Farmerjan's journal - Weather

[farmerjan]

Tuesday morning. Ate a roast beef sandwich for "breakfast".... went to the barn and plugged in the cattle truck for DS when he gets home from the drs office in Blacksburg. He called and went to Rural King and picked up a few things and stopped and got fuel at 3.43/gal. So, I am back home for a bit.

Nice out this morning, It went down to 25 and is already up to 40 at 11 a.m. No wind. It wasn't that cold when I went up to the barn. Luckily this group of cows can be loaded out right at the road, along the driveway, so he won't have to deal with muddy, slip and sliding to get backed up to a catch pen in the field. Vet is coming at 3....

Got another farm set up for next week, and one for Sun morning the 20th. Waiting on another to text back and have 4 more to contact for the last week or so...... I am really past this.

Tomorrow when I go pick up the stuff from the owner sampler farm, I will go by Home Depot on the way home and see what they have to offer. And stop at one or 2 of the " Habitat Restore" 's to see what they have. But I am really leaning towards that young man at the Lowe's south of here for the premade counter tops. I did get on the computer and looked at all the possible sinks... and OF COURSE, I picked out 2 that are BOTH out of stock right now.... I am going in to measure the counter tops so I have it with me wherever I go the next few days. May as well do some of it while I am out on trips to and from farms to save a little gas money.

Time to get some stuff done in the house in case DS needs me to help with moving the heifers.

 

[farmerjan]

Long afternoon but we got done. DS was starting to really drag since he got about 2-3 hours of "naps" with having to work all night. He was going home to eat, take a shower and collapse.
He got the bred heifers moved... 3 trips.... and seems the reason he didn't need me was GF was helping him. Not going there, but it just aggravates me a little since I need to be "doing more" and it helps with the knees and legs to use them more....
Anyway... vet got there a few minutes after 3... seems he had a very busy day too so it all worked out. We have a sick heifer that seems to have a bacterial infection... fairly high temp.... and her heart is sounding stressed he said... DS gave her a shot of Nuflor the other day... he had 10 cc's left in the bottle.... and vet said it was a good choice of drug but said she needs more... so she got 24 cc's and he said if she makes it and looks a little better then to give her another 24 cc's in 3 days. DS said that he wished he had had more to give her on Sunday, and I told him that he probably kept her from dying so now hopefully she will get this into her system and it will get her turned around... He had called me and asked me what to give her and I asked what he had at the barn, and he said there was about a shot of nuflor and I said to give that to her since that is what he had right there. Plus he gave her Multi-min... a strong multi vit/min shot.... She seems to have some edema and fluid and the vet said that is making it harder for her to breathe too.... She just came off a cow a week ago... who knows what/why she got sick.... hope we can save her and get her turned around and back on the positive side.... It is supposed to be nicer and sunny the next few days so that is good too for her to be out in the sunshine.

Preg checks went real good. 18 cows at the one place that had calves on them. 1 open that is older and he said she has problems inside and she needs to get sold. 1 first calf heifer that was thin was also open.... but DS said he has seen 3 calves nursing off her at different times... The neighborhood nurse/nanny cow.....She will get a 2nd chance... pull the calf off her, dry her up and let her gain some weight and get a chance to get rebred.... Another of the first calf heifers in this group was only 80 days bred so about 3 months... but it could be worse. 10 of the 18 were 1st calf heifers; the other 8 were all 5-6 months... so they did real good. These are 10 of the 11 he bought last year as bred heifers.... the 11th one is at another place as she calved a little later....
So the other 8 out there were cows....4 were bred the 6+ months... the other 4 were the one that was open with tumors... and 3 were only 3-4 months... a little disappointed in them. My only cow out at this place was 6-7 months and she is an old cow...She looks good. I am probably going to keep her heifer calf when they get weaned... her next calf might be a bull....

