Signs That You Might Have a Serious Disease

While I was finally cleaning up my kitchen this morning, I was thinking how much I would rather be doing something else.  I began to add up all the signs that I might have caught a serious disease, one that's incurable, actually.  So here are some signs to help you tell if you might have caught the same thing . . .

You'd rather be cleaning your barnyard than your house, and shoveling manure beats out washing dishes any day of the week.

You are seriously in love with a bovine.

You spend a lot of time with your head under your cow's belly shooting photos of her udder . . .

. . . and looking under her tail to see if she's about to calve.

The sight of a mama cow with her newborn calf just thrills your soul.

This isn't gross, it's good news.

When your first calf has her first calf, that makes you a grandma.

You mount a four-person team effort to go out in the pouring rain and rescue a newborn calf.

A milking stanchion is at the top of your Most-Coveted Wish List.

Your cows get more attention than your horses.

A slimy, slobbery kiss makes your day.

You think nothing of making a ten-hour round trip to get a new cow from an excellent breeder.

When you go on vacation and your host asks what you would like to do, the first thing you say is, "Visit a Dexter farm!"

Milking your cow is your favorite part of the day, and you never cease to marvel that God has created this cow to produce milk for her calf and yet, in His plan, she generously shares it with you.

A jug of milk fills you with joy and satisfaction.

You get seriously excited over the arrival of a cow-related package.

This makes you smile.

You buy a brand of whiskey you've never tasted because your new bull has the same name.

The sound of milk hissing into your pail is music to your ears.

This doesn't make you gag, it makes you smile.

You have hugged and kissed a cow today.

You've taken "felfies" of you and your cow.

You're out there every day, no matter the weather, to make sure your animals are taken care of.

You ship a bull clear across the country so that you can add the best genetics to your herd.

You're willing to do whatever it takes to get your cow well when she's sick.

Your life-long fear of power tools goes out the window when your cow needs something.

You can't ever have too many!
 
Yellow fat on your beef makes you happy.

You bore your family and friends talking about cows and wish that just one of your cow-loving friends lived closer.

You happily break up your beautiful view with fences because that means more pasture for your cattle.

Green is your new favorite color because it makes your cows happy.

Your new vocabulary includes words like teats, udder, quarters, top line, conformation, heat, and AI.

Genetics has become a fascinating subject, and you draw Punnett squares to figure out what your next calf might be.

You have come to think that a cow is one of the most beautiful animals God created, and you wonder how it took you so long to discover that.

If you have several of the above symptoms, you have probably caught the same disease I have . . . Dexteritis!  It's incurable--but go ahead and try to cure it by getting some more.  You might as well enjoy it!

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!

Bye Bye, Birdie: A Tragic Turkey Tale

Back toward the end of September, I did a post about our turkeys ignoring the call of the wild turkeys.

They may not have been very adventurous back then, but earlier this month they got really adventurous--and came to call in the back yard.

So we clipped their wings, Herb put up chicken wire to block the handy cross rail they were landing on, and we put them back in the pasture where they belonged.  Or so we thought . . .

Then last week our contractor, who was putting a railing on the back porch, called me while I was driving home and said, "I'm being attacked by a turkey!"  It turned out he was kidding--about the "attack" part.  But there really was a turkey in the back yard hoping for a handout from his lunch!  I got home, caught the turkey and put him back where he belonged.  And that was that, for a while.

Then just this Monday, the 14th, Herb came in and told me that one of the turkeys was gone.  We concluded that it had gotten over the fence again, this time to join its wild fellows.  We decided we needed to slaughter the other turkey quickly, although it seemed to have settled in with just the sheep for company.  We set today as the sad day.  I knew we would really miss our turkey's cheerful "prrrrit! prrrrit!" but with half our Thanksgiving dinner running wild, we intended to make sure of the half that was left.

Then yesterday morning Herb came into the house with some tragic news.  Turkey Lurkey, as I had christened the "one that didn't get away," had drowned itself in the stock tank.  We simply could not figure out why--with the kiddie pool/duck pond right there full of water--our poor, silly bird had tried to drink out of the tank.  Even though we had intended to dispatch him within 24 hours, it made me sick to think of him dying that way.

