Rocket Leaves For His New Home

Rocket had grown rapidly and was unusually big for a five month old calf:

He hung out with the herd in the early morning light and waited for me to call them into the barn for grain each morning:


Rocket and his young white friend, Lucky, went nearly everywhere together:

He slept in the pasture next to two of his aunties:

Oops. This is why one shouldn't stand too close to the back end of a cow:

His poopy side mostly cleaned off, he stopped for some mineral supplement with Lucky, his little buddy:

Then the day came when I locked him in the barn, awaiting pick up. He had never been alone before and worked hard to find a way out. I kept returning to the barn to check on him and add boards to his escape routes. This time he'd gotten himself wedged in a crawl space. Luckily, there was a gate there so I could easily get him out:

Then a man and his son from Cape Vincent, NY came to pick him up:

They have a beef farm and travel to this area sometimes because there is a meat packing plant here. They sell summer sausage, beef jerky, etc. Rocket will be their new herd sire. They said he was an escape artist there too - until they put him in with another yearling. He just wanted company:

I thought he was already weaned, but Scarlett, his mom, worried about him for two days. After that, she relaxed and her milk flow slowed down. The last I heard, Rocket was doing well in his new home:

The Red Poll Girls In The North Field

The cattle spent more than two weeks in the north field. That's six large cows on nine acres, keeping down the vegetation while allowing the grass in the larger south field to recover a bit:

I have been carrying them out bowls of grain twice a day. This was a morning feeding as the sun was behind us, in the east:

They were in the north field when the Shadbush began to bloom in the woods behind the field:

Gracie appears to not be pregnant although I've certainly been fooled before. I wouldn't want to breed her now anyway because the calf would be born in the worst of winter. So I wait and watch:

I carried them over a trace mineral salt block but they didn't have access to granular minerals in the north field. To handle that problem, I began sprinkling the minerals on their bowls of grain before carrying them over:

And there's a hundred gallon stock tank in the north field, fed with fresh water from the barn via a pipe under the road. I have to turn on the water inside the barn and then run over to the door to watch so I can turn it off before it overflows. As you might guess, I've forgotten a few times and soaked the ground around the stock tank:

Another morning shot, with the rosy light of dawn illuminating their red coats:

And the chickens try to steal whatever grain they can. The cows usually don't allow that but they do spill grain while eating and the chickens make sure none of that is wasted:

A peaceful scene, and a popular one with local people driving on the gravel road. The cattle are close to the road and I see lots of people slow down or stop for a better look:

Scarlett had to defend her grain from ravenous chickens:

But Rosella was too lazy even to stand up. I carried her bowl over and set it down where she could reach it. Gee, you don't suppose these cows are spoiled, do you?

And to end this post on a gross note, here's part of raising cattle - Yellow Dung Flies. They show up wherever cow manure is found and I looked them up to learn about them. They live mostly on smaller insects but also consume nectar and dung. The males spend most of their lives on dung but the females forage for small insects on vegetation, returning to the dung to mate and to deposit their eggs. The larvae begin their lives eating the dung. For all their gross appearance to us, they are an important part of the balance of nature:

Around The Farm In March

Once our snow and ice melted, I began opening the window for the fantail pigeons during the day. They seemed happy to stand on the windowsill and look, but did not fly out - at least not at first:

They've paired up and have been busy building nests:

The chickens too got their door opened and they were very happy about it even though at first they had to walk across some ice to get to what was left of last season's grass:

They remembered from last year that the best place to find goodies to eat is right below the bird feeders. Those wild birds drop a lot of seed:

Inside the farm house, the parakeet cage sits empty and reminds me of my former bird, Chirpy. Some would find it difficult to get so attached to a parakeet, but this one had such a happy personality that he was a pleasure to have in the room. I fear his guinea pig neighbor, Dixie, misses him also. It's awfully quiet now in that bedroom:

I had several woodpeckers at the suet cake. This is a Hairy Woodpecker, the bigger of our two common species:

He or she was bigger than a robin, with a comparatively long bill:

The Downy Woodpecker looks nearly identical but is much smaller, nearly as small as a sparrow, and with a shorter bill:

This Downy put on quite a show and was less afraid of me than the Hairy:

Here's a chuckle at my own expense. The barn door hasp tended to lock itself shut when the door was closed from the inside, causing a problem for whoever had entered. So one day I used a Sharpie to print an alert on the door frame, with a warning on how to avoid that problem. But the next time I used the door, I discovered that I had misspelled "vertical" as "verticle." I know how to spell the word, but there it was, misspelled, for all the world to see. I corrected it as best I could, but my mistake will be evident to anyone who uses that door for many years to come:

The melting ice sent the cows out into the field to find grass:

Alas, it was still too early. There were tiny green shoots, patches of ice and frozen cow-pies, but nothing much to eat. But still the cows enjoyed getting out in the sun:

Update On The Red Poll Girls

Gracie watched me with curiosity while I cleaned up the manure and mess the herd had left in the barn overnight. You'd have thought she'd show some remorse, but apparently she thinks it was all the other cows' fault:

The herd normally stays right near the hay bale feeder, but one day decided to go exploring. Perhaps they'd hoped to find some grass. If so, they were quickly disappointed:

Right back to the bale feeder:

They eat their hay, and then eat it again as they chew their cuds:

Jasmine and Gracie kept an eye on me as I tried to walk through the snow, ice and frozen cow pies without falling:

The cows mostly sleep outside, but after a really cold, windy and/or wet night, I may find them sleeping in the barn. I leave the barn door open at night in the winter to give them the choice:

But they have no fear of sleeping on the cold, cold ground. It usually doesn't seem to bother them:

And snow doesn't bother them:

This is what breakfast time looks like in the morning after they've slept outdoors in a snowstorm:

I removed the bale feeder from around this hay bale to make it easier for the cows to get at the good stuff:

And they burrow right inside the bales to find the hay which is dry and unfrozen:

Sometimes there's a veritable feeding frenzy outdoors. All in all, the girls have fared well this winter and may even be a bit fat. That's a good thing in a cow:

Around The Farm - Part 1

The first two months of winter weather were blessedly mild, but that doesn't mean that everything went smoothly. For instance, there was the day I detached the tractor bucket and replaced it with the bale spear. When I attempted to reverse the process, I accidentally pushed the bucket too far and knocked the bush hog off its wheeled dolly. It was too heavy to lift, so I had to put the bucket back on the tractor, take it outdoors and set it on the ground. When all that was done, I reattached the bale spear and ever so carefully used it to lift the bush hog. I got off the tractor and positioned the dolly back underneath it:

And on the same day as the bush hog incident, opening the heavy barn door pushed several sections of the roller track apart. A catastrophe was imminent and I could never have lifted the barn door back into place. But I carefully climbed up on the tractor bucket and used a sledge hammer to tap the track back into place. Another disaster averted, at least for the time being:

And then there's the cow manure and frozen urine left by the cows every cold night when they sleep inside the barn. This truly doesn't capture the horror of it on the worst mornings, but you get the idea:

Poopsicles everywhere!

And then one day, winter truly arrived, albeit belatedly:

The apple trees probably needed a good dose of winter. They seem to thrive in this climate. If so, they got their wish with a goodly dose of below zero temperatures, high winds, blowing snow and freezing rain:

Indoors, however, my fall blooming cactus was so warm and happy that it began blooming again. I guess it's a multi-season cactus:

For the first and only time this season, my neighbor had to put the snow plow on his truck. I am blessed with the best neighbors in the world and he came over and plowed my driveway:

I declared a truce with the local Red Squirrels and decided to make friends with my home squirrel instead:

I don't know if it's a male or female, but it's not very afraid of me - or of the Chickadees who share its taste for sunflower seeds:

One last look. Notice the icicle covered lilac in the background: