A New Pup for the Homestead

I'll be honest, my wife is pretty amazing. What she sees in me, I don't know, but everyday I'm thankful she chose to fall in love with me. I've told her, more than few times, how much I miss Katniss, and she was listening. I think my wife may know me better than myself.

Sophia's dog Bear, has been awesome to work with. He's kind, patient, and a really a big cuddler. In short order he's learned to sit, shake, lay down, roll over, and wait to be released outside. Yet, as well as he and I get along, he's Sophia's dog. His temperament has really impressed me though and I've said as much to my wife several times.

I sent her a link on a German Shepherd and Great Pyrenees puppy that popped up on my local Facebook feed. Little did I know that she had already contacted the family and made arrangements to pick up the puppy prior to me sending the link. I come home to an empty home last night, assuming she stayed late at school or stopped by the store on the way home, only to be surprised with a new pup. He's around 9 weeks old, black as midnight, minus a tiny white streak on his chest, and like all puppies cute as a cow's ear.

In less than 24 hours he's already taken a shine to Bear, and vice versa. Benji on the other hand does not seem to appreciate a puppy bigger than himself. Right now I'm basically serving as a shuttle service to try to get him outside before he relieves himself on the tile, but when he plays with myself or Bear he is quite cute. I'm sure you'll be seeing a lot more posts about him here in the future.

Why Are You Going With Oreos?

I had one of my former players, who grew up in a ranching family and community ask me this question. I went back through my posts and found I really hadn't put forward a detailed answer. So here it is.

First, much like my friends labeled Deplorables, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, libertarians, anarchists, survivalists, homesteaders, hippies, and everyone else who tries to limit the amount of money that Uncle Sugar picks their pocket for, they serve as a tax hedge here in Texas. You need 4 horses or 4 head of cattle as a minimum to qualify for, and keep, an Ag Exemption on our place. This limits our tax bill and increases money kept in our pocket, which allows that capital to go to work in other places.

Our piece of land is black clay, which to start with is a poor growing medium. Irrigation is too cost prohibitive to make sense here, so we were also looking for drought tolerant cattle that could survive on poor range/pasture/hay. The place had also been over grazed a bit with horses so there wasn't much growing on it for the cattle to "make a living" off of to begin with.

The Galloways are generally thought to be only second to the Texas Longhorn in their ability to not only survive on poor pasture land, but gain weight and thrive on poor range. That proved really true with my two heifers that I purchased at 4 and 6 months old respectively. They received no supplemental feed other than a salt block and a bucket of grain to follow as we take them from paddock to paddock. Those heifers are now cows and are thick and meaty. I trust the three young steers will follow that pattern.

This is a very part time job for me until I retire, but I'm trying to build something that is scalable for after my retirement. The Belted Galloways have to make a profit for the farm with little time or capital input. The Belties are easy on fences, other than my bull who has figured out that he can walk through barb wire strands alone, but won't get close to hotwire. They are easy to manage in paddock shifts, so that's a big plus for us. Land carrying capacity here is around 1 animal unit per acre (I'm at in North Texas) the Oreos are somewhere between .5 and .75 animal units, so the hope is to carry a few more total head than I could with conventional cattle that spreads my risk.

If I carry full size cattle I could probably get away with a bull and 3 cow calf pairs. If I sell at 2 years, we'd be carrying 10 animal units +/-. If I lose a calf, I lose 33% of my potential profit. If, with the smaller Belties I carry a bull, 5 cows, still selling at 2 years I'm carrying 8 - 12 animal units. If I lose a Beltie calf, I've only lost 20% of my profit potential.

Risk management on the homestead is different than on a working ranch and I'm the first to admit that. Just weight-wise 3 two year old large framed cattle, grass fed and finished should have a dressed weight of around 1200 pounds each for around 3,600 pounds total. Where 5 two year old Belties should dress at about 675 pounds each that's only 3,375 pounds, but losing one of each puts the full size net beef at 2,400 pounds where losing one Beltie still nets 2,700 pounds of beef. It's less meat overall, that's true, but it also allows me to put aside an area to graze, not overgrazing during drought years, and focus on our primary mission of growing soil.

