Necessary Vaccinations

I will get to the title subject in just a minute, but wanted to post a fun picture first. I met with my doctor yesterday and, now that I'm less than a week from my due date, her nurse gave me specific instructions to put my feet up and rest. It seems my dog received the same instructions :-)

 

I might not have done exactly what the nurse said, but I did make sure I did the least amount of work today that I could. We have had some calves in our herd getting sick and have actually lost one or two. That is somewhat rare for this time of year. There are a couple more now that are sick. Now, this is where I get fed up with the "Chipoltes" of this world. In their high and mighty view, animals that do not receive any vaccinations or anything of that nature are better for us to eat.

Well, in my rancher view, do I want to see a sick calf and just sit there and stare at it as it suffers and drags through the hot summer days to probably die later from something I could have helped prevent? I don't know about you, but the choice seems fairly obvious and any medications are out of their system LONG before they even approach the time to be sent to the market. Even if the calf would survive without any intervention, during the time it was sick it would drastically lose weight and muscle because of its inability to eat and digest the nutrients it needs to grow. A sickly calf is not a pretty sight and might also fall behind the herd and have to die all alone.

So, this morning we gathered the cattle into the corrals. In order to get them from one pasture to the other and not have them scatter and run through our yards and gardens, we like to implement what my dad refers to as the "Redneck corrals." 

 

They work pretty well and it is much easier to drive multiple vehicles into place than haul panels by hand and possibly take hours to get them set. 

Once we got the cows sorted from the calves, we ran the cows through and gave them a quick dose of fly spray. The flies this summer are horrendous. I would guess each cow carried at least 200-300 flies on its back. Can you imagine having those blood-sucking pests on you day in and day out and not having any way to get them off of you other than a tail that isn't long enough to reach them?

Next we ran the less experienced calves through the alley-way and chute. They had been through the alley only once before and their lack of experience definitely slowed down the process. Once they were each caught in the head gate, they received fly spray, a vaccination for respiratory illness and a shot of vitamins. 

 

As you can see, it takes a few people to make this run smoothly.

• My uncle in the back of the picture is the one that was responsible for pushing them through the alleyway.
• My cousin in the blue shirt then lifted the gate to let them into the chute area. 
• My little cousin in the orange shirt was in charge of placing the bar behind the back end of the calf so they couldn't back up. Since the calves are so much smaller than the cows, they have a lot more room to move around and get turned around or caught in odd little spaces. So the goal is to eliminate as many options as possible so they go for the option that is the easiest for them and for us. 
• My dad is the one running the head gate. As soon as the shoulders of the calf push it forward, it locks into place and ideally their head will be caught to help hold them somewhat still while we give them shots and whatever else needs to be done.
  
  
• My job was to sit there, be 9 months pregnant and write down the tag numbers of the calves that had been worked so we had an accurate count on how many had gone through.
  
  
  

My other job was to make things more enjoyable for the others ;-) I was pretty proud of myself for this next joke. Once in a while we had a calf decided that going through the chute backwards was a better option. I made the remark that these calves were called "tailgaters." I know, I know...you are laughing as hard as I was ;-)

My little cousin is the next young cowgirl to carry on our family tradition of hard work and spunky-ness. My dad was joking that he was going to catch her in the chute when she had to go in there really quick to retrieve her bar that had fallen down inside. She didn't miss a beat and said something like, "Well, the calves don't punch but I do!"

At some point, my little cousin and I might or might not have gotten distracted by some cute distractions that were in the barn right behind us. Just like there might or might now have been some tag numbers that got missed being written down during this time.

 

Anyway, we did get the job done. We ran 90 some head of cows and about 80 calves through the chute and back out to pasture before lunch. My mom is always the unsung hero on days we work cattle. She effortlessly puts together a meal that more than fills our bellies and tickles our taste buds. It is the best way to end a long morning!