A heifer in the basement

Weaning is a stressful time. It is also an excellent time to locate, tear out, and immediately rebuild the weakest part of your corral some years. Freshly weaned calves are experts at the locating and tearing out part, and a stressed, mad rancher can really replace torn down corral fast.
The above photo is the result of one such experience a couple years ago. Weaned calves can be spooky, and just about anything can set off the right bunch. One morning we woke up to the sound of peaceful quiet, which is never a good thing on the second day of weaning, and also probably why we were all actually sleeping well.
The corral was empty. This is a rancher's worst weaning nightmare. If calves don't know where their mothers are, they will just poof in every direction like a dropped bag of flour. Locating, gathering, and temporarily securing them until you rebuild the corral can be a lengthy and frustrating process. It can take months to find them all in some instances.
But, not this time. Our calves had gone half a mile, settled down, and were eating. We easily gathered them up, locked them up, fixed the corral, and considered ourselves lucky to only be short one head. I spent the next two days searching high and low, near and far, for the missing one. I eventually assumed she had met up with a neighbor's cows, and we would eventually get a call to retrieve her.
Then I saw what you see above while putting garbage in our burn barrel, and immediately took a picture so everyone would believe me when I informed them of where the missing one had been hiding for almost three days.
This old basement is just a junk collector, as you can see (with the exception of the heifer of course). How she fell in there is beyond me, and how to get her out was also beyond me at the time. She was not happy, to say the least, about her predicament. I pondered, thought, weighed options, and eventually gathered up what I thought I needed to assist her in jumping out of the lowest part of the wall, which is in the top left hand corner of the photo.
I loaded a 4-wheeler trailer of railroad tie chunks and cinder blocks and dumped a few into the basement to begin constructing a temporary set of steps. The heifer began lapping the basement, and I stepped over to the opposite side, just in case she managed to jump out. To my surprise, she lined herself out and leaped out of the basement with ease. After three days of searching, some heavy lifting and mental planning, that's all it took to get her out and back with her buddies. She was shrunk out, hungry and thirsty, but otherwise none the worse for wear as a result of her stay in the basement.
When I came across this picture again today, I thought it was fitting to share with you on day two of weaning our first bunch this year.

Paint Sticks

My camera is broke, and it's been raining around here the past few days! What that means is I don't have much for photos to show you.
In the meantime, here is a story for you. Any young ranch wives may particularly enjoy this tale.
When my parents were first married, my grandfather (my dad's dad) stopped by after gathering supplies in town for a day of fall cattle work, and realized he forgot paint sticks. He was a little frustrated after going all the way to town just for supplies. My mom wasn't sure what he needed paint sticks for when working cattle, but was excited to be able to help, and informed him she had a whole bunch and would bring them along in the morning.
My grandfather gave her an odd look, likely wondering why she had a supply of paint sticks laying around (my mom wasn't raised on a ranch), but agreed and left for home.
The next morning, early I'm sure, my mom dutifully and happily presented my grandfather with about eight paint sticks - as in paint stirring sticks.
To hear my parents tell it, my grandfather just looked at her, dumbfounded. You see, he was referring to cattle marking paint sticks.
"What could you say?" was my dad's laughing remark to how his dad responded to his new daughter-in-law's happy attempt to help him with his odd supply list request.
Good luck to all you ladies who marry into ranching families, especially those who weren't raised in agriculture! After 27 years, I can assure you my mom has learned a lot, and taught a lot, to everyone in the family she married into : )

Language

A very pregnant heifer, which has nothing to do with this post, beyond the fact that she's a cow...and I find this picture funny.

You may have noticed we have some interesting language we use in agriculture.
At our place you might hear cows referred to as bags, bitty's, rips, and any number of other descriptive terms. Now that my siblings and I are a little older, the occasional 4-letter explicit is also used from time to time.
I have a theory, based partly (largely) on the personal experiences of my cousins, siblings and myself, as to how cows, and any number of other tangible items and creatures get called such odd things.
It all starts with couples having kids. Then the kid gets up to the age where it starts paying attention, and repeating. Then it gets to the point where it can speak clearly...this is always a great learning time for parents from what I've heard.
The mother is likely in the house, and in comes her smart, attentive, three-year old child. The mother asks what the child has been up to, and the response goes something like...
"Oh, just trying to get the bleepity bleep cow to let her bleeping calf suck. Dad said she was being a bleep bleepity bleep. Then his bleeping horse bucked him off, and now he's really bleepity mad."
At which point the mother would probably be caught off guard, and respond in some way, and hear...
"Well, I don't know. That bleeping cow is getting really bleeping irritating, and dad says that bleeping horse is gonna get it."
At which point the mom goes out, finds her bleeping husband, and get's the whole bleeping inappropriate language around the bleeping kids issue cleared up.
After that, with the exception of the occasional slip-up, cows are referred to as rips, bags and bittys when they cause irritation.
Or, the kids are given a talk by dad about what they should and should not tell mom in reference to language used in the barn....
Either way, it results in some humorous acronyms that tend to stick.

A tagging story

I've been told this story, starring myself, for as long as I can remember. I heard it again this weekend, and thought I would pass it on to a new audience.
Once, when I was really little (we're talking 2 or 3 years old), I went with my mom to tag calves. I actually went almost every day, regardless of the activity at hand.
Anyway...
I've mentioned some cows are nasty about having their calves tagged, and I mean it. There is no way to explain having a big cow dead set on destroying you to protect her baby. Dealing with these cows is something we put up with, because after their calves get a little older they typically mellow out, and having a protective instinct is a good trait to have in mother cows.
Well, on this particular day my mom found "that cow," as in the really bad one who would hunt you down, run you over, come back and maul you, if you simply got near her calf, had calved. This was one mean girl, and my mom knew it.
In good ranch wife fashion she got her taggers and book ready, pulled the feed pickup between the already irritated cow and her calf. She then quickly jumped out, grabbed the calf, and drug it under the pickup's flatbed to tag it. At the same time the cow rounded the pickup, bellowing (they're really loud), blowing snot and throwing dirt. She proceeded to try to crawl under the pickup too, and was rocking it pretty good to hear my mom tell it.
Enter me.
In my wise two-year-old prime, I got out of the of the pickup to help, (it must have sounded like she needed it). I walked around, stuck my head under the pickup, and likely began chattering away (I've always been a bit of talker), as this big, loud, mad cow continued to try to tip the pickup over so she could kill my mom and retrieve her baby.
My mother still goes pale at this part of the story, and ironically enough I have no idea if she got the calf tagged that day or not. I do know she was ready to kill me after she found out the cow hadn't.
I made it out without a scratch, from the cow or my mother.
This wasn't the first, or last time, I had such incidents either. It's amazing my mother doesn't have more gray hairs really.