cutting for another month. 

In November I convinced him to buy me a small battery powered chain saw and I happily trimmed trees for the last 2 months trying to cut the trees so that the trees would be more bushy along the property line so our neighbor doesn’t have to look at the storage area on the property or just getting some of the trees trimmed nicer. 

I have gotten to the point that there are only a few trees for me to cut that my little chain saw will go through so I have been asking him to cut the bigger trees down so that when they grow big again I will be able to cut those branches with my little saw.  2 weeks ago we cut down several trees that were not giants and the cattle and sheep were in heaven for about 5 days.  This weekend I was determined to have Darling Husband cut one of the mammoth trees down.  This would provide food for the cattle and cut a tree that looked like it was forming a crack and I felt if we cut it down we could control it’s falling. 

Styx likes to play in the sticks as his mom eats near him.

Darling Husband was reluctant.  I said fine! I went to cut one of the small trees that I can cut.  Darling Husband heard that Fine! And thought he better cut a big tree.  Wonderful Husband cut the tree I was hoping he would cut then we started cutting up the branches to give to the cattle. I picked up a branch to throw over the fence, the branch didn’t budge, I realized my foot was on the branch so I lifted up by foot while I was still pulling on the branch and BAM

Darling husband and I had a nice Friday night Date in the local Emergency Room.  I scratched the retina of my right eye with a eucalyptus branch.  

Escapees and New Pasture

I spent a day working on getting the electrical fencing around our lower pasture put up.  We moved the cattle into the lower pasture it doesn’t have very good grass but it needs to be mowed and the cattle are great mowers.  We are still giving them fodder and hay so their nutrition stays up.  They will have about 2 weeks in this pasture then we will move them into the corner pasture (hopefully) and then back to their regular pasture. 

Unfortunately something is wrong with our portable charger.  So all the work we did putting the electric fencing around the fence was for nothing.  One of the neighbor’s kids left the gate open and the cows walked right out one afternoon, thank fully another neighbor saw her and put the cow back in. Then last night as Darling Husband and I were getting ready for a date we got a call.  Rollo was out.  This COW and her son are problems!  

 

Weed Eating the Driveway

The grass in the pasture with the cattle isn’t growing because of no rain and too many cows eating it.  The grass is growing along the driveway, so we decided to let the cattle graze it one day. 

Watching the cattle isn't such a bad job.

  We have a gate on the top of the straight away but not at the bottom so we used the cars. 

We also tied 3 of the sheep along the fence.  They enjoyed eating all the fresh grass.  

 

Egg using the truck as a scratching post.

Hope making sure my chair is safe to sit in.

Thanksgiving Break

Shrew on her last day.

Shrew picking a fight.

We bought a turkey The Shrew to replace our female turkeys that had been eaten by the coyotes.  The Shrew was a nasty mean bird who killed a baby turkey and would pluck the feathers off of any bird she could get near.  We decided to butcher her for Thanksgiving.  In the weeks leading up to butchering time I watched a lot of Youtube videos on how to butcher a turkey.  Finally the day arrived and Teen Son, his friend, and I got to work.  We hung the shrew upside down slit her throat and let her bleed out.  Plucked her and then cleaned out her insides.  It was not as bad as I worried it would be.  2 days later we cooked her for Thanksgiving – she was tough but delicious. 

The Shrew was a nasty bird and she was only 6 lbs it's a lot of work but not horrible.

Part of the Thanksgiving gathering.

 We went to a friends for Thanksgiving.  We had a wonderful time and stayed after dark and the sheep were still out.  When we got home we all went in different directions to find the sheep, feed the cattle, take care of the dogs, put the cats away, take care of the fodder.  We found the sheep near the top of the property and they were feeling full of piss and vinager jumping, skipping, and running.  The sheep ran down to the sheep pen then turned and charged the fence to the cow pasture.  The cows didn’t like the sheep running towards them so they charged the fence.  Our young heifer, April, didn’t stop in time.  

April eating happily after she recovered.

The spot where April got stuck.  The new silver is an old gate we "fixed" the hole in the fence with.

We have a telephone pole laying against the fence and she slipped over the pole and against the fence and ended up trapped on her side between the pole and the fence.  It was 9: and very dark, the wire cutters were not where we thought they were the other cattle were mooing and stomping around us.  I turned the flashlight on my phone and held it in my mouth and got the hay and fodder to the rest of the fodder while Darling Husband took the good flashlight to find some wire cutters, and Teen Son tried to keep April calm.  Finally we got the fence cut and April free.  She refused to eat and walked with a limp but she didn’t seem hurt otherwise. 

Getting the sheep used to Tessa.

Every day of Thanksgiving Break we worked with the dogs and sheep.  Our sheep love to run and dogs even Livestock Guardian Dogs love to chase.  Luca is a really young dog to be trusted with the sheep.  Tessa a young Anatolian Sheppard is intense.  She likes to follow them at a distance of 30 to 50 feet and they like to run so she kept them running.  Every day we would put Blackwell, Hotrod, and sometimes another sheep on leads and the Guardian Dogs on leashes and walk first one dog then the other.  After a couple hours we walked the sheep without the dog on a lead.  That worked great until we added 2 dogs.  When Thanksgiving Break ended we were able to allow both dogs and all the sheep to free range.  It is so nice when things work.

A silly Pielbuey

The sheep have anywhere on the property to go so why are they stealing the cattle's food?