CATTLE BUSINESS 2019

Things seemed to settle down as the new year started. Our little Charolais bull calf born two days after Christmas started blending into the herd and his mama took good care of him. The black cow we were waiting on to deliver had a little heifer a week later.

We were expecting a quiet few months before any calves were born. Based upon the arrival of our “rent a bull” late last summer, we were anticipating the calf season to start late May or early June. You can imagine our surprise when we saw a little heifer calf walking alongside her mama in mid-February. How could this be? Calculating backwards, her mama got pregnant last May however, the bull was not here. As soon as we got a close look at the new calf, the mystery was solved. Our bull calf that came to us in June 2017 was the father. Looking at the calf's striped coloring, and the bull's coloring, almost identical. Apparently, they can impregnate a mama at a year old? Totally news to us. Now we wonder how many more he got. It looks like our visiting bull didn't get a chance to have fun.... Our suspicions were confirmed when our brown cow had a calf in early March. No question the one year old bull was the father of these calves.

The absolute worst day on our farm was March 16th. Our mama cow that delivered our first "surprise" calf a month ago died in early morning. Besides finding someone to take her away (she weighed 1200 pounds), we had to find a surrogate mother for her baby who was now only 4 weeks old. It was heartbreaking watching her stand beside her mama looking down at her. We sent her to a farm with a milking cow who adopted orphans and raised them. Since our friend had the cattle carrier here, we went ahead and sold calves that we intended to sell last Fall. Most of them were bull calves getting them on to the carrier was terrifying. They resisted, almost taking fencing down. We wanted to sell our pregnant heifer as well because we are not equipped to assist her in the delivery if she had trouble. She was nowhere to be found, so they left without her. Now the hunt started. We drove our Gator through the woods and tall grass, and there she was smack in front of us WITH....a white panda face baby calf standing next to her! What a way to end a horrible day!

Two more calves were born in April, one of which was another heartbreak. Our #27 cow, one of our original cows and the leader of the herd, delivered a stillborn calf in the middle of the night. She was mooing for her calf for days, it was so sad. We were planning to send her to auction as she was getting older and seemed to struggle with the heat last summer, but decided to wait until her calf was born. Now there was no question she would have to go. When she left, the entire herd mooed for her for days. She was definitely their leader.

We added two mama/calf pairs to our herd in April. Sadly, one of the calves that came died out in the pasture a month later. We have no idea what was wrong. We immediately sold the mama and added four new mama/calf pairs in August, hoping our herd would be set for a while.

The last two calves came towards the end of the year, one in August and the other the week before Christmas. We had a VERY scary first week with the last one born. It got pretty cold and the relentless rain lasted for several days. Hours after being born, coyotes showed up in our pasture looking for their next meal. We scared them off but they showed up again three days later. This time Dicker shot his gun into the air, and so far they haven’t been back. The little guy overcame a lot and runs around here like a crazy calf.