The group of heifers he moved today did even better. There were 23... one had a little calf on her so got bred somewhere and we didn't know it, so checked 22. 3 were open... one was not a surprise... she was bought and was supposed to be open, then wound up preg and then aborted her calf so we just stuck her out with these. The other 2 opens were both nutty acting... all 3 will be kept and fed and be beef....All the rest were 5-7 months bred... so they will start calving in end of March. That is pretty good. The bull we used there is a real nice, quiet, easy going bull and has been very fertile... He threw nearly all heifer calves on my heifers last year and I am keeping nearly all them.... throws small calves so works perfect on the heifers....None of these heifers were mine... but last year I had nearly all the heifers that calved...DS has culled out alot of cows so he decided to just keep these heifers.
There are 3 that are a little high headed but we will give them the benefit of the doubt for now.... sometimes they settle down when they have their first calf...They will be at the "nurse cow pasture" so I will work with them and make them more accustomed to my being in there and around them. All I have to do is get the 3 calves out of there right now, and weaned... 2 are heifers of mine and 1 is a steer calf that will go out with the rest of the steers and get sold whenever he sends them on.... and the bull needs to come out. Was going to wait til March 1st, but if I get these 3 calves in then I will try to get him in the pen, and move all out.. The other cows in there should be bred back.... there are 5 or 6, I think that he should have bred...

We will go through the cows and calves and pick out any heifers we want to keep tomorrow afternoon. Then he will call the guy on the heifers that we took the load to a couple weeks ago... and see if he will take them on Friday or Sat.... and that will get alot of animals out of the barn. There will be about another 15-20 to sell....Then we can move their pregnant mommas out to the back pasture at the farm to calve them in this spring.

Then to get the other ones out of the last pasture... most all the calves are steers except for 2, they are my heifer calves, and I am probably going to keep both... I also have some steers out there... 4, I think... and a calf that we grafted on one of my cows when she had a dead calf......but that calf came off a cow of DS that died or something....and this helped my cow to not lose a lactation.... There are like 30 or so cows out there to check.... be glad to be done. We will also bangs vaccinate the heifers we are keeping... my thing and I pay for it and DS isn't going to fuss because he likes them to get tattooed. So, I want to get the 2 from the nurse cow pasture to the barn to get done; and DS has some calves at another place that need to come back too... there are 2 heifers there I think also....

Time to get a shower and quit for the night. Tomorrow I will go get the testing stuff from the farm, go by Home Depot... see how my time is running and maybe go by Habitat Restore... going to meet DS at the barn when he gets off work so that we can look at the heifers and run them through the chute and vaccinate them all.... pick out what we are keeping and then he can call the guy and see if he will take another load this week.

DS also talked to both the guys we get some litter from and they both said that we would be getting it in the next couple of weeks. about 100 ton from the one guy and about 75 ton from the other. We won't be spreading any on the one pasture because we are probably going to lose it after this year. (next paragraph).
Also found out that the one place we rent, where he lost his wife last Dec to cancer, is probably going to be sold this year, so this will probably be our last year there.... We only run about 12-14 cow/calf pairs there... so, not our biggest place.... still... he said that it is just too much for him by himself now.... and I think that he cannot deal with the memories...none of the family is around here either....sad for him. Money was no object... yet there wasn't enough money to save her.... I think he has had a hard time with that too....cancer does not care if you are rich or poor.....

 

[Baymule]

That is sad about the man losing his wife. I can understand.

Y'all are lucky to get chicken litter. There isn't enough to go around, it's scarce as hen's teeth around here. There are plenty of chicken houses raising meat chickens, processing plants in Lufkin and Mount Pleasant and Mineola, but the litter is like gold right now.

 

[farmerjan]

Wed morning. Sunny and warming up. Got down to 29 but is in the upper 30's and the sun is nice.

Going to get a few things caught up and head out to the farm and do the few things I want to then home to sort the heifers in the barn as to who we are keeping... get them all run through the chute and vaccinated so DS can call and tell the guy what we have and see if he will take them. He said he was interested in any more we had so I expect so.

Sorting laundry, temps in the 50's the next 2-3 days and sunny so they will dry nicely on the line. Yay. Want to get some washed and hung.

Need to stop and check on the car too.

