The Joys of Borrowed Bulls

Just once, I would like to have no drama with a borrowed bull.  Just once I would like to have the whole process from pick up to leaving run smoothly with no incidents.

Campbell

The first bull we borrowed was Campbell.  We thought we were rather green and clueless until we met the people we were picking him up from.

Hubby had torn his calf muscle playing touch rugby the night before, he was okay to drive (and back a horse float which I can't do) but was hopeless on his feet.  We got to the place to pick him up and beat the owners there.  There isn't a house on their land, they live in town, but they arrived about 15 minutes after we did.  With all four children.  Including a baby in a front pack.  The older three children ranging up to about 7 years were terrified of all their animals and screamed a lot.

Campbell was still running in the same paddock with two cows, a steer, several sheep and llamas.  So our first mission was to separate him, which he wasn't happy about.  They had half built yards, but they certainly weren't ready for the cattle so the screaming children went into them with their mother and the baby.

Then we had to try to get him into the float.  This is a double horse float sitting in a wide open paddock.  Not even a lane to narrow it down and an unhappy bull who has just been separated from his herd.

Eventually the guy got a roll of electric fencing wire and some standards and we started to string a line across the paddock.  I understand zapping yourself on the hot wire the first time, but not every time you get within a metre of it like he did.  He also had tall standards and put the wire on the top notch, so Campbell was able to duck under it where the paddock dipped and we had to start again from scratch.  He tried to lead him with a handful of hay, but as soon as Campbell came for a mouthful, he dropped all of it so Campbell stopped where he was and ate all the hay.

This guy had no idea of how to manage cattle, how to drive him, how to string a hot wire or how to keep himself safe.  It was two parts comical to one part ... I don't quite know what word I'm looking for here, it made us feel that we weren't so bad after all, but also quite concerned for him long term.  It was like watching one of those dreadful slapstick comedies, where you spend most of your time cringing, uncomfortable and embarrassed for the main character but you can't help laughing a little at some of the pratfalls.

So there was this guy, Hubby trying to limp around slowly and me doing most of the leg work.  I restrung the hot wire, drove him from the other side and got him down towards the float.  All it took after that was a bit of hay tossed into the float and he went in nicely.  An hour and a half after we'd arrived.

We got him home and he entertained the girls for a couple of days.  Then the neighbours bulls broke through the floodgate - I wrote about it here.

When it came time for him to leave, the lady coming to pick him up delayed it for a couple of months and then he really didn't want to go on the float she brought.  It took an hour or so to get him on the float.  We had him penned, he didn't have any other space to go elsewhere, he just wouldn't quite commit to the ramp, even with hay.

Monroe

The next bull was Monroe.  Picking him up was a piece of cake.  He went beautifully onto the float, travelled nicely and seemed to have lovely manners to begin with.

Then I figure he must have done his job and gotten bored.  He managed to get himself under a deer fence into the shelter belt and then over the gate at the end to fight with the biggest of the three angus steers I had at the time - who was also the one I was grazing for a friend.

I've seen dominance fights between bulls before, having had several different herds of bulls next door with all their political maneuvering and constantly changing hierarchies.  This wasn't like that, this was to the death.  Neither bull belonged to us and I was worried about having to inform one or both owners that their animals had died in my care.  It wasn't safe to go near them, they had no awareness of anything around them except for each other.  I rang the neighbour in a panic, I had no idea what to do and there were four more steers in that paddock getting all excited and wound up by the fight.

The neighbour came over on his four wheeled farm bike, he ran around and around them making a lot of noise until they were more worried about him than each other and then we were able to drive them in separate directions.

A week later he was heading off to his next visit.  The lady picking him up arrived at about 9am on a weekday when there was just me at home.  The horse float she had hired was a single width one which made it too narrow to effectively block the lane although that came later.  First of all, she couldn't back a trailer.  Secondly, her car was too low to make it over the high verge on the edge of the road so she couldn't straighten up to go into the gate that way.

Because the float seemed light, we unhitched it and tried to push it through the gate by hand.  We couldn't get it up over the high cut verge.  We were now blocking the road too.