Then yesterday afternoon as I was moving cattle, something caught my eye in the Home Pasture.  A closer look led me to the obvious conclusion that "the one that got away" hadn't gotten away at all.  In fact, it had met a fate worse than mere death--it had been killed by a predator, most likely a coyote.  The widespread clumps of feathers with blood here and there indicated that the poor turkey had fought and struggled before succumbing; the absence of bones indicated that it had been carried away.  Suddenly the stock tank drowning made more sense:  maybe the other turkey jumped up on the water tank to escape a return of the predator.

And where was Misty when all this happened?  In the barnyard with the ducks, guarding the chicken coop.  She can't be in two places at the same time, poor girl--and I must confess to being rather thankful that she didn't have to fight off whatever took the turkey.  Her presence might have discouraged the predator from attacking--or she might have been injured fighting it off.

We've learned several things from this tragic tale.  We like turkeys, and we'd like to try again.  But next time we'll follow advice we just got from our friends the Newswangers, who raise a whole flock of turkeys along with their Dexters:  We'll use electrified orange netting.  Predators can't climb it to get in (like they can with a fence), and turkeys can't climb it to get out.

This was a costly lesson for us since I now have to order an expensive organic turkey.  It also cost our poor turkeys because they died lingeringly and in fear, as opposed to quickly and mercifully.  Life on a farm isn't always stunning sunsets and cute calves.  Sometimes it's ugly and cruel, and we have to learn to take the bad with the good.

The Cost of Raising a Steer: How Much Does Our Beef Cost Us?

I just calculated the cost of our beef from the day we brought T-bone home on July 23, 2011 to the day we put the beef in the freezer in early December, 2012.

We bought T-bone from Gabriella Nanci, a Dexter breeder in the Atlanta area.  He was about 8 months old, the same age as Siobhan (in front in the photo above, still wearing her fuzzy calf coat).  Because T-bone was on the small side, we got him for $400.  T-bone was still intact when we got to Gabriella's farm, but she helped Herb use the California bander to "steer" him so we had no vet cost for that.  Gabriella told us he would gain weight better if left intact, but at his age we were worried about him breeding the cows so we opted to castrate him immediately.

That first winter (2011-12) we fed hay to the three cows and two horses.  I'm sure that Angel and Brandy (at 1000+ lbs.) ate more than the cows (with Sara the biggest at about 750 lbs. max).  By June 28, 2012 (almost a year later) T-bone had grown well although his hind end was still on the scrawny side.  Since it's impossible to know exactly how much hay any one animal ate, I calculated the cost as follows:

12 round bales @ $35 = $420 divided by 5 = $84 as T-bone's share of hay.  Because our cattle are strictly grass-fed, we had no other feeding costs.

Six weeks later on Aug. 12, 2012, T-bone was showing the results of eating plenty of good green grass, thanks to a rainy July.  The ideal age to butcher a Dexter steer varies between 24 to 30 months.  While discussing the best time with our butcher, Jeff McBryar, he advised that we should butcher T-bone shortly after the first frost when the grass would stop growing.  We could feed him up on hay for a couple of weeks first, but if we tried to over-winter him, he would lose so much condition on just hay that it would take most of the following summer to regain the lost ground.  For this reason, we decided to butcher him in November at 24 months rather than waiting till he reached 30 months in May 2013.

We took T-bone to Jeff for butchering on Nov. 20, 2012.  Jeff doesn't have a scale, so we weren't able to get a hoof-weight for T-bone, and his assistant Cory didn't get us a hanging weight, so unfortunately we can't calculate a rate of yield this time.  We'll know better next time!  What we did get was a total of 277.17 lbs. of beef.  Here's the final break-down for our first Dexter beef:

Production Cost for Our Steer
Purchase of 1 steer (July 2011)                      $400.00
Hay (winter 2011-12)                                        84.00
Butchering/processing Fee (Nov. 2012)          231.00
Total Production Cost for our steer           $715.00

That's a net price of $2.58 per pound.  We're thrilled with the dark red, tender, delicious beef we got.  Cory told us that these are some of the nicest steaks he's ever seen, and we can testify to them being some of the best-tasting we've ever had!