Have a good day @Baymule , moving "breakables " is always a pain.

 

[Bruce]

and white pressboard was coming in

REPLACING solid hardwood cabinets with pressboard cr@p?? The only reason to buy cr@p is if you can't afford anything decent.

Money was no object... yet there wasn't enough money to save her.... I think he has had a hard time with that too....cancer does not care if you are rich or poor.....

No it doesn't and if you don't have insurance you'll be poor in the end. Sad about his wife. Some cancers are more curable than others but that doesn't help the patient who can't beat it. My stepmother beat breast cancer but cervical cancer got her 10 years later.

 

[farmerjan]

Yeah, sad about the guy and the place we rent. They had good insurance, went to several different places I guess for "2nd opinions" and such. Cancer just doesn't care.... and because he had always been very successful, I think he had some trouble realizing/accepting that he was not able to "fix it".... she was really nice and really fought it...It's been a year now and I think he just cannot deal with the emptiness.... he wants some steers to run on the one piece of property that we don't rent, again this year.... that is why I think that we will have it for this year. He makes sure he gets his ag exemption on both pieces of property which I understand.

Was not as productive a day as it could have been. I got a headache and it plain hurt so took it a little easier for a bit. Did go to the farm and get the stuff... then DS had to work late as they had a dirt road that the frost was coming out of and it turned to total mud... the bottom basically went out of it and they had to haul gravel and stuff to try to get a base built back up. He called and said he would let me know when he was getting off... and just now called and we have the meeting at 6:30 so he is going to feed a little at the barn and maybe we can do the calves tomorrow. Always something.

Weather was nice today at least... mostly sun and hit 55 today. Felt warm in comparison...

 

[farmerjan]

Thursday.... nice, sunny but the wind came up for several hours as a small front was pushing through.... a few clouds then gone again. 34 up to 58 this afternoon.... YAY, we'll take it.

Called PT and they had an earlier opening so I was there at 11. I had already put in a load of clothes to soak/wash here at the house...... took the jeans and sneakers and sweatshirts to the laundromat a few miles up the road from the PT; after we got done at noon. It is easier to do them there in the big machine with the sneakers. Got them in and started and then walked up a couple of stores in the strip mall there to the Chinese restaurant... and ordered my egg drop soup and stuff I had forgotten the other day.... Walked through the Family Dollar store while I was waiting, came back picked up the soup and some shrimp fried rice, put it in the truck and the clothes were on the last rinse... so a few more minutes and that was good to go. Came home and ran the ones in the house through another rinse with a little softener, and then hung them all out on the line.

By then DS had texted me that he would be off work at 3:30 and was going to the barn so we could look at the calves. He didn't think when he fed them hay out in the lot this morning, so they were full of hay and didn't want to come in. It took us over an hour, 3 different tries.... got some in, locked them in the barn and then got some more. P I T A....
So we were late in the day, looking at them and then one of the 2 people he sells silage to, came by to get silage. One of my dairy farmers that sold out actually came since the guy that DS sells it to, fell 2 stories off a roof and broke his pelvis awhile back and this farmer's son has worked for this guy for several years. So, got a chance to catch up on things with him, and he actually helped us get the last 4 stupid thick headed cows in the barn. So, naturally it was getting dark again....
We finally went through them, got them sorted and the ones he wants to maybe keep, moved into another pen. Looked them over and decided on which ones... they are all his except 2... one of mine is getting sold because she is a TOTAL nutcase ... there are 3 in this group that are as flighty as all get out... Heads up, running, and looking for a way out.... The other one I am keeping for now. Her mother is an old cow, was not supposed to get bred back but DS moved her to the pasture and she is 7 months preg... So I decided to keep this heifer for now. The cow is in very good shape for her age and I hope she has another heifer... but this heifer is decent, not too goofy, and we'll see. I want to keep some of the line if I can. Will see how the heifer develops. The cow could have a bull calf and I might be sorry I sold this heifer...
We ran 18 heifers through the chute and gave them vacc shots. Will give the rest shots before they go out back...
Wanted to get the ones we were going to sell done... and then the guy couldn't take them this eve as he was still at the sale. So, tentative plans are to take them tomorrow morning...

