With the exception of one sad event, our 8th year of our cattle business was non-eventful and went smoothly. We were so thankful for that!
Early one morning in February, one of our little bull calves that was born just before Thanksgiving, was walking around frantically, constantly mooing for his mother. One thing we know, when things are quiet on the farm, all is good. When there is commotion within the herd, something is going on. We did a quick head count and were short one cow. We knew something probably happened to her, and went out in the Kubota looking. She was lying dead in the way back portion of the pasture in the woods with our bull standing over her. The entire herd followed us as we went looking, then stood over her as our friend dug a hole and buried her. Her little calf stood there in a daze looking, it was so sad to watch. In the coming days and weeks, he never assimilated with the rest of the herd and stayed to himself. Unfortunately, we will never know why she died. Her little calf was her 5th one born on our farm and we don’t know how many calves she had before coming to us. We had planned to sell her at auction with three other cows that were also older and probably reached their limit of birthing calves. She was a great cow for us as well as a great mama!
Finally, in March we were able to send to auction 6 calves that we wanted to sell last year but were unable to catch in our corral. The price per pound was very high, our timing was perfect! Unfortunately, we could not catch the orphan calf. We were hoping to send him to the surrogate farm where he would be able to have mother’s milk again. Because he was on his own at 3 months old, he never grew to the size of the other calves. It was miraculous that he even survived. He was still with us at the end of the year however, never grew to the size he should have been due to losing mother’s milk so early.
Six new calves were born on our farm this year. Even though we can tell they are close to delivering, it always amazes us when we look out the window in early morning and see the mama with her baby. We always are grateful for a successful delivery. It was crazy to see a brown white face calf born to a black white face mama. He sure is cute!
Our plans to sell the three older cows and seven more calves by the end of the year almost didn’t happen. Between the weather, people’s schedules, and the auction schedule, time crept up on us. Finally, things came together (good news), and we made the last auction of the year. But, we could only capture the 3 older cows and 3 calves (bad news). Four other calves refused to come in the corral when we put out feed. Prices were still high so it was a situation we had to go with what we could get and try for the rest after the New Year. We’ve learned to go with the flow, and hope for the best. Next spring we’ll add three younger mama/baby pairs to our herd and start the cycle again.