Luckily for us, a lovely couple were passing who clearly had a lot of experience working together with floats or trailers.  He backed up to the float hitch, she stood in the middle and with very simple signals lined him up perfectly.  He backed the float into the paddock.  Monroe wouldn't even go into the lane where the float was however.  I had to get a hot wire that wasn't connected and kind of drag net him into it.  He immediately tried to jump over the front bar and got himself stuck with his rib cage taking most of his weight on this steel bar.

Mr Lovely Passing Couple spotted this through the window and asked if we had an angle grinder to cut the bolt from the outside because if he stayed that way, he'd die.  He towed the float with bull inside up to the house and sheds and I went to get the grinder.  I couldn't find it anywhere.  There were four of us at this stage, frantically searching Hubby's shed and none of us could see it.  We were considering other options when he managed to move himself back off this bar.

At this stage, we discovered the flat tyre on the float.  Luckily, the foot pump was easily found.
10am when she left with Monroe, I thanked the Lovely Passing Couple profusely and I was ready to start hard drinking.

Kieran

It's been a while since we last got a bull.  A big part of that was not having a vehicle capable of towing a float and bull available to us anymore (my car is only rated to tow 750kg) and no yards and ramps for trucks.

A very good friend with horses (and therefore, a float and capable vehicle) was kind enough to help us.

We started with a vague communication mix-up which meant we started out several hours later than planned.  Kieran went onto the float beautifully - mind you, he also did it from a race only just wider than him.  That was the easy part.

On the drive home, he kept jumping up and looking out over the door.  The float had horizontal cross pieces on the ramp/door, that allowed him to have his front feet up and be hanging over the top.  Afraid that he might jump out and hurt himself, my friend started to go side to side sharply.  Just enough to throw him off balance so he'd want to have four feet on the floor.  She had to do this a few times.  Then as it was just shy of full dark and we were still in the middle of nowhere, we got a flat tyre on the float.  Well, it wasn't just flat, it was shredded.

My friend had only had the van for a month or two and had never needed to change a tyre on it yet, so our first mission was to figure out where the jack and tools were hidden.  Once they were found, Hubby got the wheel partially jacked up but we discovered the wheel brace for the van was the wrong size for the float wheel nuts.  My friend rang her hubby to come and rescue us with a socket set, although he was at least 45 mins away.  A lady came past and stopped, offering to call her husband to come and help, but since help was already on it's way, we said thanks but we're fine.  She must have called anyway because her husband turned up about 10 minutes later with all the gear and plenty of stories about horse float mishaps - including cattle that jump out, bounce on the road, get up and run for miles.

Once we were back on the road, it was a long, dark, hungry trip home to unload him and then back to the friend's place where our car and Miss 11 were.  I think we got a dinner of snacks sorted at about 11pm in the end.

Kieran was mostly well behaved, although he did spend a lot of time singing to the neighbour's cattle.  Some of those songs were very long and lasted most of the night.  But when we had those naughty cattle from the neighbours jumping fences to our place in the paddock next to him, he still stayed in his paddock and didn't push the issue.

When it came time for him to leave, he was going to Nelson, normally a four hour drive, but since the earthquakes changed the main road layouts, the only road available now was heavily travelled and in bad repair.  This makes the trip about twice as long.  The guy who was getting him wanted to send a truck down to pick him up.  It was only going to cost him $75.  I rang the neighbour to ask if we could use his yards and ramp.

Unfortunately, we'd just had about a month of constant rain, so the ground around his yards was very boggy, he said that he nearly got stuck there on his farm bike, but he'd help me run him to the yards and ramp about a kilometre up the road.  I had lost the number for the people who own those yards.  I tried both calling and texting the local stock agent who uses the yards often - partly for the number and partly to check if he would be using them.  He still hasn't returned either call or text (months later).  I wonder if he's afraid I was going to rip him a new one for his cattle breaking through the floodgate and eating the several hundred dollars worth of trees we'd planted. 

We tried knocking on the door but there was no one home.  I called the guy who Keiran was going to next and gave him an update.  He said he'd get back to me, when he'd talked to the truck company.

The next day, I was driving past that neighbour's house and saw someone leaving and Mr Neighbour just heading back into the house.  I stopped and spoke to him.  He was quite happy to let us use the yards and gave me his number.

