WordPlay

By Patty Wilber

So, I bought five Angus-cross cows Mar. 6. Price of cows has been through the roof (due to a decrease in cows in the US–been sold to Japan, and the price of feed…amazing how you can sound like you know what you are talking about if you ask enough questions and then repeat back…)

My cows in March

Three were “three stripers” and two were “late two stripers”, according to the to the preg checker (via the seller). “They”ll all calve within 45 days.”

“Three stripes” means they are in the third trimester and “two stripes” means there are in the, yes, you guessed it, second trimester.  Gestation in cows is 9 months.

Hmmm. There’s a problem right there. The two stripers are gonna take at least 90 days.  Buyer:  PAY ATTENTION!  (Well, in self defense, there is a learning curve.)

Here are two of the three stripers in early March. Neither has calved yet!

A “preg checker” is a person you hire to stick their hand up the nether region (rectum) of the cow to feel if the cow is pregnant, and if so, determine the calf size.  This indicates how far along they are.  If you want details, click here.

This preg checker also does teeth, and according to him (via the seller), I have three three year olds and two four year olds. I haven’t got second opinion on those facts!

Cow Red 4, which is now Blue 11 (more on that later), had her calf immediately.  The rest of them…um NOT!

I have been (not so) patiently waiting.

The cows are heading to the high country to spend the summer, in just a few weeks.  The heavily pregnant cows will not be able to hike in with the rest of the herd.  They are either going to have to go to a cow way station to have their calves and then hitch a ride in, or they are going to have to be trucked in, still pregnant.

Fortunately, my four are not the only hold outs.  There are three or four others.

Once you buy cows, they MUST be branded with your brand within 30 days of purchase. They do not have to be ear tagged, but many are, to make it easier to tell them apart.

To get a brand in New Mexico, you go down to the livestock office, check out the brand book to make sure you are not copying a brand in use, fill out a form, draw  three possible brands, choose a location on the cow (L or R, shoulder, body or hip) and pay money.

In 30 days or less, you get a brand! And a brand certificate (suitable for framing…well not really that nice) AND a plastic card you can keep in your wallet.

The brand is good for three years. Sort of.  Brand fees are due every three years, but ALL the brand fees are due at the exact same time.  I got  a new brand in March 2011 for $75 (the OLD three year fee).  But all brands have to be renewed July 2011, for $100. Pro-rating?  Not a chance.

To view NM brands, click here and then type in a name.

Here is my brand (also good for horses):

Here is my brand on a cow.

Cow Blue 14 (formerly red 19) with her left shoulder "body art". She is one of the two stripers.

My cows were branded, vaccinated, treated with an anti-louse agent, and re-ear-tagged.  The old tags were hand written and fading.  Plus, I liked the blue color!

The bull calves were banded. This will make them steers by cutting off the circulation to their testes.

I went to visit them Wednesday and arrived around 5 pm.  I try to go to the farm 1 or 2 times/week.  I usually take two or three horses with me and today I took T, Buckshot and Penny.

A front was blowing in from the southwest, dropping off the Manzano Mountains and zipping across the plains (where the farm is). The wind was horrendous and it was trying (not very hard) to rain.  I was able to count 24 (three were mine) of 36 cows on my way in and saw another bunch to the south. (There are also around 22 calves, one of which is mine.)

I unloaded (and the trailer door about blew off), tied Penny and Buckshot and got on T.  We had a few words about what he was and was not able to do, on his own, in a gale.

I won. I was somewhat sympathetic as the wind was blowing so hard it seemed to be moving his feet around when he picked them up!

We made it to the southern group and there were 12 cows (2 were mine).  All animals present and accounted for.

Cows are herd animals (duh). What has surprised me is how closely they seem to bond. For the last 2 months, every time I have checked, my 5 have been together.  This was the first time I’ve seen them split up.

