Gestation Stalls in Nebraska

Below is the text of an email I received today from Trent Loos. I was delighted to read that HSUS finally pitted their propaganda machine against the farmers and ranchers in a predominantly agricultural state. Usually they win dubious victories in states where there are few farms. Research has shown that pigs are not much affected by how they are housed but emotion will overrule science every time if the animal rights fringe gets into the deal.

"Victory was realized today for American consumers when science was recognized rather than rejected. Within 24 hours of introduction, LB 1148, which would have banned gestation stalls in the state of Nebraska, was withdrawn thanks to the charge led by the Nebraska Pork Producers.

Initiatives such as this have the potential to bring about unity within the agricultural community that has been needed for quite some time."

A personal thanks to Wayne Pacelle and the Humane Society of the United States for creating this unity opportunity."

Milking Shorthorn Holstein cross calf

Here is one we had born a couple of weeks ago. (I wanted to take his coat off, but it is pretty cold this morning.) As any of you who visit here regularly know, for the past three years or so we have kept a milking shorthorn bull to breed heifers. It has worked out quite well, but the boss has taken a good deal of flack from folks who are puzzled by our choice. It is not common in this area, although many people keep Jersey bulls and black Angus bulls for their dairy heifers. We have done so in the past, but wanted to get away from those breeds because of temperament issues (here in the east Angus tend to be mean as stirred up snakes) and the low value of half-Jersey calves.

Then I saw the our bull on the internet. I fell right in love with him. He was a beautiful mahogany color with little white snowflake-like spots all over him as a baby. It took nearly a year, but we got him bought and brought him home.

We just sold him a couple of weeks ago and actually got more than we paid for him. Now we just have to go up to Vernon and pick up the semen from him, then we can AI the pen of heifers we are breeding now. The calf in the picture was a terrific surprise though. Most of the crossbreds have been black or mostly black, with only two other red ones in all the time we had him. We had no idea that Licorice, his mother, was a red carrier, but it is kind of neat. We are keeping him and he will be raised for beef for our freezer.

Anyhow, I have mentioned the shorthorn cross thing in the Farm Side a time or two over the years....and, just the other day, the boss was driving by a farm in the area covered by the paper where they run beef bulls with the dairy cows (don't ask) and there, in place of the usual gigantic Hereford, was a milking shorthorn bull. Hmmmmm

We just had a crossbred heifer born this morning and she was up and walking around the barn when we got in at 5:30. Surprising since the boss checked at 11:30 last night and nothing was happening. The new one is plain black though. Guess Pop Tart probably doesn't carry the gene for red.

Tucker

I finally found the dog pictures I have been looking for. This is Tucker, a lab and junk yard dog cross we got for the boss way back before we were married. He will be featured in this week's Farm Side on Friday and maybe here too if I get a chance. He was a good dog. A very good dog...we still miss him all these years later.

Faded photographs

I have been looking for some specific photographs of a certain dog who used to rule here (he needs a nice Northview memorial post)....I simply can't find them, but here are some that I came across during the search. As any of you who know us will see..........we have aged.......

I am very nervous

We have to load the pigs today....I'll let you know how that turns out.....


****Update....here we go...

The bait

The arrangements for moving from home trailer to travel trailer.

Don't wanna

More bait

Done

Then, right across the driveway...

For some reason the pigs look small and cute in these pictures. Blame it on the camera, because really, they are much larger than they seem. Meaner too. They bite and try to knock you down if you are in charge of feeding...which we were when the boss was hurt. their tenure here has been fraught with pig induced peril to the point where they were the stars of two Farm Side columns when they got out and ran through the cows, down to the road....and just about everywhere else.

Today, two loaded quite well. The third...not so much. He wouldn't come out of the trailer for milk or corn or coaxing. The other two were barking and squealing up a storm in the front half of the travel trailer, which didn't calm him down either. We were under an unexpected deadline as the guys over at Nichols were only going to be there to take them in for an hour and we didn't know it until just before we started the loading process. I am very grateful for Martin Luther King Day, which, besides closing schools, afforded us tons of help, mostly used for gophering. (Gopher corn. Gopher string.)

Finally the boss tried the time honored method of moving a reluctant hog. (Gopher a bucket). He put a white pail over the pig's head and backed him out of one trailer and over to the other. Even that took a few interesting turns as the pig ran between his legs (big pig...almost a disaster), lay down in the pig feeder, and generally made his opposition known. Eventually we had them loaded though, along with more corn for getting them back off the trailer, the trusty white bucket in case they get stubborn and don't want to get off and some sand, since the driveway at Nichols is always icy. Now I am just hoping the trip goes well.

Irony

Does anyone else see the irony in a former gun-control advocate getting arrested for gun law violations? And check out his nick name...so perfectly fitting...

Dreaming over a lawsuit?

Mike

Or simply happy that the sun warms the dining room floor just there and he can steal Grandpa's old sweater and the quilted baby blanket from where they block the drafts coming under the hallway door and grab a snooze on a cold afternoon? You be the judge.....


****UPDATE on the sue-age thing.....monkeys can't.....yet.....

A man who wants to give animals the right to sue us

And has been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. Be scared....very scared.

Lawence Tribe

Sarpy Sam Obama Animal Rights

(How's that for a string of words?)

One of my very favorite bloggers, whose opinions I have come to greatly respect, has a rather frightening post today about Barack Obama's stance on animal rights. Sarpy Sam says it better than I can, but Obama's position illustrates a classic farmer/rancher dilemma. We probably understand our animals better than anyone who isn't a farmer or a rancher. After all, we live with them and their very lives depend upon our good care. We wouldn't work at such a challenging job if we didn't love them. Yet every Tom, Dick and Harriet in Hollywood and Washington wants to tell us how to do our jobs.

Kitties on the garden pond two by two

Wait a minute! There's Max, but where did Teak go?



******Update-there she is!

Red sky at morning farmers take....

Pictures

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.

Live bucking bull auction

Going on right now (midday Monday). This is quite a thing to watch if you are a PBR far.
McCoy sale

Honorable fingerpain (no T)

You can't see the grooves that occupied these fingers last night, but they still sting a bit. Yesterday was our annual either too early for 2008 or just a shade late for '07 brother, sister and kids and cousins Christmas gathering. Part of the tradition is that next younger brother and I play some guitar. He is good, I am awful, but if I play real quietly no one says too much.

We played Leo Kottke's Pamela Brown
John Prine's Paradise
John Denver's Country Roads
Danny's Song

Mike played Amazing Grace.....I watched. It was beautiful. He is so good I get cold chills.

We played Coming into Los Angeles, which we used to play with the band. You would think I would remember the chords, but I had to watch his fingers and could not quite keep up.

Then there was LA Freeway...same situation with the chords. (I should really, really, really practice more, but every time I sit down with a guitar, people feel that if I have free time I should spend it talking to them rather than tuning it and learning new songs...so I have more or less given up.... whine, whine...)

It was a very happy time. There was talk of doing it more than once a year and I hope we do. He let me play his best guitar (mine stayed home as the neck isn't quite right. He plays a lot of songs with a capo....put a capo on mine and all she does is buzz). Because I was playing his best one, he played his 12-string, so his fingers were almost as bad off as mine. I have perhaps the best pair of brothers to ever be created. Dang, I love em.

Some cogent anti NAIS arguments

....are offered by these ladies. Cattle Network has run a long and aggravating series of pro-NAIS articles, mostly interviewing government folks who are paid to be in favor of it and folks from organizations, which have been paid or coerced to be in favor of it. The ladies interviewed in this other side of the coin rebuttal have made some great arguments here. Some of them are new to me even though I have been following this intently since it reared its ugly head.