The guy who was getting Kieran next rang and I told him I had permission and contact but he'd already decided to drive down with a horse float and pick him up himself, did I know of a motel or some place to stay in Amberley?

They were at our place 7am two days later and Kieran loaded up into the float nicely.

Can't wait to see what the next one brings us.

More Milk and Cheese!

Last week we finally separated Handsome the bull calf from Brownie my house cow.

We'd left him with her to keep him friendly and tame enough until he was castrated, but with one thing and another, we hadn't castrated him yet.  He was 'feeling his oats' and starting to challenge us at every opportunity.  Putting him into a pen at night (so that we could have milk in the morning) had become a dangerous two-person job.

The wonderful neighbour came down to put a ring on him when he was much younger.  At that time, we thought he was friendly enough that he could safely be pinned against the side of the pen by two people while the third did the job.  Unfortunately, while he was friendly for me, he was less familiar with hubby and didn't respond at all well to the neighbour climbing into his pen and managed to make a hole in the fence and ran around our garden.  We discussed running them down into the yards at the neighbours so that he could use the head crusher and do it safely.  But between him working and going away on holiday and us working and having other commitments, we never quite got it done.

Now he's 9 1/2 months old, far too old for a rubber ring and he's a stroppy little gobshite.  So the vet is coming this week to 'cut' him.  That was quite challenging working out when the vet was available, we were available and the neighbour was available to work his challenging crusher.  Meanwhile, I've had enough and we put him into the next paddock over from Brownie.  They spend a lot of time at the gate together.

For the past week we've been serenaded by him, first it was angry calls, then it was sad sounding.  Over the weekend, there were fewer but it just seems like "don't forget I'm here" bellows.

Now that we're not sharing Brownie's milk with him, we're getting twice the volume.  It may have been more but I've decided to stick with once a day milking.  We were getting more than we needed before, so doubling that has meant that I was keeping a bucket in the fridge for the excess once I'd filled the jugs for our use.  We have plenty in the freezer for when we dry her off - although we have to get her in calf again first for that - so there's no need for more to freeze.

I spent the weekend cheese making.  I've made cheese in greater quantities than previously and different varieties that I hadn't tried before.  Instead of my usual 4 litres of milk to make two blocks of feta, I used 8 litres and made four blocks.  Two have been given away to people who like my feta and two are currently in the fridge.

I was also given a lot of frozen cream.  Miss Nineteen's boyfriend works in a petrol station and brings home the cream that doesn't sell, which goes into my friend's freezer (Miss Nineteen boards with one of my friends).  She gave me a bag with about 8 litres of frozen cream in the usual 300ml and 600ml bottles.  I thawed some of the cream out and tried my hand at making cream cheese.

I don't know if it was because it had been frozen but the cream and milk mixture was a little grainy even before I added culture and rennet and the resulting cream cheese is a little grainy and not the smooth spread that you buy from the supermarket.  However it tastes great.  Next up, I'll be trying some of the flavoured cream cheeses that you can buy for cheese boards.

My grainy but tasty cream cheese.

I also made a real cheddar for the first time yesterday.  I've previously made a farmhouse cheddar which didn't involve the proper cheddaring procedures, so I wasn't really prepared for how labour intensive cheddar is and how long it takes to make.  I'd thought it would be like most cheeses, a couple of hours and it's in the press.  This required an hour of turning the cheese every ten minutes to condense it into a brick-like mass before cutting it into fingers.

I liked the thought of a port cheddar, but lacking port, I used the elderberry wine that I had in the barrel waiting for me to bottle.  It's sweet and smoky and has distinct port-like qualities so I've used that.

Elderberry wine cheddar.

One of the issues we've been running into is making Edam cheeses the way I usually do, I end up with a 1.2kg block and now there's only three of us at home, it takes forever to get through it all. Making it in smaller quantities meant that it didn't press as well and I was running out of blocks for my cheese press.  So instead I decided to make it in the same usual quantities, but just before the brining and drying part of the process, I would cut my cheese into smaller pieces.  Let them brine and dry that way and wax them separately.  I'm going to do this with the cheddar.

