CATTLE BUSINESS 2018

We were excited to start the 2018 season, hopeful that things could not be as heart breaking as they were in 2017. Surely we learned from the last two seasons since starting our cattle business in 2016.

Our excitement was hampered a few weeks into January when one of our cows developed a problem with her back leg. She was struggling to walk and it appeared to be smaller than her other back leg. We watched her for a few days before deciding to remove her from the herd. She was getting worse and we did not want to end up like we did with our favorite cow last year. She miscarried a calf a couple hours later, likely four months gestation. She left an orphaned calf on our farm, luckily it had nursed for seven months, and it continued to do well after she was gone.

Calving season began in early April, when our Brown cow was the first to deliver her calf. We NEVER thought she would have it, the poor girl was SO HUGE. We were super excited for her as she had another brown calf, exactly like her other one that died of bloat last year. Another calf was born mid-April, two more calves were born in May, and one in June. We had two little white face calves, which were absolutely adorable. Unlike 2016 where most of the calves were heifers, this year seemed to be the year of the bulls, only one was a girl. All the calves seemed to be doing well until…..the end of June. We found the white face calf with “panda” eyes laying out in the front pasture near death. There was nothing we could do. He either died from the heat or from pneumonia at 41 days old. It was devastating.

In April we added two cow/baby pairs to the herd. One was a Charolais cow with a little black bull calf, and the other was a black cow with a little heifer calf. We suspected both of them were bred back as their calves were three to four months old. Time would tell.

The year would not end without another disappointment. One of the cows that we had since 2016 started losing weight. Eventually, we had to remove her from the herd as well, but were concerned because she had a five month old calf she was still nursing. Instincts took over, and our white face cow we had since 2016 “adopted” her orphaned calf and started nursing him. It was amazing to see!

By fall it was apparent both the black cow and the Charolais cow were indeed pregnant. We figured, based upon when they joined the herd, they should deliver sometime around the end of the year. The Charolais surprised us with a Christmas calf, a cute little white boy. When she brought him out of the forest for the first time, there was drama in the herd. All the cows and calves ran over to see the new addition, while the new mama took off over to the hay ring to eat. Out of her site, the oldest bull calf started bullying the little guy, shoving him down and nudging him over. We yelled at all of them from the back porch and the violence seemed to stop. We had big concerns that his mother was not going to care for him. Darkness came, we had no idea where the calf was. What a relief it was the next morning when we saw him with his mother, she found him after dark and took him back into her care. Since then she has been good and the rest of the herd has adapted.

As the year came to a close, we were still waiting for the black cow to deliver her calf. Hoping for a late New Year’s celebration.