Back to the fairgrounds ...

...to pick up the kids' projects. Brown paths lined the parking lots. The lanes among the barns, 4-H building and food booths were empty. So was the sky of the midway. No giant Ferris wheel, or Ring of Fire, or Freak-out. Just empty blue above the rock quarry and railroad line. The horses, cattle, sheep, goats, poultry and small animals are gone. Some of the farm animals were sold at auction and have already gone to their last round-up. Others, like our dairy cows and heifers, are back home on the farm.

We ended the fair with the open dairy cattle show, which brought in youth exhibitors from all over the northern part of the state. The kids bravely participated and gathered some last-place ribbons but kind words from the judge. The winning cows looked like box cars. Ours looked like ponies compared to some. The judge did comment about DD's cow that Verna was "correct and well balanced, just not enough of her to compete with some of these long tall cows out here."

We went to the rodeo and watched most of the bull riding with grit teeth. One mean bunch of Brahmas out there.

I took the boys to the tractor pull. We watched the super modified class that look more like rockets than tractors. We were there until one of them blew one its four jet engines. A long delay shaped up as officials set out to gather shrapnel from the track. The noise is indescribable -- a lot like being on the flight line with jets taking off -- the kind of sound you feel as well as hear.

Everyone surprised me by deciding after the 4-H show to keep the cows out there all week.

DS2, "Yasha," made the rounds of all the animal barns and displays. His favorite was the cow and calf barn. The dairy association lined up several close-up cows who freshened all week during the fair. Fairgoers could see the new borns, participate in hand milking, even saw managers pull a large calf.

It was fun and now we're done. Until next year ...

The fair ...

So far we survived. However, DD's beloved Verna, a 3-year-old Holstein, placed third in a tough class. We are staying ... all week ... for the open show. Means we have to go into the fairgrounds and milk the show cows twice a day there.

Off to the Fair

If I were wired differently, I could be posting from our remote site, the dairy barn of the county fair.

However, since we do everything old school, I am home at the desk top with laundry going.

We have two cows and two heifers at the fair this year. Because they are Holsteins with a lot of white on them, the kids have their laundry going at the wash rack at the dairy barn. (Or ... "worsh" rack if we want to pronounce it correctly :-)

Rustlers? Here?

This made us wonder. While DS1 and DH were choring at our cousins, a truck and trailer slowed down as though fixing to turn in at cousins' cow barn. When the guys went out of the barn to see who was there, the truck sped up and drove away.

They were puzzled and concerned because ... you don't just take a truck and gooseneck out for joy ride ... today is cattle day at the livestock auction ... half the county knows the cousins are on vacation ... lotta guys are out of work ...

On the other hand, if they were lost they might have been slowing down to read addresses.

On the other hand, DH and the boys sort of know everyone's rig around here and did not recognize this one.

On the other hand ... guess we'll just have to BOLO for anything odd over there.

The Cow Are Out ...

... In a good way. We finally got them out into the pasture. Three of the cows calved in the barn, not the best environment.

It's picture perfect breezy day, not a cloud in the sky. The wind in the long grass makes it look lives waves on Lake Michigan, alternating bright green with silver green.

Note to self ... Panda's two daughters have calved; the first had a bull; second had a heifer.

Button calved today with a big red bull calf. She's walking like she's three sheets to the wind, probably partly paralyzed from that big calf.

I hope this does not mean the heifers will have a hard time.

Peeps!

A flock of moms carrying cardboard boxes and leading toddlers headed to the first-grade pod in the elementary school.

DS2's first grade class hatched chicks in a Hova-Bator incubator with a fan. Out of 24 set, 19 hatched so his teacher had to use the wisdom of Solomon in giving out the chicks to the kids. Some parents didn't want chicks so about two-thirds of the kids were interested.

DS2 ended up with three. He named all three Chirpie, Charlie and Fluffy but can't tell them apart. We might be able to later.

We put them in a potato box from work, along with pine bedding, a lightbulb, feed and a little drinker. The feeder and waterer will fit any size Mason jar, so I attached them to jelly jars.

Plan is to make a chicken tractor for them and keep them in the garden vs. finishing them for meat. (I want DS2 to keep eating meat!)