The added bonus to doing it that way is that a smaller wedge could make a nice gift too.

Homekill Steers

I said in my previous Sausage Making post that I'd be writing heaps about what I've done with our steer, and then proved myself a complete liar by not (yet) writing another word.

I'm not quite sure where to start with this.

It is my belief that I owe it to my animals to be present for their slaughter.  I know a lot of people will not get this, they will look at me sideways and think I'm a bit odd.  It's okay, I'm used to that.  I am quite content with "a bit odd".

I had started to write a bit more in here, but it needed to be split into another post. See here for my little rant that started from this point and how disconnected society is from their food.

Anyway, I do feel that I should be present for the slaughter of my animals for meat.  I have been responsible for their care and well-being, I have raised them and given them the best that I possibly can.  Now they'll be dying so that I can continue to eat and provide food for my family.  It's a mark of respect and honouring their contribution to my freezer.

I made Hubby and Miss Eight watch Lamb Chop's slaughter last year.  I think it's important for them to see the change from living breathing animal to meat.  I don't want my children to grow up being unaware and disconnected from their food.

The homekill man came out and did one steer at a time.  One of them was for a friend.  We've been grazing a cattle beast for him and when he asked how much he should pay us, I suggested that when he gets his one slaughtered and butchered, he do ours at the same time.

Having learned from last time, I asked for the offal before he'd even taken a shot.  I had bowls and buckets ready for liver, heart and kidneys.  It turned out that I also needed a wheelbarrow.  I'd asked (half as a joke) about keeping the skin for tanning.  Hubby had been in touch with his step-father about the tripes.  His step-father adores tripe and onions as much as Hubby still finds the memory of eating them to be traumatising.

There was a lot that I hadn't thought of though that normally seems to go for offal.  "Cheeks and tongue?" Bishop (the homekill man) said to me very early on.  I took the cheeks.  I'd never had them, but I'd seen them used and raved over on a tv cooking show.  I wasn't quite brave enough for the tongue (not for eating anyway) and so with equal parts gratitude and disgust, Clegg (the friend who'd bought all of the people concerned with these cattlebeasts together) took both.

I used the cheeks for the steak in steak, kidney and mushroom pies that I made for Hubby.  The mushrooms were also grown here.  Both Hubby and Miss Eight have raved over these fantastic pies and that the cheeks were perfect in them.

The tail was the next thing to be offered to me.  I've never eaten oxtail anything before.  For all my father was a farm boy, we never got offal at home.  I decided to give it a go and was given both of them, with the 'skirt' that he cut off from the inside of the beast then and there and a few cooking instructions.  Never put brassicas in an oxtail stew they all said.  I've also since been told by an Irish woman that dumplings are mandatory with this dish.

Now that I have cooked an oxtail stew, I completely get the dumplings.  It was thick and rich and oily.  It needed the dumplings to soak up some of the oil and tone down some of the richness.  It was probably the most tasty beef stew I've ever had, only marred by some of the tiny bones from the tip of the tail that I missed when I was straining out the bones.  I got one right on my front two teeth and I felt that for hours.

Heart, lungs, the fatty and tough bits from the kidneys and some of the liver went for dog food.  I've been making dog food this way on and off for years.  Chop it all up roughly, put into a slow cooker with some minced beef, rice, oats or pasta, some veges and a little garlic and cook for hours.  It usually forms it's own thick gravy and freezes well.  I froze 24 litres of this that day, and two large bags of offal that I didn't have pots for.  It stinks while you're cooking, so if you're able to run the slow cooker out the window on a table outside this is a much better option.  I also had two large preserving pans going on the barbecue.

He gave me the suets from both steers too.  "Give one to the chooks" he said.  "They'll go mad for it."  They didn't really know what to make of it for the first day or so.  Most of my hens were battery hens that had finished their commercial time.  But they did figure it out in the end.  I rendered the rest.  I have two containers in my fridge and a large amount in the freezer.

