We Don’t Have Fluffy Cows

I know I’m late to the #FluffyCow party. What can I say… things move a little slower here in southwestern Indiana.

Actually, I’ve been wanting to write about these fluffy cows since they first took over Twitter. But this is the first time I’ve had the chance. So, here goes.

This is part of our herd of registered Angus. Most of these girls are cows – meaning they are females that have had at least one baby in the past. There are 4 heifers in the group (females that have not had a baby yet, they are less than 2 years old). There’s a few calves (in fact, one for each cow). Right now we are also leasing a bull to finish breeding the girls so they have calves again next year. (Not everyone is in this photo.) These girls are not fluffy. See how the sun shines off their coats?

Jail Break!

If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you probably saw that we had an… incident… on Saturday.


These calves are supposed to be behind a fence in the pasture, not in my (sad) flower beds!

Planting our hay fields

This is the year that we need to re-seed our hay fields. We grow a combination of red clover and fescue grass for our cows to munch on. The red clover will only grow for two years before it dies, so every two years we need to re-seed the fields. This year we stepped into a little more high-tech than normal!

We were able to put our John Deere Gator to good use to get this job done. We pooled resources with some farmer friends to get this whole contraption built. We co-own the seeder (the black can on the back of the gator) with some family, and we borrowed the GPS guidance system (the thing that looks like a flood light on the top of the Gator, and the small black box in the windshield) from some very good friends. (We let them use the Gator and the planter to re-seed their fields, too.)

Hungry beasts

There’s not much that’s cuter than the first calf of the year! We’ve got our first four babies “on the ground,” with five more on the way at our house (and about 15 at our other farm). It’s not all fun and babies around here, though. While the babies primarily eat their momma’s milk, the mommas are big eaters – especially when they’re also feeding a 60-pound newborn!

Random Friday

What's rambling through my head this week…

1. I have a slightly addictive personality. I have been known to crash on the couch and watch a full season of Downton Abbey in two days. Or to burrow down and plow through the entire Twilight series in 5 days. Seriously. Twice. Over this past weekend, I sat still with a book, a blanket, a cat, and a cup of coffee for 6 hours on Saturday and 8 hours on Sunday. And I was thrilled!
2. I lost my activity tracker in (literally) knee-deep mud out in the cow pasture. Believe it or not, I found it the next morning! (Thanks to the ladies for not trampling it under the manure/mud!)
   
3. Speaking of cows. I love healthy baby calves. It’s so much fun to watch them play!

Till the cows come home

Our cows came home two weeks ago! I never would have thought that I missed having cows at my house. But I sure did!

Feeding corn silage

Normally we can grow and bale plenty of hay in the spring, summer, and fall to feed our cows through the winter. The summer of 2012 was a little different. Southwestern Indiana (and most of the midwest) was hit by a bad drought. Our cows are usually on pasture all summer, but this year we had to feed them hay because the grass in the pasture didn’t grow. Which also meant that the grass in the hay fields didn’t grow. We were afraid that we were going to be short on hay this winter, so we needed to come up with other options to keep our girls fed and happy in the cold weather.

Put on your coats, girls!

It’s snowed, it’s thawed, it’s rained. It was 45 degrees today, headed towards a high of 9 degrees next week. It must be winter in Indiana!

The cats and I stay nice and toasty warm inside all winter long. But what about our cows? Sorry to say, but I am not letting them inside our new house. They’ll just have to tough it out outside. But we’ll help them.

A day on the farm

Just another fall day on the farm. The dogs are lounging outside in the sun.

Cows like fall

Just like me, the cows love this time of year! We’ve got Black Angus cows, and it’s really hot for them in the summer. Cows can’t sweat, so they need plenty of shade to stay cool in the summer months.

Time for some fly spray

While some of my friends and I are having a problem with gnats and fruit flies around the house, our cows are having a problem with flies out in the field! This summer was so dry that we didn’t really have a big problem with insects earlier in the year. And now that we have gotten some rain, the bugs have come back out. Ick.

Because the cows are being bothered so much by the flies, we treated them with fly spray. Farmer Doc and I went out to visit some of our cows we keep at a different pasture and give them a fly spray bath.

First, Farmer Doc put out some corn to entice them to come out of the rolling pasture and into the barn lot. (Where we could reach them.)