Belties are half to three quarters the size of conventional cattle and I'm not nearly as nervous working them by myself as I would be with full size cattle. They're easy birthers, great mothers, and each cow will birth up to 18 calves in a lifetime. They have a compact productive frame, meaning they have a carcass yield of meat usually over 62% for steers, and that equates to cash in the pocket for us.

The last thing is as the slow food movement grows more folks are looking for grass fed, grass finished beef. I live within an hour of more than 7 million people, I only need to find a dozen or so folks that I can sell premium products to, who are also willing to pay a fair price to the producer. Part of the process is in educating our customers that grass fed and finished beef takes longer and thus simply costs more. Providing recipes on how to cook ever cut they pick up from the butcher, and giving them a bit of the experience of the farm.

Finally, I saw commodity farming growing up, it's a tough way to make a living. I'm willing to cater to folks from a marketing and customer service standpoint to make our homestead work.  There is real market demand for this type of beef is real and growing.

Every Day Carry - Maglite 3 D Cell Flashlight

Most mornings when I feed, it's still dark outside, and from mid-November until early spring most nights it's dark by the time I get to the barn. I carry the 300 Blackout a lot, but with the addition of the hogs and the FrankenChickens I went back to a Glock and a big flashlight, the Maglite 3 D cell LED. 

I bought this light back in mid-May of 2016 and changed the batteries the last week of October after using it at least twice a day 5 days a week over that 5 month period. Battery efficiency, check. It has an aimable beam that goes from flood to spot. It's water proof, and if need be you could brain several would be prowlers and keep on working.

Yes, it's $23, but for something you're going to use daily for years, it's cheap. Don't hesitate, pick one up today!

My Wife Says I'm a Pessimist...

I am always planning for the worst case scenario. Be it the drive home from work, shopping at Wal-Mart, or expecting apocalyptic pestilence on the Snow Compound. This weekend found us having to pull a calf out of Rosy, the youngest heifer, and that took up most of Sunday afternoon.

While we were focused on that Tito, the smaller of the two Belted Galloways, managed to let her calf escape through the electric paddock. We realized around 6:00 PM that Smore, her calf wasn't doing too well. It was time to move the cattle back onto the main pasture anyway, so I started moving the Belties first, thinking that we could get Tito (so named for her Jerry Curled resemblance to Tito Jackson) and Smore into a pen together.

Tito wasn't having it. Regardless of what we did she wasn't going in the barn. At 6;35 Smore was limp and non-responsive so we made the decision to pull her into the house due to what looked like dehydration. I jetted into town beating Tractor Supply's closing time by a couple of minutes, picked up some colostrum, a dog bottle due to how small Beltie calves are, and a Mister Pibb because it was already a stressful day and having Dr. Pepper was too much to ask!

Andrea went to work getting fluid into the little girl. Strawful by strawful Andrea was getting water into the little calf. I got back and we did the same thing with the colostrum. She wouldn't swallow much, she was cold, and pretty much limp. We put her on the dog bed and wrapped her in a towel and blanket. I fed Smore every hour until she woke me up at 1:30 with a pile of pee and poo and her doing her best ice skater impression on the tile. She wouldn't go back to sleep, so I figured I'd take her out to the barn and see if I could entice her mom into a stall.

No dice on the stall. I begged, I pleaded, I put a bucketful of sweet feed inside the barn to trap her, but she was having none of it. Exasperated, and with Smore starting to fade, I pulled her out of the stall and placed her down by the feed. Momma went nuts, as did the neighbors dogs, and wouldn't stop mooing. Smore perked up, and Momma stood still long enough to let her nurse for a few minutes, before realizing she may not really like this mothering thing after all. They dance with one another for another 15 minutes, Smore trying to nurse, Momma moving every few minutes.

Then Momma just headed to the back 40 with Smore following behind. I left it to Providence to look after the calf. I told Andrea when she woke up that the calf probably wasn't going to make it (about the 10th time I'd predicted death for Smore or Meatloaf, she just hugged me, kissed me, and told me to stop being such a pessimist. I went out after sunrise this morning to find Smore chilling in the back of the pasture and Momma grazing contentedly not too far away.