I'd told Hubby that he needed to be cleaning up the tripe.  I've seen it before when it comes out of the cow, he had only ever seen it partially precooked when his step-father bought it.  He wasn't prepared for the smell or the colour.  In some sympathy and some disgust, I dragged it over a gate and hosed it down for him to begin with.  Then told him that he was supposed to be cleaning it.  Five minutes and he sent his parents a text to tell them they could clean it and he'd drop it round in an hour or so.  He's 95% sure it ended up in the bin and that they'd been expecting to get it bleached and boiled.

By this stage, Bishop and Clegg were making jokes about how the offal guy was going to be beggared but were also quite happy to see that I don't believe in waste and think it's something that's wrong with people today.

"Oh, that's right" says Bishop, "You wanted the skin."  He picked up my animal's skin and we draped it over the gate to the paddock.  "When it gets to be too much for you love," he tells me, "Give me a call and I'll come and take it away.  Same for the offal you won't get through."  When?  He said "When it gets too much".  I should know myself better, but that made it a point of pride right then and there.  I have tanned the skin.  It nearly got to be too much for me but I kept hearing his slight condescension and the way he didn't really think I'd be able to do it all.

So he cleaned up and drove away, Clegg taking the cleaned carcasses to the butcher.  By the end of the next day, I had about 70kg of food for us and the dog in my freezer.  That was before I'd gotten any of the "normal meat" back.  It struck me then just how much waste there is.

I posted a link to a video on facebook months ago.  This video is apparently an advertising executive explaining to an audience how their own wilful ignorance allows the meat industry to get away with cruel and intensive farming practices.  Fortunately, most of the ones shown in the video don't happen in NZ.  Sadly though, there was a comment on my post - and I quote:

While it is the truth, the population density doesn't really allow for any other method to produce the amount of food required for consumers. The day of the Rancher who can make money is gone.. .so in order to really fix this, we have to go back to distributed smaller local companies producing the food for local market, however, there is no profit in that anymore... so, how do we fix the problem without creating food shortages? Stopping factory farming stops food production.. how do we replace the food?

Given that we tend to throw away about a fifth of the edible bits of cow when we slaughter for food, I disagree.  I've been seeing a push towards "Nose to Tail" eating and found this great blog. But in my experience, suggesting using any of these parts in dinner is met with such disgust and it really doesn't deserve that.  What it does need is a little inventiveness, a return to making your own smallgoods and maybe digging out Grandma's cookbooks.

I was sure I had taken some photos during this process, but I can't currently find any of them.  I will add them and update this post when I do.

The Pros and Cons of Hand-Raising Cattle

When I bought my first two heifers, Patsy and Eddie, I had grand plans for them.  They would be my breeders and house cows.  They weren’t particularly friendly, but I was sure that wasn’t going to be a problem.  I took them a treat every day (carrots or silverbeet) and after a short time, they’d take it from my hand.  If I held my hand out to them, they’d sniff it and I could pat their noses.

It never really got more than that.  If I’m lucky and putting my hand through a fence, I can scratch a forehead but that’s the limit.

As we don’t have the full dairy set up with bails for them to go into where they can’t move away, milking them is never going to happen.  They’ve become even more shy since they’ve had their calves.

In March I bought two bobby calves.  Jersey Fresian cross heifers, one was a month old and the other was 2 weeks.  We lost the 2 week old calf, so I bought a steer the same age as the older calf.  I’m glad that these two were that little bit older when I got them as after a month of mixing milk powder and feeding them twice a day it was getting old.  Brownie was a lovely light reddish brown and Sirloyne was a darker chocolaty brown.  The kids named them, can you tell?

Brownie and Sirloyne

I used halters on them to move them from their original paddock to the weaning paddock.  They were pretty well behaved on the whole (after a little bit of work), but I don’t recommend doing this with two calves at once.  As soon as they saw the wide open spaces of the big paddock, they both bolted, crossing over first and sent me flying.  It took a couple of weeks for all the bruises I got from that tumble to heal.  I never really got the halters out after that, except to hold them still for their ear tags.

These two are great big pets.  I had to train them (much like a dog) not to headbutt us because when they weigh about the same and soon more than an adult, they knock you over or leave nasty bruises.

