HOT!!
Dawn: Spider Ranch
Arpil 22, 2009
Out the door early this morning to feed a pen of calves that we started weaning Friday. For the past few years, we’ve employed ‘fenceline weaning’, keeping the mothers close to reduce the stress of the process. With water at each corral, we can also keep the dust controlled and hold pinkeye and respiratory problems to a minimum. It all helps, especially when it gets to be over 100 degrees. After a week in the pen, the cows will forget the company of their calves, and by the third day, the calves are already bawling at the truck for breakfast.
We haven’t weighed any calves yet, but it looks like we’ve had a fairly decent feed year judging by how the bunches we’ve gathered look. We’ve plenty of old feed left, having reduced our stocking capacity in every pasture because of the high price of last year’s alfalfa. Now, of course, our concern is fire, especially around Lake Kaweah where the snowmelt is rising faster than the irrigation release, now pretty close to the dry feed as we head into Memorial Day weekend and a lake full of recreators.
Somehow, Robbin has managed to get the garden in shape, having done some planting before we left for Oklahoma, and just now finishing-up with Armenian cucumbers, potatoes and beans. But the weeds in the orchard and yard have had a second germination with our late rains, growing well while we were gone.
With two bunches to wean tomorrow, it’s the time year when you better get out early, as now the cattle are headed to shade by 7:30. As my good friend Joe Bruce remarked last summer, “an hour early in the morning is worth four in the afternoon.” We’ll wait for his Latin translation.