Who is this raider of the green bean patch?

Here is where I am looking to try to find him. And here.

A couple more cow stories

You might think that it is a chore for cows to be dragged to the fair...that they must mind being shut into a stock trailer, driven 32 miles over twisted hill country roads, and kept away from green pastures and good buddies for a week.

You might think.

However, there is a certain amount of evidence to the contrary. About six years ago one of the show heifers was turned out with a herd of regular heifers. The boss was really worried about how we were going to sort her out to take her to the show. (She had been to the fair the year before.) However, as soon as he backed the trailer over to the heifer yard, she threw up her head and ran up to the gate so she could get on.

Same thing this year. Because of the light duty truck the guys made a second trip back home to get Lemmie and Blink. They loaded Lem and went back into the barn to get Blink. When they came out there was Heather, Lizzie's old Jersey show cow, who isn't going this year because we didn't get her bred until real late, climbing onto the back compartment of the trailer. Foolish, a milking two-year-old, who went last year too, was right behind her and Junie, a dry who has been showed all her life, was running down the hill for her turn. I suppose it just shows that they aren't stupid. For the week at the show they are fed about ten times a day, have nothing to do buy lie in knee deep straw, get washed, and groomed and pampered until they shine like stars. It is like a spa for cows! What's not to like? Still it amazes me that all it takes is one trip over to the fair for them to associate a trailer ride with pleasure. In fact, Foolish has never even ridden on OUR trailer, having been hauled over by our trucker last year!

Then the other day, Alan was standing in the barnyard waiting for the boss, and decided to scratch Balsam, mother of Bayberry, grandmother of Bayliner. He used to show Balsie when she was a heifer but she is an older three quartered cow now and can't be shown. He was being careful to stay at arm's length so she wouldn't knock him down if she decided to take off, as most cows won't let you touch them when they are running free. Instead of taking off, she scooped him into the hollow of her neck, with a swoop of her head, and cradled him there against her neck so she could be sure not to lose the source of all that lovely scratching and petting. It was like a huge cow hug...she is mean to other cows, but she sure is sweet to people.

Mandy

Getting ready

This is Mandolin Rain, a 4-year old daughter of Ocean View Zenith out of an old homebred cow, being milked after the show in the fair's milking parlor. It amazes me how the cows take to the parlor, not being milked in one at home. Lemonade had to be milked off the wrong side and is only a first calf heifer and she stood like a champ.

I see you!

What is amazing about this picture is what Mandy is looking at, staring at in fact, over the side of the parlor stall. There is a roped off area where fairgoers can watch the cows being milked. I was standing in the center of about thirty people a good twenty feet from her. She is not one that I milk, she hadn't seen me in a week, it was way past dark, and yet she picked me out of the crowd and stared at me most of the time she was being milked.

I was amazed and humbled. ...although I guess that there was no reason for me to get all excited. One of the kids' friends showed her in one class last year and as soon as she came over to the string this week Mandy recognized her and wanted to be petted. The cows come home tomorrow night and I am way past ready... a night with more than five or six hours in it would be a real bonus.

Doing pretty good here....92 pounds in a day

This one did win

Frieland Chilt Blink

Although I think the kids came in fifth with that best three females group below this baby, showing as a senior heifer calf, won her class against stiff competition. She is not spectacular in the rear "wheels" and could stand to be a little longer and stronger over the topline, but I have liked her since day one. Blink is a daughter of the Select Sires young sire, Chilton, out of a Comestar Leader cow Alan used to show, Brink.

Finally

I'm thinking this is Best Three Females Class, Altamont Fair 2007. We didn't win the blue ribbon, but it was a groundbreaking, watershed, revolutionary, first time kinda thing just the same. Check out the guy on Mandy's halter...

Milk hauling dilemma

Did you know that dairymen pay the milk company that buys their milk to haul it to their plant. This may change depending on the results of a study that is now being done. I hope it does. We pay nearly a thousand dollars a month for hauling.

What's that bug?

Or mammal or frog! I stumbled upon this site after reading Burning Silo today and realizing that although there are katydids all over the place here I had no idea what one sounds like.

Now I do, having listened to the recorded call on the site. Sadly the site is not very comprehensive, but it is fun anyhow.

Speaking of meth

Last year the guys saw a car in the barn driveway and ran down to accost the individual.
We are on a high hill with a winding dirt drive.
His excuses for being at our barn didn't exactly jibe so we called the police.
He claimed he was looking for Argersinger Road.
However in this picture you can see an abandoned house that we think he wanted to get into. I never mentioned it here, but the guy in the car had no teeth, just tiny rotting shells and stumps sticking up out of raw, ragged gums. He couldn't have been more than thirty. I figured at the time and still do that he was looking for a place to cook meth. Just a couple weeks before some fellows got caught cooking on a farm road near some friends' place.
We were scared for a while.
Still think twice about checking the barn after dark.
Oh, and he had a kid about nine with him.
Nice, huh?

Reasearch

Liz accidentally woke me up at four this morning when she got up to go to the fair. (Frankly, it hurt.) It was not time to milk, but since I was up anyhow, I went to work at my other job.....the Farm Side. Deadline is today (not unlike every other Wednesday) and I didn't even have a rough draft. I started doing research on the new federal regulations on 7% iodine solution. I didn't find good news I'm afraid. Instead of being able to go to the farm store to buy a gallon, we will have to look elsewhere, probably a pharmacy, for this much needed medicine. The drug will now be sold only by entities registered with the DEA and records will be kept of its distribution. (I don't suppose that will make it any cheaper.) The law is changing because depraved drug dealers use iodine to cook methamphetimine to sell to their customers. They already steal anhydrous ammonia fertilizer; now they have their fingers in the farm medicine cabinet and their chicanery is taking away a much needed tool for calf, lamb, and kid health.

When baby critters are born, their navels offer a veritable highway by which nasty pathogens can enter their bodies, often causing a disease called joint ill, or navel ill. Dipping the newborn navel in strong tincture of iodine disinfects it and helps it to dry out, closing that germy autobahn into the baby body. Joint ill is a really nasty disease causing swollen, damaged joints and often death. Thanks to all those entrepreneurial drug cookers our calves will now more vulnerable to it, at least until we find an acceptable (and hopefully useless in making meth) substitute.

In the course of my pre-milking research I learned all kinds of stuff about laws, drugs (the bad kind), drugs (the medicinal kind) and public hearings. More than I had wanted to know, really.


Then after all that clicking and ticking away on the keyboard I changed my mind and wrote about this story instead.

Oh, the weather outside is....

Perfect, like a crisp fall day but longer, drier, and just enough warmer to be delightful. Beck and I ran errands this morning and didn't even mind (much). Liz is over at this fair with the cows...and her friends, which is, after all, the real point of showing cattle....being with your friends, that is. It has nothing to do with ribbons (although we like them) and everything to do with who is there to hang around hollering "phone call" every time a critter raises her tail to take care of business. (As in, "Liz, there's a phone call for YOU," when it happens to be one of hers that is doing what cows do best.) And who is there to "accidentally" "slip" with the hose on the wash rack. Who has a set of ear clippers you can borrow. Who brought that amazing summer yearling...or junior two or aged cow.

***New sign in the Fonda Dollar General Parking Lot***

Or who can get away to take a walk down to the carnival section with you and pick up a corn dog. Which serious hottie down on the end of the barn stands up and belts out, "I've got a Brand New Girl Friend", every time the song with the same title comes on the radio that somebody else has blasting loud enough to be heard over the buzz of a dozen sets of cow clippers, the calliope jangle of the rides and the shuffle of hundreds of feet of the fairgoers admiring the cows and the suntanned country kids that grace the new barn.

Fair time is not without its hassles, skimpy passes, loss of exhibitor parking and things like that, but never stops being a great place to meet your friends and have fun. I am looking forward more than I have in a long time to seeing friends at our local fair in a couple of weeks. I am entering some vegetables and such, but only so I can get in as often as I want to see the folks. I know if I go over with the boss we will be able to spend three hours, never get bored, and never make it past the Cow Palace.

***Back to school '07, college girl version 102***

Who brought that animal in the house!!!!!

Wait a minute...it's kind of blurry

Aha, all is clear now...it was the farmer boy in the kitchen with the yellow cat!

Oat shocks in an Amish field

Foot and mouth update

This story brings up what I said below about Plum Island vs inland labs for this highly contagious material. Interesting that it is running the same day as the Farm Side on that topic.

Ha, revisited

Save a cow

Ha, not in my barn you don't

Foot and Mouth disease disaster

Sarpy Sam posted this about FMD with a link to this post about what is going on over in Great Britain. (These pictures are heartbreaking.) The whole affair is generating some serious anger, even here in the USA. It is pretty much a done deal that the disease escaped from a lab that was manufacturing vaccines under government auspices.
***Update...Here is more

Here in the United States such testing is carried out at Plum Island off Long Island, NY. This research facility is being moved to one of five inland sites in the near future at a cost to tax payers of an estimated $450 million.

Plum Island has never caused an outbreak, but is controversial because it is out in the water and easily approached by folks in boats. It is, however, a long way away from hoofed animals, which Kansas, Texas, and all the other proposed sites for the new lab, simply are not. In light of what happened with the outbreak I wonder about the advisability of moving the lab inland. Here is some good news though.

More reasons to avoid National Animal ID

From Drovers Magazine,
"A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report requested by Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and released today found weaknesses in USDA’s plan to implement a national animal identification system. Harkin asked GAO to examine USDA’s animal ID plan in November 2005 after concerns were raised that USDA was not effectively implementing the system and not informing producers and livestock market operators how much the system will cost their operations. Harkin is chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry."

More,

• "The USDA lacks a comprehensive cost estimate or cost-benefit analysis for the implementation and maintenance of the animal ID system. In response to GAO’s recommendation to do so, USDA has now entered into a contract to have a cost estimate conducted.
• USDA has not prioritized the implementation of the animal ID system according to economic value of the species or those most at risk for specific animal diseases.
• USDA has not developed a plan to integrate the animal ID system with preexisting animal disease eradication programs for hogs, cattle, sheep or goats, thus duplicating effort and cost to producers.
• USDA has awarded 169 animal ID cooperative agreements totaling $35 million but has failed to adequately monitor the agreements or determine if the intended outcomes, for which the funds were used, were achieved. USDA has also not consistently shared the results of the agreements with state departments of agriculture, industry groups, or other stakeholders to allow them to learn from experience under the cooperative agreements.
• The timeframe for effective animal disease traceback from where animals have been raised is not clearly defined for specific species. Some contagious diseases need to be tracked and identified in a very short amount of time to limit further spread of the animal disease.
• Tracing animals from their original origin will be problematic given that USDA is not requiring critical information, such as the type of animal species, date of birth, or approximate age of animals to be recorded in the animal ID system. This information is necessary to limit the scope of an animal disease investigation.
• USDA has no benchmarks to determine if there is sufficient participation to achieve an effective animal ID system."

Just what farmers and ranchers have been saying all along.

For washing show cows

A cleaner, (but wetter) Frieland Chilt Blink

***Update...check out this cowside art at BuckinJunction

'Tis the season

***Photo by Liz (which is the first clue)

Summer hummer