This year's last poplar leaf
Spent almost all of yesterday in the barn feeding cows and letting them in and out. (We used to have a power feed cart, but it passed away last winter).
Now the guys feed with wheel barrows, which doesn't really take that long, but it is tedious. I figured that this year it would get done faster if I "manned" one of the barrows and so I do. Figure in a couple of weeks I will either be pretty fit or pretty dead. So far the trend is towards fit.
Had a relatively new (to us) veterinarian do some preg checking and it went quite well. She was competent and fun to work with. Most of the cows we thought were carrying calves are in fact and a couple we were pretty worried about surprised us in a good way. Dear old Zinnia gets to stay another year, which made my day. Nobody likes her but me, but I like her a lot. She doesn't even belong to me...is Alan's cow...and she steals other cows' calves and guards them even from us...but I just like her.
However, thanks to NY State's exorbitant tax rates for land, somebody has to go to pay some bills (we spend nearly two months income paying county and school taxes on our land) and it leaves us looking for income outside the milk check after we get done being fleeced.
Unfortunately Blink, a sweet old retired show cow and Cider, not so sweet, and in fact downright mean, will go to the auction today. Nuff said.
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4 comments:
I think I'd like Zinnia too. For some reason I like the idea that she steals other cows' babies. :-p
I like Zinnia too. Stealing babies isn't so bad if as she doesn't go too far with them.
I'll bet it's hard, getting attached to cows that end up being sacrificed to an auction.
Awwww. . . sweet Zinnia. That's so neat.
As for the confiscation of your hard earned money in the form of taxes . .
Bah! Double bah!
June, for some reason, she likes me, so we get along real well. I try to never have the boss milk her because she will pin him on the stall divider if she gets a chance.
Susan Rose, I end up liking almost all of them and generally hate selling any of them, but it has to be. With Zinnia, the stealing is on one hand great, because woe betide the coyote that comes after a calf or a new mother when she is in the field. On the other hand she pushes the moms away from their babies who should be drinking rich colostrum rather than being dragged around by a swing-bagged old lady. lol We have had a whole line of cows like Zinnie, going back to her great, great, oh-so-many greats grandma, who was vicious with calf stealing. Jumped over a cliff into the creek once to get back to someone else's calf. I can't tell you how glad I am to get to keep the old girl though. The vet was laughing at me because I kept saying, "Oh, I hope this one is bred, she is one of my favorites," only I said it about every one of the first line of cows. lol
Cathy, almost nine thousand bucks a year just for property taxes. I wonder if we are paying "our share"?
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