The Great Divide

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When I got up this morning, I could hear the bellows of some very upset cows. Normally, about five or six of the bulls in my pasture start their complaining first thing in the morning when they get their sunrise drink. Some bulls are just never happy. They don't do anything other than bitch at the top of their lungs - they're too lazy to fight or do anything physical. They just bitch about things.

But, when you hear just about every cow within a half mile trumpeting so hard they get hoarse, well, you just know something is up. I couldn't even hear the normal complaining crew in my lot for the all the woe to the south. So, I drove to the neighbors' place to see what was up. They've been working pretty hard the past few weeks building new pens, and I wanted to see those as well.

It was time for the first doctorin' for the calves. They had to be separated from their mothers and then given some shots, pills, ear tags, and the little bulls became little steers. Guess what? Mama cows just don't really care about that. All they know is their baby is fenced off from them.

I took that video with my better camera - but it's not much of a video camera. There really wasn't enough light - we ended up getting rain all day, but what I really wanted was for y'all just to hear the cows' lament. I think the audio quality is good enough so you'll get the idea. This was about nine in the am, and when I got home at around five in the pm, the cows were still carrying on, albeit some were pretty hoarse.

My neighbor isn't ready to wean the calves - they will probably have to go through a similar procedure again before that happens. I wouldn't want to get between a calf and momma for the next few days - if I had to go out amongst 'em.

And aren't those pens slick? My neighbor's children (who seem to want to continue the family tradition) won't wear that lot out. They aren't done with it, either - there is going to be a doctoring shed built yet. It's gonna take a lot of those little calves turning into feeder weights to pay for all that. But, if you want to stay in the occupation of farming and ranching these days, you have to invest in the future. If you are always working on equipment and infrastructure instead of taking care of business in a timely fashion, you won't last.