Snow Baby

Mockingbirds are tough folks....
click on this one if you want to see some of the heaviest snow I have ever experienced

We got a whopper of a snow storm yesterday. I don't know how else to describe it. Hard snow all day and slashing rain and sleet far into the night. The roads were so bad it took Alan half an hour to get from the school to Ice Cave Road. Church Hill was closed in town. The S-bend on Grovenors Corners Road was impassable without four-wheel-drive and there were police at both ends dealing with the cars that couldn't make it.

I would have hated to be an emergency responder person or a plow driver. They must have all been worn out half to death last night.

So, of course, naturally, inevitably, Broadway decided to finally have her nearly two weeks overdue calf. Of course she waited until night milking.

As soon as we could feel feet we could tell that it was coming breech. When a calf is born hind feet first there is some real urgency in getting it delivered in a timely fashion. When the umbilical cord is pinched or torn when the belly passes through the cow's pelvis, (a normal thing in a frontwards birth), the calf's head is still inside the cow. When it instinctively gasps to breathe it gets a big lung full of amniotic fluid instead of air, as would be the case if it was in the right position. Not a good thing.....

And getting a quick delivery done was made just about impossible by the size of the calf. It was HUGE. So big that after waiting in vain for hours for something to happen, when Liz and I tried to pull it we couldn't. Had to call the boss. Normally the calf's head acts as a wedge, widening out the birth canal and making room for birth to progress. In a breech birth, you have a couple of long skinny legs, which do not serve that purpose, then a huge fat butt, which acts more like a cork than a wedge.

This calf had a fanny the size of a month old calf. It was a lot harder pull than we like to see, but we got it in the end.
Incredibly it is a beautiful red roan heifer. After such a hard birth I didn't expect much, but it is standing up this morning, all spunky and lively. Momma likes it just fine.....and so do we. We will try to get some pics for later, although it is going to be a busy morning dealing with the aftermath of the weather.

Major Snow Storms Real and Imagined

The big news this week in this section of Upstate NY has been the two snow storms....one finished up its work yesterday, leaving us only a couple of inches (which is fine with me) but lambasting some of our close friends terribly.

The roads were appalling, but there was no reason that they should have been. When it is 36 degrees and snows, you will get a nasty frozen slush on the roads...unless they are properly salted that is. Then they should just be wet. Guess budget fun and games has that whole salt thing in abeyance, because Alan had the worst trip home in his college career Tuesday night and there was only an inch or so of wet snow to be found.

Now we are supposed to get another whopper today.

Unless we don't.

The weather oracles seem to have no clue whether there will be lots of rain, lots of snow, not much rain, not much snow, some of both, some of each or a balmy 80 degree day a la Bahamas (I am voting for that).



Meanwhile the kids are trying to get trips to the state Farm Show in Syracuse planned, but with such a shaky, iffy, useless questionable weather forecast they are hesitant to go.

I don't blame them. I would quite like to go myself, but with things as they are these days that ain't happenin'.



Meanwhile, C'mon spring...(or Bahamas vacation) We are ready! (I think I will make out a seed order today........)


****Update: Joated nailed it and it is nailing us!

MoreThanAMillion Dollar Cow

HT to Dairy Herd Management for this pair of great links.

Here is the story of a $1.2 million dollar show cow.

And here is Popular Mechanics breakdown on the ...er....mechanics of a big bucks bovine.

Wordless Wednesday

A Sweet Story of Cows and Neighbors

Rosemoon, of Moon Meadow Farm, was the first blogger to link to Northview, back in August of 05 when this undertaking began. Since then we have followed the story of her family, their farm animals and wonderful gardens with as much interest as if they lived just down the road, rather than in a far southern state, (where in theory it should be warmer than it is here).

Alas our southern neighbors have recently been battered by horrific storms and ice. A little while back their good family milk cow, Maude, fell on the ice and nearly died. You can read all about it on Moon Meadow Farm, and here is another story about it, and how neighbors and friends rallied to help save Maude. Farm people are good people no matter what state they live in.

All through Maude's ordeal, it was frustrating to be so far away and unable to offer tangible help. Every farmer dreads a down cow, it is so hard to deal with a critter weighing upwards of a thousand pounds that can't stand when it needs to. It looks as if this story is going to have a happy ending though and I am glad....

A Kalf Named Cevin

This is the new baby, as promised.

And a few of the other girls

Macro Monday

do click

For more Macro Monday

The Things

Visited the brother and sister in law yesterday
and the wind was darned near blowing this chicken away! Thanks for a great time guys!