Now I have to find out all I can about chicken tractors.

A novel idea could hatch from this -- a hippie eco-friendly type gal butts heads with a conventional "heavy iron" kind of farmer. Not that sounds like me in real life. No. Not at all ...

Taking three first-grade chicks is a lot more work than starting a bunch of 50 or 100!

Dropping calves

I never liked that term. Most of the time the cows lay down to calve. Yesterday one of our black-baldy cows had a bull calf -- first-born of many brethren. I think we need a few sistern in there, too, because the cows are getting older and we need replacements.

Here's where DH and I part way. He wants all Angus, the solid black ones, because of calving ease, mothering ability and rate of growth. I think you can get all that and better temper, too, out of colored breeds -- Shorthorn or Hereford.

Ideally we need both. If we sell cattle at auction, black cattle bring the best prices because buyers assume the animals have Angus background and will produce high-quality meat. If we sell them for freezer beef, color doesn't matter. I believe we can get as good growth from the other two British breeds.

I wish I had not started thinking about replacement heifers. We have favorite ones among the old cows and I hate to think culling them.

It's big, it's loud, it's in the chicken barn

That's what DH told me a few nights ago. He came into our room at midnight, wearing his barn clothes, fumbling for his glasses and then told me those awful words, "Something's out in the barn."

He added it was flying around. Not a chicken. Maybe a bat? He and the dog went on out while I threw on coveralls and -- whoa, stuff is flying around. Do I want a rabies-carrying bat in my hair? -- And a parka with a hood. Grabbed a broom and I was armed and dangerous.

The hens were screeching with horror as I went out. I did see a big black shadow against the barn lights.

Way too big to be a bat.

Went inside and saw a great horned owl up in the rafters, alternately dazed by the lights and determined to get us before we got it.

I had never seen one up close, in the wild or in my barn. It flew up into the chicken wire between the rafters and roof and glared down at me. Its eyes were huge, its fluff covered talons were huge and its curved black beak looked wicked, too. As I recall it was either hissing or snapping. Maybe both. It looked big and fluffy in soft brown and gray, but it was mad.

We got it out by turning the barn lights off, then on, holding the dog back and shooing it out with a broom. Then we propped up the sagging wire as best we could.

As near as we could tell, it flew into the lit chicken barn through an open door but could not figure out how to get out. Although the hens were traumatized the owl did not attack any of them.

We talked about it all later. Although one day a year the owl might attack the chickens -- and might never be back since it had a horrible experience with the lights and all -- the rest of the time it's working for us, taking mice and pigeons that steal grain and spread diseases.

I feel privileged to see something so cool in the wild -- not a dusty stuffed specimen at a museum or a listless zoo resident. Just hope it stays out of the barn from now on!

The home place

Here is a picture of the home farm, where Grandma and Grandpa live. The house was built in the 1840s. Behind it (not shown) is the original log cabin. Most of the trees are locusts.

In the foreground are our some of our beef cows and calves. They are "black baldies," crossbred. They inherit their black color from their Angus side and white markings from their Hereford side.

Way in the back, by the fence, is our old boss cow. She is half Holstein, so she's long, tall and almost too bony when she's raising a calf, because of her high milk production. She also lets other calves bum extra milk off of her without a fuss. One of DH's hay customers said that cow was so ugly that we should sell her and buy some good ones. However, she's had the biggest, growthiest calves every year. Can't judge by appearances.

Obviously -- juding from the leaves and size of the calves -- this picture is several months old.

I blush to admit I just figured out how to upload pictures

Poultry

While we've been taking care of the neighbors' farm I've been making mental notes about their poultry.

Guineas: Why?

Runner ducks: Funny, active, good layers

Ornamental chickens: The Houdans have a top knot of long feathers that look like a fright wig, or Phyllis Diller, if you remember her. They are high strung and flighty and will get the others going. The golden Wyandottes are pretty, with bronzy feathers accented with black, but they also seem tempermental. They fight a lot and have pulled out lots of hte others' tail feathers. That might be from being crowded in the barn due to bad weather.

Green-egg layers: These are a mixed breed called Americanas, I think. They are all colors with ear muffs of extra feathers around their faces. Some are even smoky gray and very pretty. They don't seem to lay well, though.

