Moldy Feed

A somewhat productive day.

After chores this morning Dean and I took off to go chase a bull of the neigbors that had gotten in with Merle's red cows at Cheif Bears. (PS I put the pasture names in for my reference and for anyone who reads that knows where it is...sorry if it's annoying to hear about all these places you don't know much about!) We got over there and found him and pushed him out the gate. I followed him all the way back to his cows on the other side of the pasture just to be sure he didn't get creative with his fence climbing skills and go right back wehre we took him from. When we got back to the ranch, Dean was sent fencing and I was headed down to Dick's place to continue yesterday's project.

I didn't get too far when Merle showed up to pick up the tub chute to bring to Mike for his branding tomorrow. So, we worked on folding and jacking that up until we ran into a slight issue. One of the cranks had a broken bolt so it wouldn't jack up. So, we got creative and grabbed the tractor and hooked a chain from the chute to the loader to lift it up high enough to put the pin in to hold it in the travel position. I'm running the loader and everytime I go higher the tractore tips more and more. Finally when only one side of wheels were on the ground I hollered that i couldn't go any higher and he took a look at the tractor. That was pretty funny...he didn't realize the chute was that heavy and neither did I. We did a little rearranging and hooked on in another place and managed to get it up. I hooked up to it with my pickup and had planned to take it to town, have Jay at the GE store fix it, and leave it there for MIke to pick up. But before hand, I was going out and stopping at the drill to hlep Merle hook up to it and go to town to have some repairs done on it as well. So, while travelling through the neighbors black cows to get to the drill we noticed two red bulls and a red heifer of ours that will have to be sorted out tomorrow...

When we got to the drill we noticed that Ross had stopped disking in the nearby field. After driving over to him we found out that the disk was balling up all the tall stubble. We spent a lot of time trying to get all of that out so the disks would rotate again and they finally did! We also found out that all we were doing wrong with teh air conditioner on that tractor is that we weren't turning the valve far enough. That was dumb and made me feel like an idiot- but at least it's working. So, after spending quite some time at the disk we headed back to my pickup and just as I was about to hop in we saw someone come over the hill. It was Mike- looking for the chute. We had taken so long heping Ross and dinking around trying t life it up that he ended up catching up with us! So, we switched the chute from my pickup to his and helped Merle hook up to the drill. Those two took off and I headed back down to Dicks.

I spent wayy more time that I thought it would take on cleaning out thsi feeder wagon. First, I had to get all the net wrap off with a hot iron- then sweet and clean all the cracks and crevaces that were loaded wtih gunk. This took a lot of time in itslef. After I swept it, I went and found some waste oil (or super bad hytran fluid- I'm so stuffed up I can't smell it) that was thick and black and swept it all over the bottom of the wagon so it doesn't rot out. I did a little grease work and and some more cleaning and then parked and blocked it for the summer until next winter. There were lots of lick barrels that I picked up down there and I also spent quite some time cleaning out the 15-20ish bunks that have not been stacked yet. It was a job that I was happy to get doen because they were going to rust out if we didn't get them all cleaned out very soon.

Overall, my afternoon alone didn't go too bad. I picked up a lot of crap in the yard and moved some things around which made it at least look better down there. I didn't have too much trouble with anything except getting the open faced, full waste oil bucket into the feeder wagon. The ladder is super short and high off the ground and when you get to the inside there is no ladder back down. So, I had to be super creative to get the full bucket up there- but I managed to get it done!

After cleaning out teh bunks I had to put a few barrels back in my pickup that some curious horses knocked out and headed home for chores. Merle brought an additional three bucket calves come in from someone else tonight- o the joys of feeding 14 calves milk! We got them to suck after a little wrestling match and some confusion. O, and tonight I let teh calves out and left the chicken shed door open fro just a short time...sure enough I turned around adn found five or six calves in there! haha, those littel farts. Eventually, I got all the chores done and Dean came in from some prairie dog poisoning. I decided it was time to clean out my pickup and dump off barrels so I spent quite a bit of time doing that. Then, helped Merle unload those calves, and ate some lasagna with Adrienne and Merle (yay for good food). Finally, I went to the dump hole and threw out what garbage was left from my pickup and picked up a bag of milk for the claves in the morning.

Now, I'm ready for bed! Last night the pager went off twice- one was 1022ed (or sent back to the station- the other was way to far away for us to go to.) Either way- i hope we don't get pages again tonight!

"I took the life of a cow{girl} like a horse takes to oats!"