I took a picture of my calf, and the weather, worked T a bit to reinforce “who’s the boss” and rather than ride the other two in the miserable conditions, loaded up and drove home (35 miles). Got there around 7 pm.

Cow Blue 11 and bull gonna-be-a-steer-soon Calf Blue 1

Weather on the plains--but the picture didn't capture the wind!

It was calm at my house (nestled behind the Sandia Mountains and NOT on the plains) with only a raindrop or two, so what the heck.

Rode Buckshot!

By Patty Wilber

The cows are out where the eastern plains of New Mexico flatten off the Manzano Mountains and stretch themselves into Texas.  It usually seems to be windy.  Makes me thankful I live in arms of the mountains.

The cows have 1200 grassy acres and a big water tank, but this is what they say:  “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

Excuse me? It is practically the middle of December.  I don’t think there is any green grass left in the entire county.

“Well, WE  might find some,” they say, as they sashay through any barbed wire fencing that is not tight enough to twang when plucked.

I had no idea that cows were such wanderers. Fortunately, they are easily bribed with alfalfa hay.  After just a few days of the “honk and feed ‘em” program, you can drive in, honk, and they hustle happily to the feeding spot, even from across the road!

Unfortunately, Bert (the bull) and some of the neighboring bulls, too, have a slightly different agenda:  “The heifers are always prettier on the other side of the fence.”  Like those cute ones down there by the Mormon church.  Bert’s last visit resulted in him taking a little unexpected trip with the Mormon Heifer’s dad, to a pen far, far away.

Ronnie says: “Once a bull starts a wandering, you might as well sell ‘im cuz he’s never gonna stay home”.

But Ol’ Otis says: “Pen ‘im up a while, then put ‘im back with the cows and ‘e might stay put.”

So, the wires are being tightened for the cows and Bert is at Tabooli’s house in Tabooli’s pen, and Tabooli is here.

Tabooli is four, and he is very good for a stallion, however, he likes to get in the middle of things and he is very vocal.  He talks to me in the morning for breakfast, he talks to the cows, he talks to himself, he talks to the girls; he even talks to the trailer! (Which does not talk back.)

I also have Buckshot, a three-year old colt.  He doesn’t strut, he doesn’t fight, and he rarely talks.  He just wants to get along.

Then there is Cometa. He is a gelding, but he is the Boss of the Universe.

The two girls, Penny and Risa, must be kept from the studs, and the show gelding just doesn’t need to get involved in “who likes who” with the other boys.

Penny and Risa have one  big pen, Show Boy has one…what to do with three bad boys and two pens?

Stallions must be kept by themselves, right? Nope.

In the wild, stallions run in herds, so like all horses, they do like company, and can get along with others.

In 2009 , I went to Nebraska to spend a week riding at the Jirkovski’s.  They had the best behaved stallions I have ever seen, and they typically turned them ALL out together at night, even the show stallions.

So, I called them before I started my little boy band experiment, and they said to just be careful that the stallions don’t pick on the gelding.  (They haven’t met Cometa).

I started with Tabooli and Cometa together because I was pretty sure Buckshot was going to go with the flow, and I didn’t want T. and Cometa messing with each other over the gate.

Tabooli arrived and Jim put him in the round pen. Cometa ran right over and they started sparring over the fence.  I didn’t like that.  Seemed like a panel might get damaged, so Jim let T. out.

They approached each other, nose to nose, necks arched, tails up, manes wild. They sniffed, squealed dual challenges, and rose up in the air, striking with their hooves!  Wild horse drama!

Funny thing is, they didn’t touch. It was ritualized fighting,  repeated a few times.  They never even got to the point of turning butt to butt and going for the kick boxing.

Buckshot, true to form, stayed well away from the fence line: Not Getting Involved.

Over the next few days, Cometa and T. periodically challenged each other (noisy boys!) but no one  got the upper hand or the shaft. They even ate together, sometimes.

