A Good Kind of Tired

I have been trying to give my worries to God.  I don't always succeed, but it is my goal.  When I worry, I am telling God that I don't trust Him to take care of me, I don't trust Him to provide.  One of my worries was that cows were just not coming into heat.  Well, that has certainly changed.  Danny gave a few lutalyse shots and this morning there were 12 cows to breed!  I went out to the field from 9 AM to 10:30 AM and saw three more cows that will need to be bred tonight.

My arm is a little tired, but it is a good kind of tired.  A tired that comes from having to work, but it is work that means things are going well.  I like that kind of work.  :)

In other news, Danny would REALLY like to sell the rest of the stragglers.  He is tired of calving cows and they are going to drag this out until the middle of June.  Our chances of getting these cows bred back in our window is VERY slim.  So, if you or anyone you know are interested in springing cows for $1000 a piece, please give us a call at 302-754-1175.  There are about eight of them that haven't calved that aren't spoken for.  They all milk out of all four quarters.

Blessings to you all.

Taking the Bulls to the Yearling Heifers

Ok, this first picture has NOTHING to do with the title of the blog, but I managed to get a picture of the following scene.  This makes my husband's day when he manages to do this :)

Yes, he held up the school bus that arrived after we started crossing the cows over the road to the other side of the farm.  MAKES his DAY :)

Back to the original purpose of today's post:  the bulls.  We headed to Dad's farm, where the bulls are kept, and even though we were only going to take seven of our eleven bulls to go down with the heifers, we had to catch them all to vaccinate them.

This is Micking, or as Danny calls him, "Mr. King".  Behind him you can see the rest of the motley crew of bulls.  Micking is two years old now, he was born in March of 2010, he is a Dutch Belt/Finish Ayrshire cross.

We don't normally keep the bulls for longer than two years, so that they don't breed their daughters.  We have four two-year old bulls and seven yearling bulls.  We like to send at least one or two mature bulls with the yearling bulls.  This isn't a bad group of bulls, but I am really excited about many of the bulls that were born this year that we kept.  The group you see above will be severely reduced after calving season this year to make way for the new guys coming along.  

We got the bulls vaccinated and onto the trailer without too much of an issue.  We were concerned about getting the trailer stuck because it has been raining here (hooray for rain!) and the ground is pretty saturated.  So when Dad went to pull the trailer out of the field he tried to gun it...

. . . then he hit the culvert with the side of the tire, not only popping a huge whole in the tire, but bending the rim of the tire.

So this was how he ended up leaving the field. . .

I don't know if you can see it or not, but front trailer tire is flat.

Since we didn't want to risk the interstate with the trailer tire looking as it did we headed back to the farm with the bulls still in the trailer--we weren't giving up just yet.

Then we proceeded to change the tire, but we needed a little help because we had seven fat bulls on the trailer, so it was heavy.

Dad found a tire that worked to replace the one that blew, and we made our way down.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the bulls in with the heifers, because we had to get back to our farm so we could milk.

The Lord is teaching me  to rely on Him.  Whether it be flat tires, or not as many cows coming in heat that we think should be coming into heat, or getting the bills paid, I need to put my trust in the Lord.  He does not always provide in the way I expect or in the way I would choose, but He is God and I am not, and I will choose to put my trust in Him.  I can't imagine putting my trust anywhere else.  Humans fail, weather changes, and I make way to many mistakes.  The Creator of the universe has promised to never leave me nor forsake me--why would I put my trust in anyone or anything else? 

"The LORD sustains all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down.  The eyes of all look to You, and you give them their food in due time.  You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.  The LORD is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His deeds.  the LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth."
                                                                              ~Psalm 145:  14-18

Breeding Season Begins!

Yesterday marked the beginning of our breeding season!  We put 150 kamars on the cows on Saturday and Sunday.  Now to watch and wait.  We try to let the cows come into heat naturally without the extra shots of Lutalyse, but if they take too long and we don't see any signs of cycling out of them, we will give them a two shots 10 days apart to hopefully trigger their system so that they will come into heat.

I will AI the cows for the first 4.5 weeks and then we will put the bulls in with them for clean up.  I have many jobs, and the bulls only have one, and they are pretty good at that job, and when we are trying to stay seasonal, putting the bulls in part way through the breeding season allows a break for me, but I still have the first 4.5 weeks to hopefully get some genetic improvement with the cows.  So far we have five cows bred and 165 or so to go in the next 4.5 weeks.  Not all of the cows will be past their voluntary waiting period (allotted time after calving until we breed them) before we put the bulls in with them.

Tomorrow we will take the bulls down to put them in with the heifers!  We don't AI the heifers, mostly because we don't have a good and easy way to catch them, but also because we have a lot to do and there are many things that I enjoy doing a much more than breeding heifers.

Well, it is 7:30 here, and I need to go out and watch the cows for heats, like I will every night for the next two months.

Blessings to you all.

The Stragglers

We are at the very end of our calving season.  There are only 11 cows left to calve...and we are waiting, and waiting, and waiting.  They are our stragglers, and according to the vet, they will drag this out until the 7th of June.  We are hoping they decide to calve before then, but we shall see.

The Stragglers

I am trying to convince Danny that we should leave two calves on the cows like we did last year.  He is pretty adamant about not fooling with it this year, so we shall see.  We had two calves on the cows last year, and that was kind of fun.  The first week was a little hard, because we would have to go find them and take them to their mamas, but once they realized that they had to move with the cows it was easy.  Then we weaned them at 5 months (because we weren't feeding them any grain).

Last year's (2011) calves that we kept with the milking cows

This was Yarn, last year at 5 months old.  She didn't like to go onto the feed pad with the cows who are waiting to be milked, but she was too big to slip under the fence like she used to do

This is Kiwi, who is laying down with her head cuddled up next to the bull!  He wasn't much for breeding cows, but he was an excellent babysitter.

Until I write some more...may God bless you and keep you, and may your hearts be open to His voice and His calling on your life.