So we then sorted out their mothers so they could stay together overnight so that they weren't trying to tear down fences and get back together. DS put some clean wood ships in the barn so they weren't laying in muck and dirt... he had cleaned it mostly out earlier...They had silage and water for the night and they won't be walking the fences.

We have heard that even the heifer prices are up a little more than they were a couple weeks ago. There might be a few more to go in a few weeks.....DS said that if they were bringing more, that he could just sell a few more... there are fall born calves on cows now, and these cows are mostly all bred to calve again in a couple months... so sell more now and pick out some later on to keep, if the prices are lower.

He is going to call me tomorrow when he is planning to go to the barn. Since he had to work extra the other night... he has a few hours coming as the boss doesn't want to try to turn it in as overtime... and DS said that suits him fine, he will take off a couple hours tomorrow and take the heifers... Either that or take them Saturday morning... but he would like to do it tomorrow then we can take Sat morning and sort out the others, pull the calves off and get the bred cows moved out back with the other bred ones and let them have a rest for a couple months. That will get them out of the barn and out on the stockpiled grass out back. Better all the way around.

And the rest of the heifers will have space to come in and eat without getting pushed around and they will be around people more and hopefully any that are still a little skittish will calm down more. If they are crazy, they leave. And this will make room in the barn, so that he can get the last bunch of cows home from the other pasture, and we can get them preg checked and calves weaned off and have everyone moved around and ready for spring calving. The steers all need to be weaned and ready for when ever he wants to sell them.


One of my weaned heifers is sick, DS found a premie calf out in the field and he suspects she was the one that had it. Possible since she was with the bull later than she should have been... and her mother has always been VERY FERTILE.....could be she came in heat younger than I realized.. That would explain her droppy looks... Got her in out of the weaned heifer lot, into the barn and worked her through the chute and gave her antibiotics and some dex to help her to clean and it will help with any inflammation... She is out in the front with some keep heifers, and it will make it easier to get her back in for more treatments. The other one that the vet treated is out there also. DS said she was up this morning... she still looks pretty mopey and GF took her some grain and some water down in the field... She will need another shot/dose tomorrow. Hoping we can get her to come along.

So, finally got home around 8:30/9:00. went out and put the chickens in the crate for the night. Something has dug a hole under the side of the greenhouse shelter... and I don't need something getting them. One or 2 of the leghorns are laying, I've gotten a white egg yesterday and today; plus several browns. Took 2 gal water this morning and will take more in the morning and mostly fill the waterer.

I just put 1 more load of clothes in the washer, going to take advantage of the sun tomorrow again. Delicate fabrics so they ought to dry real easy. We are supposed to have sun Sat morning and then some clouds coming in and a possible front go through Sat night/Sun morning... with the possibility of a trace to 2 inches snow. Temps are supposed to drop Sat night too... high Sunday is only supposed to hit mid 30's.... I keep telling myself that it is only February......

Time to hit the shower... hair needs washing desperately.... think I will do that and read for a little bit.

 

[Mini Horses]

That front stuff is coming thru here, meeting with some southern rain.....yep Sun we're getting something wet. Not sure what but looks like a dusting to maybe an inch of white. Enough to annoy. . Until then we are enjoying the warm. Today 65, Sat 68, Sun hard to see 40. Could be so much worse! . We are both just wanting warmer, faster.

The daylight is getting better. That helps everything!

Good you're getting the cattle/calves worked and separated. That's a huge job!! With jobs to consider, makes time limited....and co-ordinating both of you. Wooweee! There are challenges. I go by 3 farms with small herds on way to stores I service. Love to see the new calves!

Next month I'll have some goat kids. Not so many as last year because I worked so much and didn't get breeding done as well. Lot of things didn't get well handled last year! I'm limiting that extra work this year!!!!! Tired of it. Like you, wavering on quitting....just can't quite accept it yet. . I'm close though. Thinking I'll drop to only two closest stores.

 

[farmerjan]

Friday evening. Been a nice day but it was SOOOO windy. I went out to the chickens and looked over and half the clothes I hung yesterday were all over the lawn.. Luckily they were dry. I wound up taking them all off the line. Did not hang the last load out, it is sitting in the rinse water and I will either hang it tomorrow or else it will get hung in the house. But there is supposed to be less wind tomorrow. I didn't realize that we were going to get so much last night and this morning.

35 to 64 today and it felt good except for the wind. But the sun was out and that is always nice.

DS said he was going to take off a couple hours mid-day so we could take the heifers. I went to the barn at 10 and took a bucket of feed and got them all in the barn. He got there right at 10:30 and it was alot easier to just sort the cows out from the calves. Cows went out in the field and the calves went on the trailer. We took them up to the guy... they were a little lighter than the last group... but these were mostly all off first calf heifers and they are all bred back so not going to complain. 1.50 / lb for them, 5 cents more than the last group.... They weighed them in 2 groups, 12 blacks and blk white face, and the 3 "colored" calves... my charolais, a hereford and a chocolate/char cross. Those 3 weighed right at 525 and the group of blacks were a little lighter. So, I will get a little more since my char was in the heavier group of 3.... I had planned to keep her for a cow but she was too "fast" in the barn, and I can buy a bred due to calve cow for about $200 more than she brought and get a calf this year. I would have to wait 2 years to get a calf out of her to sell. Not in love with her so she went. There are a few more that we sorted off to keep, that I hope he will get back in, and "look over again" and maybe sell one more small group. I may re think the 2 I had decided to keep. The owner/buyer was not there but a couple guys we know were there, got them weighed and all, and we will get a check in a day or 2 so not worried.
Tomorrow or Sunday we will take the preg cows out back. The first calf heifers that are preg for their 2nd calf, will do good to have a break... they are mostly 5-6 months bred so an extra month or so will be good.
The few that were shorter bred he will put in the field with the 2 crazy red cows and a couple of other shorter bred cows. There are a couple that are probably going to be sold, they are a PITA to get in and we are tired of fighting with them. Plus they aren't going to calve until late summer, so out of synch with the spring group and before the ones being bred now for fall calves. At least they are pregnant, but with a couple being a little nutty, they can just as well go. We'll see.

So we got back about noon and DS went back into work. And now, there are reports of possible SNOW on Sat eve/Sun morning... like up to 4-6 inches with this front. So he has been told to be at work 8 pm on Sat eve. Crazy.... 65 today and possible 35 on Sunday ; for highs.

Tomorrow's farm has had to switch... so now they are scheduled for next Friday... That means now I am testing EVERY DAY next week. Added to PT twice next week. And one on Sunday morning the 20th.... one farm is 2x here close... but it is one I really would rather not test. Just get so dirty there and it takes so long....I guess I should look at the weather for the next week so I know what I am looking at for temps and all.

I went and filled up the truck too since it has gone up at some of the stations. I used my "rewards card" at Shell and saved 5 cents a gallon. 3.19 with the discount, some stations are up to 3.29. Diesel is 4.14

DS may have to go to NH for some of the estate stuff .... there are a few things that he needs to help my brother with... he thinks he is going next weekend as it is a long weekend for work and he will only take off one extra day... 1 day up, 2 days there, and 1 day home. Had hoped to get the vet for the preg check on that Monday with him off work.

So I am going to go to bed earlier the next few days, so I can make sure I get enough sleep and get up for that morning farm on Thursday morning and then the other one on next Sunday.... get back into a little bit of the getting up early routine. I really like not getting up until 6 or 7. And not having to go out early mornings that are 5 and 10 degrees.... Did all the extra early mornings for 40 years... ready to not do them anymore.

Well, time to quit and get some sleep I guess.

 

[Mike CHS]

Gas here was $3.19 a couple of days ago but it is going to go much higher. I had a severe lack of sleep for most of my working life but since I left that world I rarely get up in the morning before 6:00 and would stick with after 7:00 if it weren't for the sheep.