It’s handy that I can go right up to them and stroke them, I can pour a drench (in my case I use Apple Cider Vinegar) on them without the need for yards or a run.  I have no doubts that when Brownie gets big enough, she’ll make a great house cow and will be easily milked.  For all Sirloyne is getting a little stroppy (I’m assuming it’s the jersey side coming out) he’s still mostly manageable.

We’ve also got three yearling Angus cross steers.  They were hand-raised, but not treated as big pets like my other two.  They’re friendly enough and will follow me along a fence line if I’m on the other side and if they’re happy, I can give them a pat anywhere - not just a lucky quick stroke of a nose.

The problems come when I’m trying to move them.

Patsy and Eddie, not being quite so friendly, just need someone (better with two people) to walk up to them and keep walking.  Slowly driving them in the direction you want them to go.  As Hubby learned, it’s not a good idea to run when they do - they’ll just keep running and outpace you.

The hand-raised cattle aren’t so shy, they welcome someone walking up to them - it might mean a treat or a scratch on the forehead where they just can’t quite reach.  Otherwise they completely ignore you.  It’s very hard work shifting cattle when they’re really not interested in going anywhere.  Sometimes, an armload of hay can help - they’ll follow you then but it depends on the quality of the grass they’re walking through.

At the moment, I’ve got Brownie and Sirloyne grazing in our big unfenced paddock.  I’ve strung electric fencing across and I’m moving it slowly as they eat the tops off the long grass.  It was making it difficult for us to get to the back paddocks where we’re still clearing gorse so we bought a plastic handle for the end of the hotwire that just hooks onto the fence - at the end that is not attached to the electricity obviously.  You just unhook it, walk through and then hook it up again.

They’ve figured it out and tend to stick quite close to us when we do this in the hope that they can squeeze through too.  It’s getting to be quite a knack to slipping through and hooking it up again before they follow you through that gap.

I’ve been told not to completely trust them either. A lot of people get complacent about them and end up getting badly hurt.  I recently heard a story from a friend about his neighbour.  She was mauled by her housecow - which she’d raised from a calf.  She got so comfortable around her that she didn’t think and got in between the cow and her young calf.

I’m loving that my hand-raised cattle are so friendly, but cursing it at the same time.  Perhaps I need to work on halter training the next ones properly so that shifting them won’t be so much of a problem.  For now, I’ll have to just keep up with the armload of hay.

Invasion of the Bulls

There is a saying - Good fences make good neighbours - this is more true in a rural setting.  There is nothing worse than having the neighbours livestock turn up in your paddocks.  There can be any number of reasons why this can be a problem.  The fenceline is the responsibility of both sides, but I’m told that when you have stock in a paddock, it’s up to you to ensure that they stay there.  So if they end up at the neighbours, you’re the one who has to sort it out and pay for any damage.

This happened to us just as I got a bull in for my two heifers.  I’d been thinking and talking about it.  My Dad had been out and seen my girls, but he didn’t think they were ready for it.  He was raised on a dairy farm that ran Jersey cows though and they’re about twice the size of the average dexter.  I heard all sorts of advice about the weight a heifer is supposed to be before she’s ready, but again, that was advice for larger breeds - I couldn’t see my girls ever reaching 280kg.  They let me know by their behaviour.

You see, Patsy and Eddie started jumping fences.  Fortunately, Eddie jumped the fence to the wonderful neighbours and ran around in a paddock with his heifers for a week.  Patsy, after bellowing angrily at her sister for 3 days, decided she wasn’t going to be outdone and jumped the fence in the other direction.  Toward all the ugly big jersey bulls.  We got them both contained fairly quickly into deer-fenced paddocks.  Much to their disgust.

I heard about this bull from a lady I was buying bobby calves from.  The breeder who owns the bull has something like 9 pedigree dexter bulls that she is happy to loan out for free, you just organise the transport yourself and you pick him up from whoever has him currently.  She likes him to stay with each person for 7 weeks, which gives him at least 2 attempts to do his job with your ladies.

The day I got him, he was a bit stroppy after being in the horse float for an hour and a half, so I kept him next to but separate from my girls for a couple of hours.  But within seconds of being in the same paddock, he was on one of them and had done the job right in front of me (and my then 6 year old daughter).