Apple appreciation day

Looks kind of wild and wonderful doesn't it?

However, turn the camera less that 45 degrees and all you can see is traffic....trains, trucks, cars and in the summer really expensive boats.


Since the snow has momentarily mostly melted, the guys and I brought in wood today.
Not together. They worked all day getting a dead elm up out of the ravine between the house and barn. A good friend stopped by the other day to pick up some Holstein semen we were giving him to make room in the tanks for Promise. He took a look around and saw the massive, bare-limbed monster where it loomed dangerously between barn and house.

"Why don't you cut that one down?" he asked, "Right handy to the stove and all..."
The boss admitted that with his bad arm he was a little afraid to mess with it. Elms are treacherous droppers of huge, brittle limbs and will kill you if you aren't careful (or maybe even if you are.) This friend has a long history with logging and firewood and a really big chain saw. He made short work of getting it down, but there was no way to avoid it going into the creek.


I stayed away from that job and went up into the orchard instead to bring down pieces of a dead apple limb that Alan cut up for me a few weeks ago. They have been buried under snow, tantalizing me by being so close and yet so inaccessible. With a whole mess more snow in the forecast it seemed like a plan to get them in. I had already hauled down a lot before the snow flew and still scavenged three heaping wheelbarrows full from just one limb. The apple trees are part of an old orchard that we used to use as a horse pasture. I like it up there.

I have never seen a yellow bellied sapsucker, but they may very well have seen me.

The horse pond. We have always wanted a willow tree and this little shrub volunteered. Don't know if it is a black or crack willow but it serves the purpose.


If I had just a little more zoom and a bit faster camera you could see the gulls like paper darts that flashed across this dramatic sky. I am grateful to the apple trees. For branches to keep me warm, for looking so pretty even in the winter, and for an excuse to be out here all afternoon and still call it work.

Winter birds

This has been the best winter for birding in a long time I think.


The usual suspects arrive at the feeders every day. Lots of little birds of the sparrow, finch and chickadee clans. Jays have made a raucous comeback after West Nile disease decimated them a few years back.
Lots of red tailed hawks.
Not enough visits from the Cooper's hawk and we miss her when she isn't here to bomb the pigeons.
WAY too many mallard ducks and crows, going after the corn bags every afternoon.


Then for three or four days somebody was out in Grandma Peggy's little winesap apple tree making soft, purring calls that I not only did not recognize, but had never heard before. It is very hard to pick out birds on grey, cloudy days, and despite several efforts I never saw our murmurous singer. Then day before yesterday there was someone large and grey out in the young honey locust in the old orchard. At first I though he was a shrike, but he flashed black and white as he flipped down and picked up some large object, maybe walnut sized.


Wow, a mockingbird! I'll bet he was my mystery singer and is mimicking some southern songbird. We get mockers sporadically but it has been ages since the last one. Peg used to put black currents on the windowsill in the living room and they would come and eat them. In fact when we moved up here Liz found a mummified one in the closet of the room she chose (shudder). If this one stays around I will put out some raisins or currents for him. I think the big thing he picked up was probably a dried up old apple from the orchard, but there are lots of wild grapes, rose hips and other dried fruits around for his dining pleasure.


The best bird sighting came the other night when Liz and I were driving up the river on our way home from the Farm Bureau board of directors meeting though. With the locks open and the ice gone for the moment, the long, flat, stretch on Riverside Drive looked like a sheet of dark, polished metal as we slowly passed.

Then a softly glowing shimmer of movement caught my eye out on the inky expanse. I turned to see what caused it (Liz was driving.) For the entire length of the smooth part of the river, from the old insurance office all the way down to Dunkin Donuts (and maybe beyond, I couldn't see) a narrow necklace of gulls floated like a trail of feathers down the center. In some places the trail was only a gull or two wide, in others thirty or forty marked their places in the roosting flock.