Up with which I have to put.....including kids and stubborn cows

Exhibit A) One of them (kid, not cow) practicing calling coyotes while using MY computer...IN THE DINING ROOM. If you have not heard a predator call go here.
After suffering through that, bear in mind that my personal distressed rabbit uses no call, but sounds much more like an actual rabbit than the guy in the video. I thought turkey calls were bad but....

Exhibit B) Large people playing catch with a seventeen-pound bag of dog food...in the kitchen.
Okay it didn't break, but it could have. What was up with that anyhow?

Exhibit C) Cows that won't have their calves and get it over with. I did both last-at-night and first-in-the morning checks and dang, my eyes feel like a sandbar. And no babies yet. Broadway looks as uncomfortable as heck and seems a little off, but she is eating and getting up and down fine...and NOT having that baby despite being more than ten days overdue. Now Magic is bagged up and about ready, Cider is getting there and Armada is going on the night check list...all I can say is ARGGGHHHH,,,

And last night I was just falling asleep when a bunch of coyotes tuned up, really close...close enough to be heard inside our room, which has a lot of plastic on the windows, and over the din from the Thruway, which offers a never-ending counterpoint of humming, roaring and rumbling. The boss jumped out of bed and went out on the landing to see if he could see them, but despite a small moon and a scattering of stars he couldn't see anything but darkness. I suspect they were on the creek between the house and barn. It serves as a highway for everything from the fisher to beavers to foxes and those pesky brush wolves. It was a while before I fell back to sleep....

At least this morning is dawning clear and pretty with the eastern sky peaches and fire against the deep, dark blue of the zenith. The early barn check offered a river of crystal stars pouring across the sky like liquid diamonds.... and no snow or mud to trudge through, just frozen bare dirt. It has been so cold and windy for so long that five degrees felt warm.

I may whine about all this cow and kid stuff, but putting up with it all is always worth it.

I rest my case.....

Sunday Stills...the Letter G

Green

Gold


Gael

For more Sunday Stills.....

Barn Check Bears Fruit

Heifer calf by Lancer. (Whoo hoo) She was walking around the barn when I got there this morning. I gave her to her mama and bedded mama down with fresh bedding and fed her...(and fed Mandy and Blitz and my shorty an extra forkful of hay). She is licking it off now...when it is dry to her satisfaction I will probably give it a calf coat. It is fairly warm out today and it probably doesn't really need one, but anything to give it an extra edge.

Now if the shorty would just have her calf.....and Magic.....

Still More Yellowtail Wine HSUS

Lest you think that you can't make a difference...

And a post about the true grassroots nature of the anti-donation uprising.

Horse Camping Follies

Some years ago, my late, great saddle horse, Magnum, and I participated in a three-day trail ride and camping trip into the Adirondacks. If there was anything you could do wrong horse camping, we probably did it, but we also had a memorable time....trout fishing...horses jumping into the middle of the bridges on Route 30 (in heavy summertime traffic) up along the Sacandaga Reservoir, early bear season and all.

The first night we got permission to sleep across the road from the old Atomic Gas Station up in Mayfield. We went down a tiny access road almost to the lake, picketed the horses along the edge of the road, and quickly collapsed into our sleeping bags, exhausted from a whole day of riding, and the excitement of broken bridles, horses leaping into the center of highway bridges, etc. etc. Back then, there were no boat docks, camps or development there, just a wild little corner of the lake and lots and lots of real big trees. (In fact, when I went down to the edge of the lake early the next morning I saw the first common mergansers I ever saw, a mother and a row of fluffy little grey and red babies.)

Anyhow, we were tired enough to fall deeply asleep, there among the rocks and trees, just a few yards from the swishing of the traffic on Route 30. It is amazing just how well you sleep under those circumstances. A few hours passed.....

Suddenly the night erupted in a cacophony of horsey squeals and an incredible string of vehement oaths.

Seems a couple of guys were on their way somewhere after closing time at the local bars. Having imbibed heavily, they needed to relieve their discomfort so to speak. Thus they parked their truck along the edge of the little access road and walked down over the bank to the woods.

It was dark

They were drunk.

Thus the fellow in the lead didn't see or smell or hear my friend's gigantic chestnut mare until he walked square into her hindquarters.

They didn't linger but hied themselves back to that truck and drove off with screaming tires. I wonder what they thought they ran into down there beside the lake.....

No Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Disease

Or at least that is what this study says.

Meanwhile I am going to slap some pure, real, golden butter on my toast this morning and relish every bite!

