Goodbye, Rambo and Obaama

Last Tuesday we moved the trailer into the Home Pasture with the sheep.  (Technically, they're still lambs under 18 months old.)

I put a feed tub in the trailer and sprinkled some feed on the ramp.  Rambo was quite curious while Obaama was more cautious.

Rambo figured out a way to reach the feed without having to go up the ramp.

It didn't take Obaama long to brave the ramp and get his share of the feed.  It took about five minutes for them to adjust to the idea of getting fed in the trailer.  Later on, long after the feed was gone, one of them was all the way in the trailer still looking for more.

By Friday we knew we could get both sheep all the way in the trailer, so we called Triple H Meats to tell them we were coming up.  As ever, Rambo was the tough, brave one.

Obaama was still shy--he hasn't changed from the day Matt had to drag him out of his truck!  Well, he has gotten a lot bigger!

I think Misty knew something was up.  She's already seen her charges (pigs, in this case) disappear into the trailer in the pasture and never come back.  I'm sure she has no idea what's actually happening, but you can tell from her face that she knows this is goodbye.

Herb gave Rambo and Obaama a nice, smooth ride up the mountain and backed skillfully up to drop them off.  At that point they both decided they wanted to stay in the trailer, and it was all Herb could do to wrestle Rambo off while Corey and I held metal roof panels up along the side of the ramp to prevent a prison break.  Once Rambo got off the trailer, Obaama was right behind him.  We left them there looking fairly calm and relaxed.  Rambo had the last word:  "Bleah!"

I talked to the butcher today about setting aside some meat for sausages, and he said, "Those are really fine sheep!  Do you have any more?"  So Rambo and Obaama, you may not have made us love raising sheep, but you made a good impression on the butcher!  And I'll definitely miss your photogenic qualities out in the pasture!

No Such Thing As a "Typical Day"

There's no such thing as a typical day here on Zephyr Hill Farm.  But this was yesterday.

If I was up this early every day, a sunrise like this would be typical!

This bouquet on the dining room table is definitely not typical; it's left over from Kara's art project.  Thank you, Kara, for the bouquet and the photo!

Hero regularly finds things to bark at, but it's unusual for him to see something from the back porch that makes him go tearing off toward the back pasture.  His urgency compelled me to hop in the Doodad and go check out the "disturbance."

Are you serious, Hero???  A squirrel up the pear tree???  I know he's a "sight hound," but I had no idea he could see a squirrel from that far away!

At least I know the pears are ripening.   And the Back Pasture needs bush-hogging.  That's typical!

It's typical that the cows start mooing when they see the Doodad.  They know it's the Great Purveyor of Treats.  Not this time, though--I wanted to finish my morning coffee.

For the past week it has been untypically typical to have a new bovine around.  Ebony and I have bonded enough that I was ready to put her out to pasture, but I wanted to try an experiment first.  I opened the gate to the stanchion and put feed in the box and another tub of it on the stanchion platform.  She stepped right up to trim the long Bermuda grass growing up behind the gate.

I clipped on her lead rope and encouraged her to step right up onto the milking parlor floor and then the stanchion.  With the tiniest pressure on the lead (immediately let up) she was quite curious and willing to explore.  Once she found the tub on the floor and got the taste, I dumped it into the feed box--and she stepped right into place.  I didn't close the neck bars, but just petted and scratched her all over and told her what a good cow she is!

When Ebby finished eating, I used the lead rope to guide her to step backwards off the stanchion and head to the door.  She stopped on the way to trim some more grass.  Move over, lawn guys, your job is in jeopardy!

 The first part of our walk to the pasture is through an unfenced area, so I kept it very relaxed.  When Ebby wanted to stop and eat, we did.

As soon as we got into the pasture and started down the hill, six heads shot up and 24 feet came galloping across the Lower Pasture.  That's typical, too.  Nobody misses a trick around here!

A large, nosy greeting committee lined up along the fence so everybody could get a look at the "new girl."

Ebby was excited and eager, but she let me lead her to the water first.  When I let her go, Boudin got to touch noses first.  Nothing is typical with him since he's new, too, but I get the impression that he's the self-appointed Spokesman for the bovines.  (Well, maybe until Royal arrives and grows into his job as Spokes-Bull!)

Sir Loin came down to the bottom of the Home Pasture, so I managed to finagle the sheep and turkey away from the gate and get Sir Loin out into the pasture with Ebby.  The sheep being that cooperative is definitely atypical!

After meeting the other cows through the fence, Ebby wandered off to explore her new pasture.  She reminded me of the Pied Piper with all three black cows stringing along behind everywhere she went.