Only time will tell if Smore is going to make it, but if she lives through the week, the odds increase dramatically.

Giving Thanks for Great Neighbors

It's said that good fences make good neighbors. I think it takes a lot more than that. You have to engage, share, be friendly, give space, and treat them the way you want to be treated. I'm by no means perfect, but I've been really blessed with awesome neighbors everywhere I've lived, and Texas has not been an exception

Today we had the last heifer give birth. She, like all teenage mothers, was not ready to be a mom yet. The downside to running a bull with your herd is that nature is in control  of when your heifers get pregnant. Sophia and I were out this morning looking at the dun full blood Beltie that was born overnight when we realized that Rosy, the young Dexter heifer (+/- 19 months old at the time of this writing) was about to give birth.

I always get nervous with first time Mommas. You don't know how they're going to handle the birthing process, and in this case she's still growing and not yet to size. My worst fears were realized as only one foot appeared while the calve's head was more or less out and things had come to a standstill after 2 hours it was time to act. The presentation of the head and one leg out is called, simply enough, "Leg Back" though I didn't know it at the time.

I knew we had to get Rosy tied up and help pull the calf out. My neighbors saw the circus going on out in the paddock and Andrea, Sophia, and I were trying to get Rosy restrained. Comedy ensued, as Rosy bolted through the electric fence into their previous paddock. I had left the gate open back into the pasture this morning anticipating moving the cows back later this week, and Rosy saw that open gate and thought she was making her escape.

My neighbor Joe was in the field, along with his wife, George made his way over, Andrea, Sophia, and even Emma made their way into the field to herd Rosy into the barn. We got her into a stall and here's where my neighbors went above and beyond. We got Rosy into a rope and tied her off on a stall bar. Joe, George, and myself took turns trying to find that leg and get the poor little calf out, to no avail, we just couldn't find it. After about 5 minutes I sent the girls out of the barn, because we'd decided that we had to pull the calf out.

As I'm writing this I don't know if the calf is going to live, and to be honest it'll break my heart if it dies. That said, there's simply no way Andrea and I could have pulled that calf out, my neighbors and I are all over 200 pounds and it took everything we had to get that calf out. I don't think we hurt Rosy, but only time will tell.

Calf Number 3 in 2016

With first time birthing heifers, you never know what you're going to get, but so far both Belties have had their calves without incident, and both at night strangely enough. We think that this calf is a heifer, and if so the girls have decided on "Smore" as her name. She's Dun colored and really is a good looking calf.

Today she did give us some excitement as she kept escaping the paddock and chilling just out of reach of Momma. She doesn't seem to mind us at all, unlike her half brother from the other Beltie who is skiddish as all get out. Hopefully we can get the electric fence grounded well enough in the dry conditions we're facing to help discourage her from roaming about.

She will be the foundation of our homegrown breeding stock moving forward, provided her genetics look right. The cuteness factor at the Snow Compound has gone up considerably this week!

Calf Number 2

Calf number 1, AKA Sir Loin, showed up on a Monday morning two weeks ago with little warning and zero work from us. Calf number 2, AKA Meatloaf, was much the same way, Arial's udder was super full on Friday night, and Andrea told me she was going to calve the next day. As is frequently the case, she was right.

Meatloaf presented both legs, and then his head about 2:00 PM on Saturday, Andrea and Sophia left to go work the school Fall-fest, and by 2:30 Meatloaf was on the ground. By 3:00 he was walking and nursing. If only they could all be this easy! His belt is almost identical to his father's along with this curly coat. With the late summer we're having, I'm not sure he's going to need that thick of a coat.

Arial is a tremendous mother cow. She's attentive, protective, and nurturing of her calves. She produces a ton of milk, and if I had a squeeze chute, I'd be very tempted to buy a bottle calf and see if I could get her to adopt him. Everything they say about Dexter's being great mothers has been proven true by this cow.