Cows, Kids, and Baltimore Orioles

Female Baltimore Oriole

My friend, Linda, from Colorado sent me some bird feeders, including oriole feeders. So far the orioles haven't seemed interested though, even though I hung one right near their jelly dish. They and the catbirds visit that all day.

Is there anything I should do to get them to use it? 


And do you fill it with the same food as the hummingbird feeders? Curious minds would like to know.

Never saw the orchard orioles again, although I really am pretty sure I DID see them...you know how that is, right?

No meteor shower for our area either. Instead it appears that it rained most of the night and it is still soggy out there, and grey, and gloomy. I SHOULD  go birding for a few minutes today. I am pretty sure the Black-throated Green Warblers are back in the cow lane. Think I heard them yesterday, but the call of our male is just a little different from the one on iBird, so I want visual verification.

Alas, this weather is not terribly tempting....but I probably will go anyhow...or at least take the binocs to the barn... you get sick of rain after a while.

 Kids are all home, which is nice, if hectic. Always great to have Alan in our area code, even if we only see him passing through. I dreaded having them move away....

This young lady keeps things interesting

Moon is giving a lot of milk on the new grass.  Wondering if we should ship a couple big, weaned, bulls, and buy a pair or two of little ones to drink it all. The four that are still on milk now are getting pretty fat, the boss and the kitties get all they can drink, and with Bama due to calve....

Daisy, deciding whether to wash Tangerine....or EAT her

Bama is starting to bag up for that coming calf. Hope she comes through okay. She has a number of breeding dates...wish we knew which one she caught to, as she needs an injection of selenium.

 Our area is very deficient in that mineral, and we customarily give it a couple of weeks before a calf is due. Seems to help them to pass the placenta in a timely fashion and in general post calving health.

One of the best nutritionists we ever worked with, who served the herd back in the day, once gave me a bottle of a "people" selenium supplement made by the company that supplied the selenium we put in the feed then...which meant that we didn't have to inject the stuff. After a while I worked up my courage to actually take it...and I felt great. I've tried to find it commercially available since then, since feeling great is high on my agenda, but I never have.

I am very nervous about Bama's coming baby. She is such a pet...and she in part belongs to friends....

Bama and Moon, who like the silly cows they are, spend their days next to Sunny, the horse, rather than grazing all the acres they have to themselves. You can't see it, but Sunny's yard is just north of them. Must be they think he is handsome or something. so despite having a pasture that kept fifty-plus, they are chewing on short grass.