And that was our Tuesday.  Typically, a pretty good day!

Putting on the Dog

McGraw-Hill online dictionary defines this expression:  "To make things extra special or dress formally for a special event."  I learned this expression years ago from Herb's parents and thought it was funny that his citified parents used such a countrified expression for "putting on the ritz."



We've spent the past couple weeks "putting on the dog" to get ready for Saturday night's all-school cookout for Richmont Graduate University where Herb is full-time in the counseling program.  The upcoming shindig gave us the perfect excuse to finally do a lot of sprucing up that's been needed.

Even the round pen got bush-hogged.

The barnyard was looking its best, too.

After I mowed the picnic area between the two barns, I went back and made it nice and stripey.  (That's pretty hard to do without a zero turn mower!)  All the extra work almost shows up in this photo!

Saturday dawned with pouring rain--2 inches of it!  Fortunately, it stopped by 2 p.m. so we were able to host our almost 50 guests outside as planned.  Right before everyone came I drove around to record these shots of the farm while it was looking nice.

Herb "put on the dog," too.  Well, actually, I put it on him--the snazzy American Dexter Cattle Association apron we got at the national convention in June.

The sheep were just as curious about our guests as the guests were about them.  Most of them had never seen lamb chops on the hoof!

The puppies were thrilled for all the attention after being shut out in the rain all day to keep them out of the nice, clean house!  (I'm not posting any photos of the sliding glass door with the bottom half covered in muddy paw prints.)

The parking area that we bush-hogged AND mowed worked great.  I ferried guests back and forth with their lawn chairs and food in the Doodad to keep them from walking through the puddles in the road.

From the amount of food and beverages that were consumed and the laughter all around, I'd say a good time was had by all.

Poor Hero was shut up in the barnyard in the interest of food safety, but he got some special loving.

Misty was shut up, too, but she, too, had admirers.

In lieu of fireworks, we ordered a beautiful sunset for our guests, and we got a truly stupendous one to end the evening.  It looked like Someone Else was "putting on the dog," too!

Shetland Sheepdogs, Meet the Sheep

Jet and Bonnie are Shetland Sheepdog puppies, or Shelties to those who love the breed.  So far they've met their new mommies, me (Susan) and Kara.  Jet has met his new daddy, Herb, and they've both met our big dogs, Hero and Misty.  The friendly turkeys wandered over to the back fence the other day and checked out the new babies, but there's a whole farm-full of animals out there that Jet and Bonnie haven't met yet.

A couple of evenings ago, Rambo and Obaama took things into their own hands hooves.

Jet was a little more curious than scared while Bonnie watched from a safer distance.  But when Hero jumped up and ran to meet Kara, everyone scattered--sheep and sheepdogs!

Family Snapshots

Here are some snapshots of our animal family from earlier this week.

We let the guinea fowl out of the brooder house on Sunday.  It took a couple hours for them to finally get over their fear and move out into the wide world!  We gave up watching long before that!

Cash surveys his little domain in the Home Pasture, while Sara grazes far away in the Lower Pasture.

After a couple of days in the chicken tractor, the turkeys enjoy their freedom.

One of the sheep gets up close and personal.

Macree loves her daddy Cash and usually stays close to him.  I guess every little girl goes through a stage as "Daddy's Girl!"

Sara and a little black dot who is Tundra enjoy their solitude.

Ping follows her new pasture-mates.

Ping has finally found someone lower on the totem pole than she is--that turkey is flapping away from Ping because she asserted her dominance over a soggy strawberry.  Misty likes to sit out near her charges, but she doesn't worry herself with their antics.

Sticking close to daddy.

The little family in the Home Pasture, right before we moved the cattle to the Far Pasture (in the distance).

The guineas have taken to roaming all around, but they seem to like to be near the turkeys, their former housemates.  The bird in front of the others got itself into the Home Pasture and couldn't figure out how to get out.  So the silly birds kept running up and down along the fence gabbling at each other until I went out in the pasture and shooed the lost bird through a gap to join its friends.

And finally, a close-up of Tundra, the newest member of the family, and mom Sara.

After Birth: The Not-Quite-So-Cute Side of Our Dexter Heifer's First Calving

I've already posted lots of cute pictures of Siobhan, our Dexter heifer, right after giving birth to her first calf.  After eight days of up-close-and-personal calf watch photos, you might guess that I also have plenty of photos about the less adorable, more earthy side of calving!

Now that you've been fairly warned, here are some photos (along with some that are still adorable--because isn't a newborn calf always adorable?)

