What in the heck has she been doing?

So, as you know, I’ve been out of the blogosphere for quite a while.  Somehow, I let life get in the way of typing & sharing my story.  I do share brief snipets & texts via Facebook & odd quotes & notes on Twitter as @GreenRanchMom.

I did share the story of MamaCow on our website a week or so ago.

So, I’ll catch you up quite quickly.

Farmers markets are tons of fun!  I love the connection with our customers & sharing our story with everyone.  Plus, then most people take home some yummy steaks or Beef Sticks : )

I was a very active Founding Member of TallGrass Grocery Coop  and we finally opened the store in September!!  It is located in Historic Valley Junction, so stop by & shop for some affordable, local, real Foods (including EbersoleCattleCo Beef).

 

We had a Practical Farmers of Iowa Field Day in October.  It was super scary preparing for other beef producers to come to our ranch.  Then, once the day arrived, it was TONS of fun!!  Jill & Sean from Blue Gate Farm, even stopped by after market (& brought greens for us, so of course I sent some sticks home)!!

The next week, we unexpectedly welcomed nearly 50  Fullblood Maine Anjou cows to our Ranch.  It was a quick, rescue type of situation, so we have had to work really hard to improve their nutrition & health.  But, these cows are beautiful to look at AND work with.  Their dispositions are so sweet & willing!  We selected a fall heifer for J.ustaCowgirl to show  and she was halterbroke & lead-able in 3 days!!  This is nearly unheard of from a calf that had only seen a human about 5 times in her life before October!!  We are really excited to offer our Fullblood calves for sale!!  We will be selling about 5 cows & 10 Bred heifers  this spring in order to cover our costs of wintering 50 extra cows.  If you’re in the market for a MaineAnjou heifer or  cow, drop me a note.  We’ll have both Purebreds and Fullbloods.

And now, I’m just really enjoying the winter “break”!!  We’ve enjoyed a beautiful mild winter and have plenty of grass & hay for all of our cows.  Plus, we cleaned out the big barn, so we’ve all been riding lots : )  I’ve even started a couple of our colts, so we should have some great minded saddle horses to offer this spring.

 

Hope this catches you up a bit.  I'll share more stories as we go

This is my soapbox....be prepared for me to be stepping on it frequently

I haven't been posting much about my opinions lately.

This is my SoapBox

I will be stepping up onto my soapbox HERE on my blog.  In more ways than one.

As usual, I try to think before I speak, but it IS my blog & I will say what I want.  I do have several posts in draft for me to tone down. : )

Hang on to your saddlehorn, we're going for a run.

GreenRanchingMom

Whew!!! Nothing died & THEY're HOME

Whew, well, you might have guessed, but my family has been gone ALL week. Yup All of them. Honey had planned on taking A.Cowgirl & J. to his hometown County Fair in Illinois to show Freedom & the Steer. I needed to stay home to do chores & take care of the calves that we're going to show @ State Fair & trying to sell for show calves. Late in the day on Sunday, Honey's brother called & said that they wanted to have Squeak come too. They would watch him during the day & Grandma would have him at nite. Because 3 kids & fitting 2 calves would be WAYYYY to much for Daddy to handle by himself. o.k.? Can I do this??

Can I really stay home.....by.....myself????

Well......I did it!! I got lots done outside & wasn't in the house more than 10 min at a time while the sun was up.

And....NOTHING DIED. You see, most every time that Honey is gone, something died. 8 years ago, he was showing in Denver & I lost 5 (yup 5 out of 8) calves & his dog was hit on the road.
So, nothing dying was a HUGE accomplishment.

And, If you read my tweets you know that A.Cowgirl did really well & the steer won Reserve Grand over all on Wednesday. This was a huge show. There were 297 calves shown each day.

So, I met them in DesMoines @ my parent's house to trade trucks (honey took theirs, cause I had to haul pigs). That little steer I tweeted (he bloated really bad) about was doing ok, just a little bit of bloat (don't worry, I took some pictures, so I'll blog about bloating later).

So, we get home about dark, and all of us are doing chores (WOW!! its great to have my ranchhands er...kids... back). And we hear a goat crying. At one point it screams, & I ask "who's killing my goat??" Meaning that the dogs were chasing it or had one of the cows stepped on a goat? Nobody sees the goats. We had seen LadyBell & Checkers on the other side of the road with 7-up when we got home.

We get the air let off of the bloated calf (again) and I went to the south end of the barn to carry buckets the J had so graciously filed, and still hear a goat crying. I looked under the wagons (remember its getting dark). HMMM, I carry 2 buckets to the cows (the OLD babies in the barn). Lacey (my pet cow who is blind) starts walking out and trips on the poured water pad, & steps in the hole. A goat SCREEEEEAAAAMMMMS. YIKES!!! I holler for honey & go running to the hole. I stick my hand in the hole (really dark & can't see) & I feel ......HORNS. I grab his little horn & PULLLLLLL. Billy Goat is stuck in the hole. HONEYYYY! He's so fat I have to re-grab and use my legs to pull him out. Billy is usually VERY anti-social & after I pulled him out, I checked legs & stomach & he seemed fine. But he just stood there looking around & trying to figure out if he was ok. He let me pet him again & seemed ok.

WOW!! He got lucky! How did he fall in feet first?? Did a cow kick him? They usually drink out of the calf tank, WHY did he have to go in the cow pen? Wow, he was lucky that he didn't go head first or he'd be drowned. I guess we're lucky he has horns, so he didn't get hurt too bad when Lacey stepped on him. She just squished him farther down in the hole. Its a 6 ft tube that sits below an automatic waterer.


So, they made it home & we're all laying in bed snuggling & talking 90 miles a minute.

AND...........Nobody died while Honey was gone. THANK GOD!!!

Gol darn gone & done it......again

I know, I was just really into the groove of blogging this spring. Then summer hit, and I quit. Well, I didn't really quit blogging, I just ran out of time in the day to blog on a regular basis.
So......In a nutshell in the last month we have
Hauled Pigs
Fed Calves, tied up calves, washed calves, and worked with the show calves on a daily basis.
Rode horses and ponies
Played with the goats
Harvested 2 more chickens
Harvested 2 beef
Made LOTS of hay 55 hauled home, 78 in one field & still more in another field
NOT registered for school today


Things that are on my list to do.....

There are tons, but the one that I really want to blog about is tanning hides.
I saved the hide from the last beef that was harvested. It's been salted, and now needs to be processed or tanned. We didn't save the brain, so I think that I'm going to use Alum to tan the hide.

Well, I'm off to bed, so I can be out and about at 5am.
Night Y'all

WARNING - Opinionated Nursing/Animal Husbandry Post Ahead!

Well, this subject has been brewing in my mind since I was pregnant with Squeak. That's a long while! (about 19 months). And, I am VERY opinionated on this subject, so I apologise in advance if I offend you (but you should really change your mind & then you wouldn't offended).

I recently read this blog about a mother not being able to feed her child, when her child needed fed. That blog, had me thinking about most mothers and thier attitudes towards nursing, & starting to nurse thier children in the hospital.

Here's the story of the original time I talked about this with another person. I was in my Midwife's office for a routine checkup somewhere towards the end of my pregnancy. We were discussing nursing. Missus D (we'll call her) is quite the Lactivist (what most nursing advocates, or activists call themselves). As a Rancher, I am also quite opinionated about nursing, and also very much as a mother.

Missus D was explaining to me how important nursing was, and that it was important to get nursing off to a good start, IN the hospital. That's when the Rancher in me spoke up (& Missus D listened intently).

If a lamb doesn't get colostrum........Its as good as dead.

If a Colt doesn't get colostrum..........Its as good as dead!

If a Calf doesn't get colostrum...........Its as good as dead!

Then WHY do we think it is ok for BABIES (human babies) not to get colostrum???

I have a VERY wonderful Rancher Friend & Mentor, she chose not to nurse her sons. However, she did INSIST, that she pumped her colostrum for the first day and that it was fed to her sons.

She KNEW how important that this first milk was.

You see, colostrum has thousands of antibodies that provide immunity that is VITAL to the baby's survival. The rates of survival in an animal that does NOT recieve colostrum start dropping dramatically every hour after the 12 hour mark. If an animal has not recieved colostrum within the first 24 hours, their rate of survival is below 25%.

It is so imperative that an calf receives colostrum, that I have milked out 2 cows this year (not an easy feat to milk a beef cow) to give it to a weak calf that wouldn't suck. We tube ALL of our houseguests with powdered colostrum that we mix with hot water. AND we make sure that they drink from their dam as soon as possible.

Now, you should REALLY think about this. How many children do not get colostrum after they are born in the hospital??? How many nurses will provide a child formula in a bottle, because the mother doesn't feel like nursing or doesn't APPEAR to have enough milk? HELLO!!! You don't need that much milk when the size of your tummy is a WALNUT! You don't need very much if that milk has TONS of VITAL immunogens & antibiodies! The "first milk" is also VERY FATTY! (next time I HAVE to get a picture of some colostrum from a cow & then some later milk)

WHY, tell me WHY do we not have powdered colostrum for babies? We have developed (and realised we need) different milk for the first day of a calf's life; WHY haven't we done it for human babies (whose mothers do not KNOW the harm they are doing to their children)??

As doctors, WHY don't they REQUIRE ALL MOTHERS TO PUMP COLOSTRUM? I think that they should insist that mothers give their children MILK, NOT Formula.

Now, if you can handle the opinion.......On to the nursing side of things.

Farmers, if you had to choose between bottle feeding an animal or letting its mother raise it, Which would you choose? - - - - - Mother should raise it, with HER milk

Does a calf do as well on a bottle or bucket, as on a cow?- - - - - NO

Will you have higher death loss of bottle animals? - - - - - MUCH Higher up to 50% more, even under the cleanest conditions

So, why then, do we THINK it is ok for mothers to feed their children formula?

Why do some doctors try to push mothers to wean their children to formula?

I have no clue. It must be because they think they are smarter than Mother Nature! They can replicate everything she does, YEAH RIGHT! It is probably because the pharmaceutical companies pay them, to sell thier formulas.

OK. I'm done, I've said my piece. But, I will say that Missus D (remember my original story) was quiet. She had never thought about the animal side of it, and NEVER had anyone pointed these thing out to her. And she is a Lactivist.

Think about it, if an animal doesn't get colostrum, and just formula, it has only a 50% lower survival rate. Even dairy farmers give their calves colostrum before they pull them from the cow.

But, we (most of our nation) think it is ok to feed our children the same formula for the entire first year of their life.

Oh, and BTW, that is a bottle of Juice that Squeak is drinking. But he did wean himself at ~10-11 months. (Momma is still really sad about it, but it was just too hard for him to hold still)