The trouble came two weeks later.  I found the neighbours bulls had broken through and were in our big paddock.  I hastily ran an electric fence across to stop them from coming up to the house and out on the road, before ringing the neighbour.  The neighbour leases his land to another neighbour who in turn leases it to a local stock agent.  He was going to ring the stock agent and get it sorted for me.  Two days later, I couldn’t see any of the bulls, so I made the assumption that they’d gone back and it had been taken care of.  Turns out they’d gone down our gully and cleaned up all the fallen plums.

© Copyright Andy F and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

Just two or three days later, I got up to hear the most dreadful racket coming from my back paddock.  I was used to hearing the bulls bellow at each other, just not from that direction.  When I looked, I found that they were in my paddocks, lined up against the fence to the paddock where my girls were entertaining their guest.  Well, they were supposed to be entertaining their guest.  Campbell was too busy bellowing at the line up and they were bellowing back.  By this time, the bulls had been changed from the big ugly jersey brutes that had been there, now there was a mix of young bulls. I could identify herefords and fresians, but there were also some mostly black with the odd white patch that I’m guessing were crossbreeds of some sort.

I thought my lot were safe, but rang the neighbour again and told him what was going on.  He was on holiday in the Coromandel so too far removed to do much, but promised to ring the neighbour he leased the land to and get it sorted.  Great.  Two hours later, I was greeting a visitor that Hubby was also home from work to see and we were looking at the bulls lined up against the fence when one managed to lift the gate separating them off it’s hinges and suddenly my girls and borrowed bull were running loose with 6 other bulls.

Hubby started into the paddock saying “We’ve got to separate them.”  I looked at the bulls jumping on each other and one who jumped on one of my girls, not that she stood still for him.  “I’m not going into a paddock with 7 randy bulls,” I told him, “it’s just not safe.”  So we had no choice but to leave them and hope for the best.

After another day or so, they’d all settled down and it was in the end very easy to separate my girls and Campbell our borrowed bull.  I put nails through the gate gudgeons and bent them around to prevent the gate from being lifted off again.

A month came and went and the bulls weren’t interested in my girls at all, so I knew they’d both conceived, but I still had six bulls roaming around my big paddock.  To be honest, I wasn’t too worried.  The big paddock is inadequately fenced so I hadn’t put my cattle into it, but had grass that was reaching waist height in it.  We had a very wet spring and summer so it wasn’t a fire risk, but it just kept growing and seemed like a great waste of feed.  Having the bulls roaming took a lot of the grass down.

Then I got a call from the neighbour on the other side.  “You got some fresian bulls at the moment?” I explained the situation to him and his whole manner changed.  They’d broken through to his place and he was worried about his heifers that he didn’t want in calf.  He was going to tell me off, but since they weren’t mine and had wandered through from further over, that wasn’t my responsibility.

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It took a couple of months before they were gone.  Even then, I noticed one that had dodged the round up.  We managed to drive him through the hole in the floodgate and patched up the hole after him.

By this stage, I’d gotten a couple of bobby calves - one heifer and one steer.  I was warned that she could start cycling at four months of age and one of those bulls would kill her if he tried to mount her.  Not to mention that she’d be far too small to have a calf.

The floodgates are a mess again.  It only takes one storm to raise the level and speed of the stream to wash away all sorts of things, so it’s time to go and make sure that we’re not going to have a repeat.  We have a few ideas of how we may make them a bit more secure, we’ll just have to see if it all works.

Calves!

The second of my first two calves was born last weekend.  I’ve been pretty excited about this as these are my first farm-babies.  I bought their mothers over a year ago, borrowed a bull to entertain them and now have two pretty little bull calves as a reward.  I’ve named them Harry and Ron.

Patsy (left) and Eddie when we got them as yearlings.

My hubby is feeling rather excited and pleased too.  He’s always said the animals are mine to deal with.  He leaves it to me to do the research, make the choices and organise their care.  In this however, he sees early steps toward self-sufficiency.  He sees that we don’t need to be buying more calves to raise for the freezer.  He’s a little disappointed that they’re both boys as he was hoping to build up the herd with at least one girl.  But there is next year and we also have another heifer who is currently approaching a year old, so she’ll be worth breeding in not too short a time.