At this point I decided to switch Cometa and Buckshot because Cometa has a super thrifty metabolism, so to keep him from becoming obese, he really has to have a limited diet.  Tabooli is young and studly, (at least until next week, when he will become a gelding…)  He needs more food.

So, I turned Buckshot out  and put Cometa in. Buckshot strolled over to Tabooli.  The two stallions gave each other a quick sniff and went to get a bite to eat. That’s all!  No posturing, no talking.  A big non-event!

The two stallions Buckshot (buckskin) and Tabooli (palomino). Ho hum.

Then Tabooli strutted to the gate to taunt Cometa, “The cows say the grass is greener on my side of the fence.”

Cometa whacked the gate. Boing!

I think I might load Cometa up and send him to a pen far, far away!

If you’re on my FaceBook or Twitter feeds, you watched this one unfold.  The evening clouds  coming in over the mountains weren’t a surprise–we knew about the rain.

When the hail started, that wasn’t a surprise, either. Biggie marble-size hail is common enough around here.  It squalls through in pretty short order.

I mean, usually.

This time, there was nothing usual about it–although as golf balls started to spang off glass and we crated the dogs away from the windows, we still thought it would pass.

Because, I mean, usually.

But within moments I was pressed against the leeward office window, watching DuncanHorse hurl himself around a paddock slippery with accumulating inches of hail–scrabbling, falling, and beyond rational equine thought.  Talk about feeling helpless…oh, I cried for DuncanHorse!

This lasted for approximately…forever.

(Yes, I’m pretty it was about that long.)

The hail piled up in drifts that would take days to melt, sandblasting the world.  When it finally–FINALLY–eased, I went out to comfort Duncan with his blanket (he’s too dignified to call it a blankie, but same effect), and gave him bute and a bonus snack of hay.  I won’t say he leaped into my arms upon my arrival, but it was a close thing.

The next days were all about discovering damage: Garbage can, holed; gutter drains, bashed; van, battered (to the tune of $6600), one solar tube cover split.  The roof damage is of yet undetermined–the special insurance catastrophe teams are here,  but taking weeks to work through the backlog.

Our scrub Oak, scrubbed. The dear little thing does still have a leaf or too...if you look closely.

My lush fall wildflowers turned into food processor fodder; we lost a little yard tree and are crossing our fingers for this year’s other painstaking transplants.  The wild juniper/pinon arroyo lands around us were thinned to a veil–neighbors across the valley are suddenly visible.  The wild grasses  were flattened, the roadside ditches held mini-glaciers of hail flow, and the giant sunflowers canted wildly out of the ground under their own weight.

Our thriving, bushy catnip

Smashed Asters probably ought to be the name of a band

OH.  The agility equipment.  Battered, shattered, shredded. I saved the table (it’s already repainted) and the A-frame (ditto), but the dogwalk…maybe salvageable, maybe not.  Insurance folks check it out this week, along with the teeter, tunnels and broad jump–and the barn, which gurgles mysteriously and has water in its structure somewhere.

Um.

As for DuncanHorse, it took five days before he shook off the soreness and the shock, but he’s back to being his opinionated self and would not care to admit he was ever in need of a blankie and a hug.

All in all, that storm left behind a little slice of damage remarkable for its completeness. No exposed car or household in this little area escaped; no skylight survived.  While most of the damage occurred tightly local to us, the storm also hit weirdly northwest of us to wreak havoc at Kewa Pueblo.

However.

In the end, it’s all part of living along the Sandias. If the beauty of these high desert foothills is dramatic, so can be the weather.  It’s also part of horsekeeping at home–and of being so drawn to the outdoors that the damage to the trees and flowers and the small creatures who perished now feels so deeply personal.

Tucked in by the house...a wee gaillardia, the lone survivor

Of course, that doesn’t stop us from crying about it, or floundering to fit repairs and recovery into the following weeks, or wandering around in shock at the gut-deep understanding that no matter how well you prepare and provide for your outdoor kids, when nature comes along, it’s not always enough.