Brown-egg layers: These are the old fashioned breeds that I like the best, including Plymouth Rocks and cross-breds. She has ISA Browns which are a production-oriented red breed with some Rhode Island Red background, I think. These chicks are color coded when they hatch -- males are almost all yellow and females are brown and yellow. (THat's called sex-linkedBTW) Another sex-linked type are black with brown on their heads and necks. These are also color coded at hatching. I think the females are solid black and the males and black and gray. She also has white Rocks and barred Rocks. The latter have a tweedy look of gray with black barring. They are pretty variable, though. Some look almost solid black with gray speckling. Closely related are the white Rocks. They are an ancestor of modern broiler (meat type) chickens. Their white color means they are easier to dress and pin feathers don't show up very well.

Our neighbor said she did not like the ISA Browns for stewing hens since they had no extra flesh and did not taste good. I can't speak to taste, but I picked up a white Rock and an ISA Brown today and found the white Rock hen compact and well-fleshed, not angular like the other one.

So ... maybe my next batch of layers ought to be white Rocks. They are not the heavy layers like ISA Browns but probably have better salvage value.

In the bleak midwinter ...

And by the way, it's just barely winter!

While the neighbors are on vacation, we are doing their chores for them. Yesterday being Sunday, DH fed the cattle and poultry before church. He thought he left everything done up "ship-shape in Bristol fashion" all but gathering eggs. Neighbor and the kids have a big flock of poultry for 4-H including ducks, guinea hens and chickens -- all sorts.

In other years with nice weather the kids and I have walked down the road there to chore for them.

This year, though, a winter storm went through. Only a few inches of snow and a quarter inch of ice but a stinging cold wind howled all day. County highway ran as few snowplows as possible. Thus we almost didn't make it home from church and dinner in town with the out-laws due to all the drifts.

At home we added layers, took some hot water just in case we needed it and headed down there. I found the water frozen in the shed for the ducks and guineas. Somewhere along the way I misplaced my gloves. On the way over to the chicken house the wind caught my "magic scarf" and blew it all around my head. I could still see but not very well and blundered into crusted drifts that were more than knee deep when I broke through. When I made it to the chicken house, I found they'd been fed and assumed DH and DS1 had finished gathering eggs. But when I checked the water, found no one had been over there yet.

Well, what was going on? I hated to leave the warm chicken house but ...

When I made it to the cow barn the wind was behind me and I could not pull the walk-in door closed for a minute or two until that gust passed. I went in the cow barn and found ... well, things were no longer ship-shape. DH and DS1 had cornered a drooling panicky steer who had gotten a gate over his head and was running around with it. It was a walk-in gate . He looked like he had a four-foot metal ladder over his head. He was panting and drooling as though he'd been stuck like that for quite awhile, clanking around and banging into things. DH and DS1 had moved the other cattle out of his pen and replaced that gate and finally had him cornered.

I thought of a cutting torch but in a straw-filled wooden barn ... bad idea. When one of the kids got their arm wedged in teh carved back of the dining room chairs and panicked, we got the kid out by soaping their arm. What about soap? My next idea was that, like a horse collar, we'd have to turn it while trying to get it over the widest part of his head, right across his ears. If the animal would hold still for that. If he got his head in the gate, surely we could get it out. DH thought if he broke the welds we could pop the steer loose. We decided to try that, first. DH got a sledge hammer and took a couple of whacks. One bar bent slightly. While pulling on it to hold the steer still, he got one ear through. The gate hung up behind the steer's poll, the bony knob on top of his head. DH grabbed the gate and twisted again and the steer finally pulled back hard enough to get loose.

As far as I know he's OK this morning.

Well, what did we learn here? Sometimes the best solution is very direct -- a few whacks with a hammer and pull -- but it's a lot of hard work. Are we sometimes scared to be that direct, thinking there must be an easier way?

Also, we need to be thankful that the steer survived and no one got stepped on, maimed or even broke their glasses with that combination of large panicky animal and metal gate caving around.

Back at teh house I did my own chicken chores. My feet were numb with white blotches when I got in, so had to soak them in warm water. Boy, did they hurt when they warmed up!

This would all seem a lot more do-able at 25 or 30 degrees.