Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 22 June 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good evening and happy Thursday! It wasn’t quite as hot today, 86 degrees, but still dry. We’re getting dusty already. We farmed the crap out of this thing today! After normal morning rounds, we moved the beef cows in with the dairy cows. Details to follow. We then set up the brooder in the barn just in time to go pick up the new beef chicks. We ordered 69 and received 45. After a phone call, the company offered many apologies and are going to give us a credit on our next order. The chicks seem to be doing very well. I added a pic of the new beef chicks and the 7-week old beef chickens. It’s crazy how fast they grow! After we got the chicks settled and a quick lunch, we moved the sheep to a new paddock. It’s always an event to get the next paddock set up and this one gave us the opportunity to trek up and down the hill multiple times. My watch tells me I walked almost 6 miles and climbed 32 flights of stairs today. We finished moving the sheep just in time to get milk and egg orders ready for delivery to town. We made the delivery and a quick trip to the store to pick up essentials for the weekend—big farm tour, more info later. Home again just before 8:00pm, just in time to milk before dark. It was quite the day, yet again…not bored!
The big event of the day was putting the cow herds together. It started with us gathering the beef herd together and moving them through the gate to the dairy cows. Of course, the dairy cows were very near the gate so the shenanigans could begin immediately, if they were going to begin at all. Our Boss-mama cow came through the gate first and went straight to the dairy cows who quickly moved away. No longer interested, Boss-mama went to grazing. The heifers that followed, however, were very interested in the dairy cows and the dairy cows were not interested in being the interest of the heifers. A bit of running, dash in to the woods, run a bit, dash back into the trees, continuing across the pasture until a group of about 6 of the beef heifers and calves found themselves outside the paddock. In no time, we had them back where they belonged and things calmed down from there. The dairy cows stayed a bit stand-off-ish…except for with the bull, just how we wanted it. In no-time-flat, the bull was quite interested in Happy, the first “Blonde” he’s had access to in years…or ever. The pics today show the progression from them first meeting, to him…well… “sniffing her out,” to them standing together, to him following her into the milk barn (we turned him away and he circled outside like a great white circling a bag of chum), to them reuniting post-milking to spend an evening together. The biggest surprise of the day is that we thought Betty would be the first one of interest, not Happy. All-in-all, it went very well and it looks like things are going to be good for the “Ladies Man!”
Local Farm Report for 21 June 2023:
Harvest:
20 Chicken eggs
0 Duck eggs
0 Goose eggs
7 1/2 Gallons of milk
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Stella is probably going bonkers now!!