Moving day

Friday was the day to move cattle around... weaning some youngsters, moving some cows to the "old" bull (Duke) for breeding, others to the "new" bull, Bennett (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-new-bull.html), and others to be kept separate because they either are already bred for spring calving or they had late calves in the fall and will move to the spring cycle for the next season. Jimmy and Regina had it all figured out who should go where, and we just tried to help out where we could...

On Thursday, Carl got a picture of the cows with their calves behind the house -- he and Jimmy had just moved the temporary fencing to give them another strip of "fresh" grass.

On Friday, Jimmy got additional temporary fencing set up and the cows and calves were moved over to the lot at the handling system.

I had a clipboard with the "plan" of which number cows went where.

We first separated out the ones going to Duke (the old bull) -- this was pre-separation...

After we got those pulled out (with their calves), we moved them down to the field where Duke is located -- both Duke and the cows seemed to be very happy with the move!

Then we separated out the ones that would be in the spring calving cycle. This was a heifer (she only had a tag in one ear) -- she got new tags in both ears signifying her "promotion" to one of the herd cows. She (and the late calving cows from this fall's cycle) will be bred later to produce spring '23 calves. That group as well as those already bred for spring '22 calves went back to the pasture that they had been in previously.

Mocha and Duracell (the two that we had bottle fed in 2020) were in a field that the cows would need to pass through to get to Bennett, so Jimmy and Carl moved them so they would not complicate things...

Hard to see, but there are 5 cows and their calves now moving across the field where Mocha and Duracell had been, on their way to the pasture where Bennett currently is located. One heifer had been moved into his pasture a week or so ago. He didn't come out to visit the new "ladies" but they seemed happy to be in a new pasture. I wonder if they feel like we sometimes did when we got a brand-new manager at IBM, "Great... a new manager to train..." or, in their case, "Great... a new bull to train!"

In the pasture behind the house, there are 3 momma cows (this is one of them) whose calves have been weaned in the process of the move... the calves are in the field with the dairy cows and Mocha and Duracell. Let's just say that none of the participants in the weaning process, including the humans who live in close proximity to the mommas or the calves, are very happy right now (there's a whole lotta' mooin' goin' on!). Regina said that the calves will get hoarse so the momma's can't hear them anymore, and the momma cows will dry up so they won't be in physical discomfort... but... that takes a few days! The weanlings are eating enough on their own to no longer need momma for "groceries", and, it is to the benefit of the momma cows to go ahead and wean their youngsters as they are already bred to deliver in the spring of 2022, but... logic doesn't seem to apply when mommas and babies are separated, at least for a few days!

Once again, we are amazed by the amount of management and planning that needs to go on to steward a farm!