handy
Member
Woke up this morning to a noisy traffic jam on my road...
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Awww how cute!!
I love when I am out, and the road is full of sheep or goats. It's so funny!
I also love the cowboy We need to get us some over here!
Untill this year we would ride our motorcycles to eastern Oregon close to the Idaho line every summer. When you see a sign that says "Open Range", it's time to slow down and pat attention!
Woke up this morning to a noisy traffic jam on my road...
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So is a heifer a young mother? How many times a day does it need bottle feeding? It seems she will be spending the majority of her day doing that. So do you butcher a cow for yourselves? Or do you sell them all?We have a small cattle ranch...and I mean small. We only have 50 acres, so we only run about 8 momma's, a bull and the year's babies.
We had another baby born last night. Unfortunately for this one, her momma didn't accept her. This happens sometimes...especially with a heifer. The momma just freaked out and tried to kill the baby. So, my daughter will bottle feed. Hopefully it will survive. The chances of survival, if they don't have a mom out in the herd, aren't too good.
Ok, thanks.No problem on the questions...I actually "pity the po foo" (as my son says) who hasn't experienced farm living! Because living out here in the country does indeed rock!
Yes, a heifer is a cow who has never given birth before. Sometimes they are so stressed during the birthing process they reject the babies. Out in the field, the babies die, but we always pen up our cattle when they're about to calve so that we can keep an eye on things. We'll breed this particular momma once more. Most likely, with her next baby, she won't be as stressed and will be just fine. If not, into the freezer she'll go. She's too old to sell the meat (we only sell young steers for meat) and we refuse to sell any cow who has trouble birthing. But, we can't afford to feed a cow and keep her if she doesn't produce for us.
The baby is drinking colostrum for her first 24 hours of life, then we'll switch her to calf formula. My daughter will bottle feed her at least twice a day, more if she'll take it. But, usually they'll just eat twice a day.
Bottle feeding really isn't the problem. It's when they are big enough to turn out to the fields with the rest of the herd that the danger comes in. Without a momma to protect them, a younger one just has a much lower chance of survival. We lost one last winter in a snow storm, didn't have a momma to cuddle with and just became too cold. By the time we found out where they were, he was just too weak to make it back in to the barn area. I have our ranch hand and kids making a winter pen in a corner of our hay barn for this one...if we can get her to age two, she should do just fine.
We don't make any money at this...we do it mainly as a way to keep meat that we know for a fact is good and healthy in our freezer and also to provide the tax break on our land. Without running stock on our land the taxes are much higher!!! Since I don't buy meat at the store, I'd say that we break even. Naturally the larger ranches around here make much more money at this than we do, but nobody gets rich off of cattle ranching these days.
But, there's more important things than money anyway...and the life lessons the kids learn, the responsibilities they take on around here and just the quality of life we have out here make it worthwhile.
I keep telling myself that!!!!