New Arrivals Daily

Calving season is here!

It is the season that might be one of the most anticipated events on our farm/ranch. Although it also comes without a lot of sleep for my dad.

First things first, we joined together to load up the heifers (the cows having calves for the first year) and transfer them from a pasture further away to one right next to my parents' house.

Dad doesn't get much sleep because day and night his job is to watch over the cattle to take care of them and their newborns. Since these cows have not had calves before, everything is new to them. Sometimes they don't claim their own calf, sometimes they have difficult calving, or sometimes they just up and forget they have a calf for a little bit.

Saturday a heifer had calved earlier that day while we were pulling posts from fence we had set up around CRP this summer. 

Ok...so maybe he was pulling posts and I was driving and taking pictures ;-)

Well, apparently later that day when the heifers were fed, the mom forgot that she had a new calf to take along with her. She ran to the food and left her calf alone to fend for itself in the dirt and wind. So dad called us for some help and we loaded up the adorable little guy and took her baby to her (and the food).

Hey, mom, you left me behind...where are you?

This last picture is one of the many reasons prairie dogs are horrible for us to have in our pastures. I actually hadn't ever seen this before, but had to take a picture when I saw a one-day old calf about to lose its front legs down in a prairie dog hole. If its legs did fall all of the way down in there it would be very hard for it to get out.

I'll keep ya posted on the calving progress and hope that all of you are hanging in there with all of the crazy weather around these days...be it snow, or rain, or hail, or tornadoes, or blizzards, or wind....hopefully it covers it all ;-)