Back to Barn Checks

After a couple weeks of peace after Etrain had that gigantic bull calf, it is back to O'dark-thirty in the morning excursions to the barn to check springers....springers are cows that are close up to calve. Right now there are three, my milking shorthorn, Broadway, a tiny little black Holstein named Magic, and arguably one of the nastiest cows we own, a largely-white daughter of Four-of-a-Kind Eland. We like our Eland daughters as a rule, but the less said of Crescendo the better. Still good or bad, loved or dreaded, they all get the same care and that means barn checks.

I can't tell you how comfy my bed was this morning. Soft, warm, peaceful...well except for the wind howling that is. And you can easily bear raging weather from the depths of fifteen quilts and afghans (well, maybe not fifteen, but you get the idea.) It is not quite as easy when you know you have to go out in it.

But I did. I had been dreaming of shorty calves all night. Milking shorthorns are not the most highly thought of in the dairy cow line...by some folks anyhow. However, we really like them. Our shorty steers grow up quite thick and sturdy and the only heifer we have milked so far, Broadway, gives as much milk as a Holstein. I value my B-Dub as I call her, and even if I didn't duty was calling loud and clear.

Sometimes a nighttime/almost/sorta morning barn check offers an unexpected beauty, clean white snow, sparkling stars, dazzlingly clean air blowing by, any of the other features of the thick of night may be present. This morning the sky was a muddy grey, the snow was worn out from yesterday's traffic and I was afraid of the damn fisher, which has been tracking up the creek every night.

Still I got er done and am back in the house, comfortably accompanied by that wonderful first cup of coffee. Everybody is fine, no calves yet though, so unless they all have them today I will be doing this again tomorrow.

Have a good one!

Things from Florida

A person from the exclusive, two member, best brother in the world clan and his lovely wife sent us oranges this week....the real kind. The ones that taste of sunshine, sharp and tangy and yet fulsomely sweet. They were so welcome. I was literally wishing for fruit, nibbling leaves off the indoor lettuce and wishing for fruit...when the boss came over from the barn with them. (For some reason known only to themselves UPS left them on the milkhouse step.)
Paradise..that is all there is to it.....thanks bro!



And as I was watching the feeder yesterday I realized that among the white-throated and field sparrows there were a couple of white-crowned sparrows. A few minutes later I heard part of their distinctive call. Usually they are here for a week or two in April and then are gone. Nice to see them.

What Farmers Contribute

This is a neat little movie with some figures on what America's farmers produce that astonished me...and I research agriculture every day and read dozens of newsletters each week.

Coopers or Sharp Shinned

You make the call.. Coopers have white at the end of the tail and a big head...this one has no white, but the tail is very worn...head seems smallish....but it is a pretty big bird like a Coopers.


***Verdict is in. Retriever Farm's husband is a biologist and he says sharp shinned. It was picking Sassenachs out of the wild roses today and Alan said the same thing. Thanks everyone.

More yellowtail HSUS

This time from the NY Post. The reaction to the wine company donation to the animals rights organization has gained real traction in the past week or two. I think at least a few folks are finally getting it.

Sunday Stills...Valentines Day

......I want to dedicate this week's Sunday Stills to my incredible parents who will celebrate 59 years of wedded devotion in September. I love you guys! Thanks for the shining example of what love is.

A geode, with crystals, a long ago gift from my parents.
See the heart?
Do click

Details, details

And some gifts from Liz's Valentine and mine, the Stewart's coffee and gumdrops are hers...and my Valentine has been getting up first and making me a cup of coffee and turning on my computer all week....thanks guy.....


For more Sunday Stills....

New York Farmers are Bloggers Too

If you want a glimpse of New York agriculture as seen through the eyes of the people who live it, there is no shortage of options.

You can visit The New Farmer's Blog for some useful thoughts on frugal menu planning and interesting discussion of farm issues.

Or Teri's wonderful Farm Life, the story of a little different style of farming, an often comforting, yet also thought-provoking view of just what its title says.

Or Putting Up With Annie's Crap for a dose of wry humor and real life farm stories

John Bunting's Dairy Blog for in depth insight into milk pricing and the convoluted challenges it poses for the dairy farming economy. Today he writes about the dismissal of the NFDM casem
yet another outrage in a seemingly never ending saga of unfairness.

Liz's BuckinJunction, which is often about rodeo, but is also a journal of farm happenings....and Maqua-Kil Farms her other farm blog

And not least, my lovely sister-in-law, Lisa's story of happenings on their little piece of NY farming, Southview Farm