Weaning calves

It’s that time of year again. Our calves were born in February and March, so now they’re around 6 months old. It’s time to wean.

We started them on creep feed back in June, and they’ve been eating hay with their mothers for a few months. They don’t know it yet, but they’re ready to be weaned.

First, we brought all the calves into the barn and left the mothers outside on the pasture.

It's too dry for cows

We are having bigger problems than my dry garden this spring.

Our pastures are so dry that we are already feeding hay to the cows! Poor girls, there’s just not much to eat out there!

That doesn’t stop them from trying, though. They are eaters!

Those crazy calves

I love being back home, even if things aren’t quite finished yet. One of my favorite things right now is sitting on our back porch and watching the cows.

(Does anyone who knew me in my pre-Indiana life think this is a funny statement?)

One of the construction projects that isn’t done yet is cleaning up the giant pile of dirt from digging the new basement.

It’s in the way of our view, but the cows and calves are loving it!

They love to play king of the mountain.

Every once in a while one of the momma cows will come along and be a little bit of a party-pooper.

“I see you up there, young man!”

“Don’t you make me climb this dirt pile!”

“Okay, fine, I’m coming down.” Pout.

Those calves have it tough. Moms can be so mean.

Little boys all grown up

During calving season last spring, we had to do a C-section on one of our cows. The surgery was successful, and Charlie the bull calf was born.

In November 2011, we loaded up our bull calves and sent them to Purdue’s Indiana Beef Evaluation Program in Bedford, IN. We had to pay to send the bulls there, but they took great care of our boys and also collected a lot of data about rate of weight gain and growth.

At the end of the program (about 5 months) they host a sale of all the bulls. They have criteria for which bulls make the sale, and unfortunately Charlie didn’t quite fit the bill. I think he didn’t grow quite fast enough, but to be honest I’m not sure of the details.

Since Charlie didn’t make the sale, we had to find our own buyer for him. We did that, without much trouble, but Charlie had to leave the test farm before his new home was going to be ready. So he got to come home to visit for a few days!

The miracle of life is beautiful

And slimy.

In the last five days we’ve had three calves born on our farm. We’re only waiting for one more, and that should be any day now.

Lucky for us, none of the births have been eventful, and everything has gone smoothly.

One of the calves was born backwards, but he still came out fine and did well after he was born. (He’s about an hour old in this photo.)

Carhartt for the boys

Er, men.

Last fall, we had a great partnership with Carhartt where the Real Farmwives got to show off some of Carhartt’s new women’s line. Now it’s the guys’ turn… Carhartt partnered with the Real Farmwives again for the men in their life (the Real Farmers? The Real Farmhusbands?) – the guys got a chance to try out some of Carhartt’s spring line early!

And want to know the best news? Carhartt and the Real Farmwives have a giveaway for you! Check out the Real Farmwives website and enter for a chance to win some Carhartt gear for your guy!

Hubby Doc tried out the Astoria Jacket in black. He’ll be the first to tell you that he’s a big guy, and needs a big jacket. We did have a bit of a hard time finding a jacket that was available in the 2X size he was looking for. But, Carhartt came through with this choice.

Even though this March has been unbelievable warm, it still is cool in the mornings and evenings around here. And I may have mentioned before that it gets just a tad windy up on our hill, so the jacket has come in handy on a few occasions. The farm dogs take their pills/treats every night. (They’re such good girls!)

Nothing is funnier than running cows

Nothing.

Attack of the blackbirds

Every once in a while, we are completely overcome by blackbirds. They swoop in, hang out for a little while, make a lot of noise, and then swoop back out again.

They love to hang out with the cows. The cows don’t seem to mind.


All of a sudden, for no particular reason, they’ll all take to the sky, all at once. It’s pretty dramatic to be right in the middle.

Bye bye, babies

Our babies are all grown up! Well, at least as grown up as we get to see them. Our calf babies were born in January through March of this year, and we got to see them grow up until early in November. Our cattle farm is a cow-calf farm, which means that we keep our adult cows, they get to have babies every year, and when the babies are around 8-10 months old we sell them. We wean the calves from their mothers when they are 4-6 months old (then they are called weanlings). When they are a year old, they are called yearlings.

This is Hank back in April. He was only about 3 months old then, but he was always our biggest calf.