We gathered the bulls out of the yearling heifers today. While we were at it we doctored anything with footrot and sorted Chance and my cows off and put them in a different pasture, as we run a later breeding season. I don’t like calving in March. I’ve lost too many calves to blizzards and had too many with frozen ears, so we dropped back to April. There is still a chance of cold weather and blizzards then, but it usually doesn’t get as cold and by the middle of April we usually have green grass.The calves might be a little lighter in the fall, but there are more of them and it takes less feed to winter the cows.

Here is our prey! LOL

Here’s my crew out starting the gather.

Pete ranches on a big place down south east of here. Some rich guys bought it and Pete was running the place so they let him stay on and made a deal with him where he gets to run his cows there. But he’s got to put up with out of state landowners who don’t understand much about this country. But it sounds like they are learning! 🙂

Here’s Pete and Tristin bringing a sore footed heifer to me while I watch the gate. Tristin said it was more fun sorting with Pete as he didn’t yell and holler at him!

When Cindy got home we went out and put out mineral for the cattle and then we went out and picked chokecherries. Now Cindy has to go to work and make jelly for some people. Not me, I ain’t that big of a fan, I’m more of a plum and wild grape jelly fan, and I really like buffaloberry jelly.

I have a couple of neighbors who came over and cut and baled some hay for me. So far we have 110 bales and it looks like we may get that many more. I figured if we had 60 we would make it throught the winter with our little bunch, but with this much we won’t have to worry about a tuff winter. And I expect one, one of these years. We sure used to get them. Start about the first of November and end about the frist of May. I think we need a snowy winter to break this long dry spell we’ve had. Snow drifts into the creeks and the dams get full in the spring when the snow melts. Winter of 96/97 was the last one we had like that. they aren’t much fun to get through, but I think we need to suffer through one. Maybe it will just be a mild winter and a wet spring. I guess if I was going to get any say in the matter, that is what I would order! LOL