I'm guessing the calf was born a little before 9 am, judging by the time Herb found her.  This photo was taken at 9:59 a.m. and shows the umbilical cord trailing from Siobhan's vulva.

Some of the springing and softening of the pelvic ligaments (see the hollow below the tail-head) is still visible.

About 10 minutes later, the calf was on the move.  Having given birth myself, I must say that it's nice that human mothers don't have to start chasing after their babies immediately!  We get 6 or more months to recover before that happens.

Cows don't have the choice to bottle-feed or not--and their babies are born with teeth.  That's another thing we human mothers don't have to contend with for about 6 months!

After the first round of photos I took right after birth, I went back inside to give Siobhan and her calf some bonding time.

It was almost noon, about three hours after the birth, when I went back out to check on them. I noticed the umbilical cord was gone, and Siobhan was busy eating.  I thought I knew what . . .

Yes, indeed, she had delivered her placenta and was eating it.  This is hands-down the most disgusting aspect of calving!  I've read that some people take the placenta away for fear the cow will choke on it and because they say it serves no purpose for her to eat it.

My theory about this is that there are a lot of mysteries about God's creation that we don't understand.  We don't know of a logical purpose for a domestic cow eating her placenta.  She certainly doesn't have to worry about cleaning up so predators don't scent her calf because she's in a safely-fenced field with a livestock guardian dog on duty.  However, if God gave the cow the instinct to lick her baby's face (often necessary to remove membranes so the calf can breathe) and lick its body all over maybe there's a reason He gave her this placenta-eating instinct.  Maybe someday we'll know why--and maybe not.

Watching this was rather like watching a child slurp up a long piece of spaghetti--and I do hope that's not what you were planning for supper tonight!

Yes, this is easily the most disgusting aspect of calving!

No wonder Siobhan felt the need to lie down and rest after giving birth, following her calf around the field, nursing it and eating her placenta!  And just as every mother knows, no sooner do you get baby settled and decide to take a nap yourself, than someone comes to visit!  Fortunately these visitors just wanted to peek at the baby, and one look from mama sent them on their way.  Bovine mothers don't have to worry about being polite!

There's nothing more wonderful that the feel of a newborn baby's soft skin.  It sends a thrill right through the palms of my hands up my arms and right to my heart!  A cow doesn't have hands, but Siobhan was obviously basking in the feel and scent of her baby.

Having seen the umbilical cord in the previous photo, let's take a closer look at it.

When Siobhan was born, Sara wouldn't let us near her for weeks so we never did anything to Siobhan's umbilical cord.

With all my calf-watch reading, I never got around to reading about immediate after-birth-care for the calf other than the fact that it needed colostrum in the first few hours.  My bad!

A scare today over a bellowing mama and a floppy, un-rousable calf 24 hours after her birth, moved us to call our vet.  It also sent me to the internet looking for umbilical cord care.  I learned that some people don't do anything, but the majority (especially if calves are born in the mud or in feedlots) dip their umbilical cords in tincture of iodine to prevent infection.  Believing that late is better than never, we did it right then.

After talking with our new vet who is thankfully available, we're not so worried about tetanus, but we know that a systemic infection of the bloodstream is possible.  That can lead to a lethargic, sleepy calf as one of the first symptoms.  At this point we're going to monitor the calf's temperature (not over 102° in the cool of the morning) and activity, making sure she gets up to nurse regularly.  A farm call from the vet is not possible today and he agrees that it's better not to put Siobhan and the calf through the stress of taking the calf away and hauling it to the clinic when it's hopefully just a tiny newborn sleeping soundly in the sun.

As Herb said earlier, "Worry is no fun!"

With all that curly hair for the amniotic fluid to soak into, Siobhan had her work cut out licking the calf dry.  We could have toweled it dry, as I've read that some people do, but we preferred to let Siobhan do her own mothering, which she seemed to be doing very conscientiously.  It was a warm, dry morning so we weren't worried about the calf being chilled.

At one point Siobhan seemed to simply inhale the scent of her calf.  Her expression reminded me of times I've inhaled the sweet baby powder scent of one of my own children or grandchildren.

Licking off the birth fluids from the calf actually assists in the cow's bonding with her calf and recognizing it as hers.  This is something else we human mothers are glad we don't have to do!

At one point after all her activity of the morning, Siobhan laid down near her calf.  I sat down in the tall grass a little ways off (with my telephoto lens).  Listening to the birds singing and feeling the gentle breeze stirring the long grass, it seemed to me that there couldn't be a more beautiful place or a more beautiful day on which to enter the world.