Gulls look different at night. Ephemeral, like insubstantial like puffs of milkweed down. To keep their places in the constant stream of the flowing river, they leap frogged over one another, a handful at a time, skimming low up the river to land at the head of the line, then floating slowly back down. They were so incredibly lovely, adrift on that long, silent mirror, that it took my breath away. I am rarely pleased to be out late at night, but the gulls made me glad that I was.

***Alan saw a pair of something huge and white, with long, trailing legs, laboring up the river the other night. I suspect great white herons, but didn't get to the window fast enough to see when he came in a hollering. They come under the heading of maybe once every ten years or so birds and are a big event. I hope they come back by.

Amish corn shocks and other harvest icons

The dark building in the rear is our old hop house. It still contains the drying racks that were used to dry that crop

Amish corn shocks against the horizon one day this week

Under the influence of green cardboard

Something in the water...or in the cardboard, I'm not sure

Here at Northview, before our milk goes into the bulk tank, it runs through an inline fibrous filter that takes out any bits of straw or debris that may have been pulled in with the milk. These filters are 24 inches long and 2 1/4 inches wide and come in a green cardboard box, which holds somewhere around fifty of them. Said boxes are rife with potential, simply rife. They are nothing but trouble.

Last night, while setting up for milking, I found I could not get my fingers on a filter (the green box is stored inside a white metal box on the wall, (into which it just nicely fits), for purposes of cleanliness and keeping the milk inspector happy). Liz tried to reach one too and couldn't, so she pulled the green box out of the other box. Yep, just one left. We were all set just the same, since the boss had bought a brand new green box of filters, which was sitting on the windowsill. She plugged into the metal box. Then she set the empty green box over by the door to be taken to the stove, and warned me, "Don't let Alan see this, you know what will happen."

Well, yes, I did know what would happen...it has happened before, it will likely happen again, but in the business of getting started I forgot all about it and left the box right there. Sure enough, when it came time to tear down he spotted it. Immediately he popped the end over the top of his head and became, "Napole-ON" (as he pronounces it in a hokey French accent).
Why he thinks a two-foot long filter box on top of his head turns him into a famous, (but short), French dictator, I don't know, but last night he discovered a new phenomenon. When you hit six feet tall and you put a two-foot long box on top of your head, you can't stand up in the milkhouse.

Instead Napole-ON had to scurry around bent almost double. That didn't slow him down though. (Dang it!) He began to cavort with the box (taking up a lot of room like only a teenaged boy on a tear can do. They seem to expand to fill all available surface area and then some). Because of these windage and elevation difficulties he took the box off his head and became Bionic Man. With his bionic cardboard arm for swatting family members and making foolish he was invincible (and not so very helpful either). There is just no dealing with him when he gets his hands, (or head) or whatever, into a cardboard filter box. They make him crazy.

As a responsible parent I needed to do something, anything....to stop the insanity. I tried to rip the box off. (If you take the box away he calms down and will get back to feeding the last hay feeding of the day and taking hay over to the horses.)

I couldn't get it though. I just couldn't. Because of the empowering properties of the box, my advanced (and ever increasing) age and infirmity (not to mention the fact I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt), all I could tear away were little 2-inch chunks of green cardboard.

"Hee-Yah," he waved it tauntingly at me and ran out the door. Of course I followed and we did box battle beside the bucket rack outside the door. More pieces fell to my onslaught, but I still couldn't win the day...(mostly because I wound up lying over the bucket rack guffawing helplessly, with tears streaming down my face).

It is hard when you are laughing yourself sick to get someone to stop waving a box around and finish up feeding, but eventually that happened. Maybe he just got tired. Maybe whatever properties green cardboard filter boxes possess finally wore off. I don't know.

I swear though, the next time we empty out a box of filters I am going to take it right over to the stove and toss it in. Never again will I risk leaving it lying around waiting to transform my mild mannered son into Napole-ON. Never.

I like this lady

Meanest mom on the planet sells son's car.