Good morning. Sorry about yesterday. It dawned clear and sharp and bright. The air was clean and fresh. It didn't rain. So everybody in the family worked like a dog with two tails to take advantage before it starts pouring again. (This afternoon by all accounts.) Between grabbing a good day when we could and Frontier being down most of the day, I barely even looked at the computer. We cleaned the barn and Becky swept the whole house. I weeded the small garden patch. The guys chopped haylage. We cleaned mangers. We moved heifers up on the hill into the big heifer pasture.

They are a bunch of big ones we really wanted to keep right by the house for the summer, as we are breeding them AI. We need to see when they come in season and be able to catch them to do that. There are self-locking stanchions there we can use for the latter job. However with all the rain the mud in the yard became ridiculous. They just couldn't stay in it any longer. Now they are in a huge field with no headlocks, where it will be hard to see them in heat let alone catch them. We had to think about their health and comfort though.

Unfortunately it is also the field where we are holding the dry cows and calving some of them. Liz goes out every day and walks that fence and checks for new calves or new problems. I will worry more now as some of the big heifers are aggressive and others are overly friendly. (When something weighs well over a thousand pounds, cuddly is bad.) She takes a cell phone and a big stick but still....it got pretty western yesterday moving some of them. One of them, a big, ugly beast named Armada, was downright dangerous when we were trying to get her up the lane. (I am too old to dodge charging heifers, I have to say.) I think she may have sealed her fate and be looking at an auction-bound trailer ride next time we handle them. I need money to pay bills and we don't need dangerous animals. This was the second time she has caused problems.

Today we get another good weather day before storms are expected for tonight. Liz and I need to set up a couple of calf hutches as we have more calves than we have places to put them. We need to get strawberries before the season ends. Rain and frost have made that a big problem. Becky needs to get taken to Walmart for going to Potsdam supplies.

We lost one of our best heifers to bloat Saturday night into Sunday (one of those in the barn until ten thirty nights). I for one still haven't gotten past it. If you have them you will lose them, s**t happens and all, but she was a Silky Cousteau out of an Ocean View Extra Special, a really, really special animal. It was just a freak thing. We treated her and had her coming around good, but she was still pretty weak. Sunday morning Liz and Ralph milk. She was okay then. They came in from the barn for breakfast and while they were eating she rolled herself over on her head and probably suffocated. Only heifer her mother ever had and she is gone too so.....

Just a lousy weekend overall.