The other thing I pointed out to him is that the calves effectively cost us $20 each.  He stopped and looked at me puzzled, “how do you figure that?” he asked.  We had their mothers, the bull cost us only the transport to get him to our place.  $40 for a horse float (and a couple of hours - most of which was spent trying to get him into the float but that’s another story).

Having said all of that, our second calf Ron, is most likely not the spawn of the handsome Campbell, the purebred black dexter bull we were able to borrow.  Eddie, his mother is also a purebred black dexter and our Ron is a lovely cinnamon brown.  Ron at birth, is also taller than his 2 week old cousin Harry who is a beautiful glossy black.  It’s hard to tell though, I know there are also red dexters and both my girls have a tint of the red on their winter coat.  He could be a throwback.  Or not.  We had an invasion of bulls from the neighbours who lifted gates off their hinges.  You can read about that here. 

I had worried all the way through my girl’s pregnancies that Eddie at least may be carrying a calf that would be too big for her to deliver by herself.  I watched her growth anxiously, I spoke to numerous people and after getting so much conflicting advice I rang the vet.  No, he told me, restricting their food for the last month isn’t recommended as it can cause metabolic problems in the calf.  Upon learning that we may have fresian crosses he changed his mind (sort of).  Normally, they like your cows to have a body condition score of 6 for calving, but recommended that I try to get my girls down to a 5.  He sent me to this website that clearly shows how to score them.

I tried and I tried.  I left them in a fairly small paddock and gave them hay.  I’m told they won’t gain weight on hay, but it will maintain their condition.  It didn’t seem to matter what I did, I couldn’t see any ribs.  They got too big with calves for ribs to be showing at all.

I had a good friend who is also a dairy farmer have a look at them.  At least a week he thought.  Three days later, we moved them into the front paddock so I could keep an eye on them.  I was walking along behind them and noticed stringy looking mucous hanging from their nether bits.  If they were people I’d call it a bloody show, but I guess all mammals have similar things.  20 minutes later, Patsy was making some odd noises so I went to check.

Patsy and Harry (about a week old).

She was lying down and her belly was rippling.  That looked like a contraction to me.  I had a couple of good friends there at the time who were both farm-raised.  They came to the fence too and confirmed that.  We watched her for the next few minutes and saw feet emerging.  I was trying to see if the feet were pointing up or down but they were so small it was hard to tell.  Then we saw a nose poking out too.  It was maybe 20 minutes total from start to finish.

Eddie came over to see what was going on and licked the calf too.  The calf finally stood up and started to go towards Eddie for a feed.  Eddie stomped on it and kicked it quite hard.  Several times.  Then she tried to get between Patsy and her calf.  We had to separate them.

That was difficult.  Eddie is normally the sweeter natured of the two but she was confused.  Patsy and Eddie had also been together since they were born.  But the three of us managed it.  A bit of musical paddocks followed and after a day or so I was able to swap them around so that Eddie was in the front paddock where I could keep an eye on her and Patsy and her calf were in the paddock behind them.

Eddie hung in there for another two weeks.  She was showing all the signs of being close.  Her udder was so full it looked ready to burst and the teats were pointing off in different directions.  I made sure that I saw her every couple of hours or so.  One morning, I noticed that I hadn’t seen her at all, so I went for a walk down the far end of the paddock.  There she was, with a lovely little calf at her feet.  He was lying down and had been cleaned up.  His coat seemed dry so he was probably at least an hour old.

I wanted to see him on his feet and feeding.  I was worried that Eddie would reject him after the way she’d behaved towards Patsy’s calf.  The second or third time I went out to check, I climbed the fence and went fairly close but on the other side of the fence.  He got up, stretched and ran over to Eddie.

Eddie and Ron (about 2 hours old) with Patsy through gate.

He was fine.  He had enough energy for a wobbly frolic, he dropped a massive poo that wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t been fed.  But as he stood by the gate to the paddock where Patsy and her calf were, Patsy’s calf was standing next to it - the new one, a couple of hours old was taller.

They’re all doing well now.  I’ve finally put them all together in one paddock again.  There was a bit of investigation of each other but I’m sure it will all sort itself out soon.