Week 25

It has been a busy cattle week.   It went pretty well.   Nobody died.  We sorted the weanlings from the cows with just the two of us as the 'kids' have been living in town. (Eric got hired on a commercial fishing boat and Jo just got hired as a bank teller.) Good for them, more work for us.  

We have two corrals we sort from.  One new, one older.   The new one works well with just the two of us.  It's very safe.   The old one is wood and it needs work and the gates don't close easily, and there's wasps living in them and the animals always seem more nervous being handled there.  This photo shows them walking into the corrals.  

It was early morning.  It was one of the few photos I took because, like I said, I had my hands full with animals, wasps, breaking boards and difficult gates.  I kept thinking,  I'm not a man.  I might have said it out loud once or a few thousand times.   Gloria Steinem would not like that.   Unfortunately, Mark and I also got upset with each other a bit.   A few choice  words were said.  I got stressed, then the cows get stressed as they look to me a lot.  I had to keep reminding myself to lower my shoulders, drop my head, loosen my jaw.  It helped. It got done, nobody died.  Heck, nobody even got hurt.   The weanlings sold for a very good, very good price and they all looked good too.  That is a lot of good and probably out weighed the cussing.  I'm a bit ashamed of that part.   

For our preg check we hauled all the caught cows (those brush cattle are still loose on top) to our newer cattle handling area and Jo drove out to help.  Thank goodness for Jo.  She doesn't ever say she's not a man.  Needless to say, It went really well.  We also love working with our pregnancy check guy.   He's very calm and helps us.  He actually does artificial insemination (AI) for dairy cows for his day job,  but does a few beef preg checks and AI as well.  He's been very accurate and we trust his call.  We had 3 cows open.   Two were older, they will go to the auction. The other is only 3 years old so we will eat her.  I had sold all the other appropriate steers in our freezer beef sales and had kind of forgotten all about us.  Silly girl.  We got to eat too.

Anyways, busy week keeping penned up animals fed and watered as well as: sorting, cussing, wasp slaying, selling, preg check, and today- relax.  Spent some time with neighbors and at the river and eating at the world famous  Chimney Tree.  

The south fork of the Eel River

The Chimney Tree

Tomorrow Mark isn't working off the ranch, so we have to load up and haul the open cows and 2 bulls for this week's auction.   One of our bulls, Lou, is getting just too old. His heart is willing, his libido is good, but his body is letting him down. He needs a cane, he's getting very stiff.  The other bull is my pet, my Labrabull, Mr. Johnson.  So sad to see him go, but he isn't very interested in cows and he rarely leaves his buddy's side.  I will miss him though.  I hope the new bulls we end up purchasing will be nice like him, but have a little more, um, sex drive. 

Mr. Johnson is the cuddly one.  Lee is his buddy.   BTW- Lee does like cows. We can tell.

Until next week....