Cattle Work... Again

On any given day, you can find Josh and Loren working with cattle.  There's many jobs that need to be kept up with to keep the herd healthy and safe (besides the obvious feeding and fencing): vaccinating, pregnancy checking, weaning, branding, making the little bulls into little steers... just to name a few.  I think I've done a post on everything except the preg checking... that post will be on its way the next time it's done, very censored and adult content only (PG-13).  This post, however, is about summer pest control on the cattle. 

And, as always, when The Guys (or "The Boys", as Sarah calls them) are working with cattle and it's a job safe enough for us (the kids and I) to be around, we were right there in the middle of the action!

The cattle are divided into herds depending basically on their age and calving time and are kept in varying pastures over the farm.  When a certain herd is close enough to be "brought in", The Guys will go out with tractors, four wheelers, the Jeep... whatever it takes... and finish running them into the barn.  I think this was the last herd to be brought in this summer.  They were in the very back pasture but one afternoon, in the midst of their grass eating and cud chewing, they wandered close enough to be brought in.  So the kids and I got a late afternoon warning that we'd be working cattle that evening. 

If you look in the picture over the hood of the tractor, you can see the cows are starting to come up to the barn.  This is a pretty noisy job!  They were quite a ways away (this picture is really zoomed in!), but still the level of mooing from the cows and calves and the level of hollering from The Guys to keep the cows moving made quite a ruckus all the way up to the yard where the kids and I were waiting! 

About halfway there, even more mooing and hollering...

.... and finally they made their way through the gates, through the barn and into the waiting pen.  This picture is pretty zoomed in, too, because the kids and I stay out of sight until the herd is locked up.  If they see us wandering around, they'll get nervous and won't cooperate.

 

So, how does one go about spraying a herd of cattle for summer pests?  Well, we do what any smart thinking cow-family does: we use our resources.  And the resource we have is our Highboy, typically used to spray tall crops but with a little finagling and temporary adjustments, it can also be used to spray cattle!

Josh and Loren added a little dope tank.  (I don't know what they call it, but since it's little, it holds the concoction to spray the cattle with (the dope) and it's a tank, I call it 'the little dope tank".  It makes sense to me and since it's my picture and my blog, that's all that matters!)  They use the pumps from the Highboy and added a hose with a spray nozzle on the end and VOILA!, we have a cattle spraying setup!  This system of brilliantly rigging things to work has come to be known to us around here as VZM: Van Zante Modification!

Here's how it went down: Loren (the cowboy there on the left) ran them into the barn in groups of six or eight cows and whatever calves came in with them....

 

...Josh sprayed them....

....until they were all good and saturated with the pesticide....

....and I opened that red gate you saw in the last picture to turn them out. 

I general don't get nervous around cattle, but I have to admit that I was a wee (just a wee) bit nervous this time because I knew that mamas and babies were separated.  And when mamas and babies get separated, mamas get mean and do what it takes to get to their babies.  Thankfully, I only had to jump the gate once when a young first year heifer (I think) got a little over anxious and tried showing me who's boss.  Once she found her calf, she was a sweetie like all the others. 

 

Then we repeated the process until all the cattle had been run through.
(I only added this picture of Josh because I like it. Not sure why, there's nothing special about it.  It just speaks to me.)

Still spraying.
(I only added this picture because I like the brand on the cow on the left and how the cow on the right is apparently trying to stick her tongue up her nose.)

So we kept the routine going until the first tank was empty and....

....we had to go in and reload.  The tank holds a concoction of water and pesticide that will take care of flies, ticks, mites, mainge (I think ) and any other annoying summer pestilence that would affect the cows' health.  We call the concoction "the dope".  One big concern is especially with flies: the flies tend to swarm around the cows' eyes, which leads to infections and eventually blindness.  Having ONE blind cow is bad enough, can you imagine several in a herd?  It's pretty important to get the cows sprayed in a timely manner at the beginning of summer to prevent any problem before it arises.  Thankfully, The Guys reported that they didn't see a single bad eye in the whole group... which means they got to everything in time!

 

"See, Mom?  It's this full.   Just in case you wanted to know!"

After having run the cows up from the pasture and spraying half the herd, The Guys were also ready for...

...a Coke break.  And yes, they share, as evident in the picture :-)

And really REALLY good.... no GREAT...  Coke break also involves tree climbing, too!

But all good things must come to an end and we were soon back to...

 

spraying again.  Group after group until we were finally done.  After finishing the whole herd, The Guys put the herd back out to pasture.

To finish up the whole job, all the gates have to be put back in there permanent places.  My kids don't let their size hinder their willingness to work.  The gate was too big and heavy for them, but that didn't stop them from trying, and actually moving the thing a good foot, before Daddy came to help!

Once everything was all said and done, it was time to head home.  It was dusk, so we followed  Josh home with the blinkers on so no one would run over him.  We got home a bit before nine, quickly chored and showered, and got sat down to eat supper about 9:15.

Love this farm life!

Now, a couple of postscripts:

 

There have been countless times when I've had to excuse myself, the kids, Josh, or our whole family from things because of farm duties.  And almost always I get a look of ignorance and confusion (like, "What on Earth are you talking about?") or doubt (like, "Yeah right, people don't really do stuff like that except on ranches in Oklahoma.")  Well, yeah... we really do and when we don't make events because of farming, it's the genuine reason.  AND...

 

 

Any reference to dope and coke in this post is purely agriculturally related.  Honest!  :-)