Not much

Because not much is happening of interest. It is getting cold again after our mini thaw. Another storm is predicted for tomorrow. It is winter after all.

We have been selling a few head to pay the property taxes, which tend to be the bane of any and all property owners in NY. So far we sold Rip Tide, a yearling heifer which developed the unacceptable habit of sucking other heifers (ruins the udders). Sometimes we put a prickly plastic tab in their nose, so if they suck they get kicked and stop. RT also kicked out behind real bad so....

Then there was Fitty (number 50, AKA Beech) Fitty kicked. Pinned people on the metal post in her stall to try and crush them. Killed her calves as soon as they were born if she got to them first. Had chronic mastitis (udder inflammation) so we fed all her milk to the pigs for three years. Got loose last week and tore up the barn and beat on baby calves (bad timing.) She still made it to ten years old, which is old for a dairy cow. Can't say as I miss being scared spitless if I got stuck milking her. (The boss usually did it, but he tends to wander off.) 187, another heifer. Had either an udder injury or some other serious infection and lost a quarter. Too bad, she was pretty gentle, and very well bred.

And by far the worst, old 49. Veronica. Daughter of Juniper Rotate Jed. Super high producer in her younger days, but almost 11 and not milking so great any more. One of Alan's cows, an old standby. A bit of a kicker but we all liked her. She loved the broom and would moo coaxingly at me whenever I was sweeping cows or currying them.

No one wanted to sell her but we couldn't get her bred this year and she was only giving twenty pounds of milk. If not for the tax man we would have made the not-so-businesslike, but after all this is our farm isn't it, decision to keep trying on breeding her. Let her hang around another year. We liked her. It hurt to put her on the truck and of course, she went sweetly, just walked right on the trailer. Alan swept her off and curried her a lot the night before and asked me to do the same yesterday morning. Of course I did and no doubt she was the best groomed cow at the auction barn. There are two more to go next week, Aretha, chronic mastitis, also feeding pigs right now, and 471, Marge, 14 years old and going downhill. (She could die on the farm and be buried here, but for the tax man.) Imagine selling SIX cows to pay just one of the two sets of taxes (that is just property taxes, school and county) on this place (and they will not pay the whole shot by any means.)

I wonder if the legislature in Albany, when they dump unfunded mandates on local governments and schools know (or care) that a nice old cow died early to fund their overspending. The other three would probably have been sold anyhow....maybe not Rip Tide (who will grow up to be a dairy cow on some one else's farm), but Fitty was long overdue before she killed somebody. Not 49 though. The poor old girl was taxed to death.