Patty at the Write Horse sure knows it, too–Friday gives us the storm from a Risotada Training point of view.  But until then, we’re all still just putting things back together.

PS Dear Editor: v. sorry my proofs were pushing that deadline…

posted on Wednesday

Yup. Got me my cactus fork.

Got me my little hatchet.

And today, the juniper nursery and I gave each other a nervous hairy eyeball and faced off.

I like my little hatchet.  Buh-bye, little trees!

Of course, I feel guilty.  I always feel guilty, cutting trees.  But in this case, they’re all clustered together so tightly that it’s not healthy anyway–I don’t see that growth pattern anywhere else in this area and I wonder if that land wasn’t disturbed somehow in the past.

And in this case, they’re right in the middle of my agility area, which is a vaguely L-shaped patch of mud and grama grass (now shorn of prickly pear) in the south pasture area, already formed around several large stands of juniper and pinon.

So…yeah.  It’s me, my hatchet, and the juniper nursery.  Besides, I’ll pick out some of the larger ones to stay around–appropriately spaced, too.  I want to leave this gorgeous, fragile high desert land as healthy as possible (which is why DuncanHorse is currently closed in his paddock and not running loose on the wet, erosion-prone soil).  The baby trees are already serving another purpose: dragged to the head of forming gullies, where they’ll slow the run-off.

When it comes to this sort of project, I tend to over-do it.  For one thing, I’m using tools that mean something to me.  This hatchet was my grandfather’s, and is older than I am.  (And I swear I checked the handle before I started work.  Really I did.)  So working with it means more than just being out on the land, out in the quiet…out in my zen zone.  It means thinking about my grandfather…thinking about the places and spaces in which I’ve used this hatchet over the years.

Besides.  With me, it’s always just one…more…leetle…tree…

So maybe it’s a good thing that the hatchet head came flying off in mid-stroke.  It’s certainly a good thing that I ducked the flying hatchet head.

Anyway, I got plenty done, but I didn’t over do it, and Yes! I still have a reflex or two left!

Anyone here have any favorite old hand-me downs?

(I was going to ask “anyone have any favorite old tools?” but a scared little voice in my head popped up and said, “No!  Don’t do it!” and indeed, that seems wise after the back-scene responses I got to “cactus fork,” to which I can only say OW OW OW OW.  You silly people.)

posted on Monday

Not a word combination that comes often to mind.

But the agility area is rife with a low-lying prickly pear and hoo boy, it’s gotta go.  It starts with the hoe:  lift the flat pads of the winter-shrunken cactus with hoe, find that tap root…and then just the right, swift combination of hack-n-slice.  Prickly pear be gone.

Actually,  that’s when the hard part starts.  Because what then?  Can’t leave the things lying around.  For one thing, they’ll just root where they are.  For another, then they’re still…well, lying around!

But by golly, don’t go picking the things up.   The spiny scary parts aren’t even the problem–it’s the horrid little hooked fuzzy spines that you never see until it’s too late.  No matter what.  No, leather gloves are no protection.  Maybe I’ll try kevlar sometime?

So today I discovered a new use for a trusty old tool…my half-size manure fork.  It used to be assigned to yard duty when Duncan grazed in Flagstaff and ABQ’s South Valley (“mowing the lawn” had nothing to do with machinery), but here, it has no such use.

However, the poo fork (because yes, I am too lazy to say “manure fork” more than once) has now found new life!

Behold!  The Mighty Cactus Fork!

I might even be smug and satisfied, if it weren’t for the juniper nursery located behind and to the left of where I stood to take this picture.  I’m kinda getting the feeling that the hoe and the cactus fork aren’t quite gonna do the trick…

Hmm.

Quick! Don’t look at the Scary! Turn around instead! It’s…

Much better.

The Monday Post

And the rain turned to heavy snow…

What was I saying about horses in the wet cold dark? About the stupid?

Well, there’s the flip side of the coin. When the horse has to deal with Human Stoopids in the wet cold dark.

There’s a truth with horses–surround them with bubble wrap, and they’ll still find a way to hurt themselves. Just imagine what goes on when there’s a real excuse for it…

This weather has been hard on my getting-older boy–his flank is still tender from the fall he took on ice earlier in the week, and he felt that night of getting wet down to his bones. But the next bit wasn’t his fault, not at all.

His paddock is on an area that’s newly graded, you see–or half of it, anyway. A bit of construction overlap. “But safe for a horse, right?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. No problem.”

As muddy as it gets, it turns out–not what I was expecting, after my time in Flagstaff’s high desert. Though the guys were expecting it, and wood shavings have taken care of much of the mud immediately in front of the barn.

Turns out the mud wasn’t the problem. But that human factor…

All that grading. All that rain. All that ground settling beneath a frozen crust of mud.

Oh yes.  Problem.

And yes, we’re talking a sinkhole.

A sinkhole which one stout Lippie hind leg plunged through to the hock while the other–that’s the one with the totally funky, reconstructed stifle–scrambled to keep the first leg from breaking, front hooves slamming down on the frozen mud and halfway through the extended air pocket stretching out before him. All that struggle, written in the mud to freeze and read, and painted all over his white coat.

Well, he didn’t break his leg. I’m not sure how. But the horse who greeted me in front of the stall the next morning was one hurtin’ boy. He gave me that look. You know. “Please fix this.”

Of course I found the sink hole. And I found the air pocket extending radically beyond what he’d gone through, so I left him in his stall eating breakfast to hunt down the bute (horsie anti-inflammatories) and to call the construction guys to bellow for help. Bless them, they hustled out there fast.

In this mud, the best we could do is put up a little square of corral panels to block it off–it’ll be a while before it’s fixed. Especially given the weather we’ve had since then and are slated to have this coming week–snow ‘n’ blow.

Meanwhile, Duncan has had his bute and is feeling much better overall.  Although, as it happens, the spate of weather has finally driven him indoors. He’s been wearing his waterproof/wind proof sheet most of this time, but he’s finally hanging out in his stall.

In fact, in that photo up top? Yup, he’s in there. In the horse cave. Waiting for hay, carrots, and nose-kisses…

And forgiving the human stoopids.

Aren’t animals just like that?

The Friday Post
Happy New Year!

No, seriously…do it. Fence me in! And do it right!

Last Thursday, I had a Christmas gift I’ve been looking forward to for a very long time: I took a walk with the dogs around the new pasture fenceline on the new property.

Oh, it’s only about half the property–the back half is deeply cut by an untamed arroyo of the sort that forms a little highway for coyotes and possibly the occasional bear. (So I hear. I’m hoping we’re just out of normal range, but all the same, I’m keeping birdfeeders away from the house. Apparently bears think they are way cool…)

So we didn’t include the arroyo in the fenced area.  That leaves a modest pasture of perhaps just under two acres, but it is so delightful!  All rugged and wooded with juniper and pinon, with a deep swale (a pre-arroyo?) between the house and the arroyo.  Lots of  variation, lots of cover,  a flat area of juniper nursey soon to be lightly cleared for agility and a flat area for riding on.  And best of all, it’s fenced.

Even the dogs know what that means–and they knew instantly, when I took them for their first walk on the land last Friday.  It means running in wild circles without being stopped, because their boundaries are a given.  It means the safety to romp and range away from me while I walk, and the freedom to come back, check in with me by meeting my eyes, and spurting away again.  It means exploring together while making their own choices, yet still being with me…us, the pack, walking our territory.  Together.

Once there’s a horse involved, things will really get fun.

So yes, by all means–fence us in!

Besides.  I had a lot of gates put in.

I’m going out there again this weekend to do it all over again for the new year.  I hope you’re having a good one!