So, I have always been told that if you take a week off for vacation you will have to work twice as hard for two weeks after to catch up. So, what happens when you take two weeks off for vacation...total insanity!!!
We were home for about a day and a litter of pigs were born out in the barn yard, in the rain. Had to fight two very upset mothers to move them into the barn, but, after there, everyone was good to go!
I had several customer requests for project proposals at work that literally took me 6 weeks to get caught up and ahead of. I told everyone at work we were in full blown beast mode, and we are not letting off the throttle till the snow flies!!!!
Lisa and I had intensive fair prep/training for the few weeks leading up to the fair. While the boys were halter broke and such before we left, they were definitely not ready to show after the break.
I learned a valuable lesson with Linus this year. When applying bands for castration it is absolutely necessary to take your time no matter how little of it you have, and count to 2! I didn't, and I only got one of two. My daughter brought this to my attention during the detailed baths to get them ready for the fair and the vet confirmed that he was still not a steer. SO, Linus didn't go this year. Instead he will be going next year as a Dairy Steer.
Lets play a little game of "Find Lisa in the ring"! Showing a full grown steer will be exciting next year. Hopefully he will be tall enough for her to look under his head as she cannot see over their heads now! If you are looking for her that is her head in the center of the picture visible over the back of the steer in front of her!
A clear sign that hard work pays off. Lisa studied and worked to learn all the stuff she didn't know last year and scored a 98.5% on her skillathon and took first place out of everyone in the Junior division for her project! She received a certificate and a brand new show halter with an award plate showing the year won on it!
While we were away my good friend who owns an excavation company was able to deliver all the concrete slabs and recycled concrete material I needed to complete the driveway to the other side of the farm. This has been needed for years and was a major issue this spring during the very wet weather we had.
I used concrete slabs that were removed during a new parking lot installation as a base in all of the old stream beds where the mud was the worst in the spring.
Above was a very large hole. The picture doesn't show it but from bottom of the hole to top of finished grad was about three feet. This is where I used the big chunks up. The balance of the wet areas were installed as shown below. In a 3D real world version of "Tetris" I fit the pieces together to create a driveway and then used the recycled material to cover them and fill in all the cracks.
Here is the finished product. The cows walked around it first but have realized that it is a pretty nice pathway and have started using it exclusively when going across the creek to the pastures. I am excited to see how it holds up during the wet season this fall and in the spring!
Upon coming back from vacation I also had to address putting the new deck on the trailer. It took about 4~5 hrs to complete but turned out excellent!! Very sturdy and looks like new!
It was immediately put to use the next day to make a hay delivery that was requested while we were away on vacation.
The field that I share crop on that was baled while I was on vacation really grew well and was ready to go two weeks ago, we finally had a solid break in the rain and I dropped it all plus all but one of my other fields....totally around 70 acres. I didn't have time to mess around so I borrowed another friends large tedder to get it done quickly as we had to get it dry fast!
I am in the process of figuring out how to get one of these for myself now that we have so much hay ground. I love my silage bales but dry hay is much easier to market at any time of the year. This thing also did a phenomenal job and the hay was ready just in time to beat hurricane Harvey!
To be clear, this is the third cutting! This field is producing at an amazing rate!!! From this 40 acres we had 327 bales of first cutting, 148 bales of second cutting, and for third cutting we got 114 round bales and another 450 squares. If all in rounds that totals around 615 rounds.
This field produced more high quality hay this year than it has in the previous two years combined by more than 100 round bales! We haven't decided if we will make 4th cutting or if he will just graze it off. We are leaning toward selling some of the first cutting he would feed and let the cows eat it off!
So, with everything going on I decided one night to have a fire to relax by for a while as it was just my son and I and the dog while my wife and daughter were at town. I had chair by the fire and the Zeus just wouldn't leave me alone and kept climbing on my lap. At around 80 lbs he isn't a small puppy anymore so it wasn't easy. I got up at one point to add some wood to the fire and he took the opportunity to have my seat and wouldn't give it back!
About this time my son comes out to join us and tries to share the chair with Zeus. Zeus wasn't really having any of that and proceeded to sit on top of Alex! All in all it was a fun evening with some great laughs!
The kids are finally getting old enough to start doing some work! So, I am teaching them how to mow the lawn. Normally I would do most of it before turning Alex loose on the mower but I didn't have the time this day, so I just let him mow and gave him some pointers. He actually did a very nice job and was even better than some grown up do their first day at work! He will pick this up quickly!
Following the chaos that has been going on lately I got a call from a manager at another branch on Thursday night requesting straw for a job on Friday morning.........an hour away! I was happy to have my wife and daughter to help do chores and load up before it got too late.
This is Sugar (right) and her daughter Sugar Pie (on the left) a couple weeks ago in the pasture. I am happy to have both of them and even happier to report that after yesterday's herd check they are both confirmed pregnant. We had 16 confirmed bred and 12 open that we will be performing AI on in 9 days.
This brings me to my last topic for today. Last weekend was a very sad one for us here on the farm. Anyone who has been following my blog for a while will recognize the name Legacy and knows that he is the little orphaned bull that we raised by hand from shortly after he was born.
His momma died a few days after he was born and we had to take him in the barn and bottle feed him. He is named after his mother who's name was Erica, she was from the Erica bloodline from Summitcrest Farms. His name is Erica's Legacy.
Both kids helped and he was a big baby his entire life.
This picture was taken just before vacation. He was doing well in his third year as our bull and has many of his children to show for it. The first weekend in July we synchronized all the cattle so they would be bred to calve at the same time around the first of May so they would be born in nice weather next year. Some time in the couple of weeks following this he got an infection in his rear foot but didn't show it until it was so bad that he couldn't walk on it. By this time the infection was into the bone and we were told he most likely wouldn't walk again.
The vet treated him and we put him up in the barn and he had the entire shed to himself and one of his daughters who's mother (Sally Shorthorn) was sold a earlier this summer due to complications with her Udder. He was doing well for a couple of weeks and we thought he would pull thru this, however, the infection moved to his lungs and his other hind foot instead. Within days he went from almost 2000 lbs to around 1200 and couldn't get up any more. We decided to let him go and be out of the enormous amount of pain he was in and had the vet put him down.
Of the 16 bred cattle 13 of them are carrying the last of his legacy and we are excited to great them in the spring. He will be missed.
Have a good week everyone, winter is coming quickly this year so don't put off till tomorrow what you can do today, you may not have tomorrow to do it!
Kenny
