day 2 … out of sequence

What’s that? I’m sorry, I’m just a little late on the continuation of my days off from, oh, about a month or so ago. It’s been a little busy around here. And usually when there is a day off it involves something that is related to cattle critters. And not just ONE day, but TWO fun-filled days …. branding will be next…..

As of today’s date pre-breeding check ups for both cows & bulls are officially over. Fletcher & his fellow herd sires passed their annual performance tests at the vet and are no longer un-employed.

But before all that could happen the entire batch of bully boys needed to get a look over, some shots, fly spray, notations on weights and who was going on the future cull or sale barn lists. It took a couple of hours but, overall, the bulls were way easier than the cows and heifers (but to their credit the heifers behaved better than the mama cows… shhhhh, don’t tell them they’ll make up for it later and, quick, knock on wood for added measure…).

The bulls really didn’t require too many bribes or harsh words to get them to do what we wanted. They were split into 2 factions in the field but a couple shouts of “BOO!”, the rattle of the cube bucket (bribe) and the Fletcher/Captain Holiday group immediately came over without any exercise on our part…. then the other half with Hamlet & Houston insisted on a personal invitation from their humans which required a couple of cracks from the slappie, a few of growls (threats from me) of “HEY! Knock it off!” to disrupt the rough-housing and goofiness that younger stock typically engage in when YOU want them to do something that YOU want to get done fairly quickly. Maybe they were excited that we came out to play with them or wanted to show off how cute special they are but as the two groups joined they all waddled into the barnyard for their inspection. And they didn’t even destroy Gus’ shed by itching on it. What good boys!

A couple of the teenage boys were a little difficult to get going in the right direction down the alley. “Didn’t those silly heifers whisper something about that?? That green thing looks like an hard boiled egg slicer. Remember what the heifers said? They said it will squeeze you so tight your eyes bug out!” Oh, the horrors of it all but soon they saw their buddies, alive & well, feasting on the tasty field bind weed in the barnyard that the ladies overlooked the day before so surely it wasn’t all that bad. And their eyes look fine…

With the younger bulls done it was down to the 5 herd sires. Two of them barely fit the squeeze chute. You can’t quite close the head catch on them at this time of year due to their hormones in full swing making their necks all puffed up.

Hamlet, in the photo above, weighed 1860. We could get the head catch on him a little bit… if I remember correctly it was just his head. The photo above is a classic illustration of how things go around here when working with cattle. Note there’s a lot going on in this photo. The bull at the wagon is Captain Holiday. He’s a 3 yr old and is another of Fletcher’s son. Notice the halo around his head?? I know, it’s kinda hard to see but I’ll interpret what is going on. Hamlet is getting his final pre-breeding checkup while Captain Holiday spied the range cube bucket in the back of the wagon that ‘someone’ tipped over (gee, I wonder who it was?). And the alfalfa cubes just happened to spill out all over the bed of the wagon. Now, those cube were getting super stale and ruined laying there in the scorching sun & they really needed to be eaten immediately before they perished (while everyone’s back was turned). Hamlet seen him eating them but it must be a code amongst them to never rat out your buddies or was it that his head was squeezed? I’d seen Captain Holiday, too, that’s why his ears are back 😉

Last was Fletcher. He is so crested up that looking down his back from tail to head he looks like an Idaho camel. You barely can see his ears. He really does have ears, not super big ears but he does have ears.

Here’s a couple of pictures for comparison. First one was late spring. He looks like a youngster (and he’s clean). The other is was taken the day we turned the bulls out with the ladies… can’t see much of his white stripe on his neck now. He weighed 2160… he’s a big boy. He’ll loose some weight when he’s with the ladies though. Bulls don’t eat much during this time of year.

It took us…. well, quite a while… to get him from the corral, down the alley and into the chute from start to finish with a little lot of bribery from the snak bucket, threats of leaving him in the pen to roast his beefy hide in the hot sun, a few swats on the rear end, fly spray, a little pushing/shoving (like that does anything special…) and eventually he moved forward. Well, sort of. After all, he is THE herd sire.

Until next time….
~hobo