One Month Down

 Today is the one month mark for my husband and I. We are happy, completely exhausted, busy and did I mention worn out? Our wedding day was beyond perfect, and we loved and enjoyed every minute. Our honeymoon consisted of more than 1,500 miles in 6 days and we had a blast. Upon our return home, the honeymoon immediately ended, and we've been scrambling ever since. We also snapped a few photos along the way...

Flaming Gorge Reservoir. One of three reservoirs we checked out on the first two days of our honeymoon. This one offers tours every 30 minutes too! But, alas, no sooner did we make it through security for our tour than a lightning strike was spotted, which puts a halt to tours for half an hour. Considering that we had a lot of miles to cover and it looked like a storm was brewing, we sadly left without seeing things up close.

Jackson Hole. We spent a day and a half walking around Jackson, enjoying dinner and a live show at the Jackson Theater, eating at the Two Merry Piglets, and loving a 13 miles scenic float down the Snake River. I wanted to do a white water rafting trip, but my husband turned green at the mere mention, so this was our compromise. Considering I got this picture on the scenic float, it was worth it!

 Yellowstone National Park. This is actually two miles south of Yellowstone, where we stayed in a cabin with a back porch, complete with two rocking chairs and this view. While in Yellowstone, we checked out Yellowstone Lake, the famous Yellowstone Falls, Old Faithful and various other sites. Wildlife count included buffalo, a grizzly bear, elk and deer.

Montana. From Yellowstone we stayed in Cooke City, then went over 11,000 feet up, up, up over a pass on our way to Red Lodge. It was a gorgeous drive. From there we drove along the Yellowstone River and checked out the crops (I did marry a farmer/rancher). This hay picture was taken just north of Alzada, where it appears they are having an excellent hay year.

From Montana we came home, excited to dive into married life together.



 

 Our first task was dealing with the pinkeye epidemic that swept through our pairs in the week we were gone. Almost all of my cows, several of his and over half the calves were infected. And, for those that don't believe in antibiotic use in livestock, treating problems like pinkeye with antibiotics is not the easy, lazy way out, it's the more time consuming, right thing to do for the animal. We spent an entire day setting up corrals, gathering and trailing in a herd half blind, running each infected animal through the chute, and treating them with a combination of penicillin (to treat the issue) and dexamethasone (to speed up the penicillin's efficacy). We gave the shot in the vein running through the eyelid, because that location ensures the treatment is right where it needs to be (the eye). My sister-in-law, who works for two vets, and her husband were kind enough to help us figure out the best treatment, and help us administer the shots. We also poured everyone for flies, since they are the main carriers of the disease. I am happy to report our treatment was highly effective, and the last two times we've checked, everyone is doing much better and well on the way to recovery. If we hadn't treated with antibiotics, most of my cows and over half our calf crop would be blind for life, which would severely limit their ability to eat, drink, maintain a healthy weight and survive in the large pastures they call home.

Then there were the crops, which ripened in our absence. We checked everything and my husband kept a close eye on them until it was determined the time had come to harvest.

 

 

 So, much like spring and fall cattle work, the entire family converged on our fields, making sure the harvest happened in a timely fashion. Here is my father-in-law, racing against a rain storm to finish the first wheat field. A couple crops did get rained on in the truck, and now we are shuffling hot, moist grain back and forth in an effort to dry it.

 Then there was the hog trip. We had to make an overnight trip to get a few extra hogs to fill all our orders because our wonderful customer's orders exceeded our supply. I was driving down the interstate at 80 mph with an empty trailer on our way to Southeastern South Dakota, a 6 hour drive one-way, when the transmission went out of my husband's pickup. I got pulled over to the side of the interstate and slowed down to about 20 mph before everything locked up and lurched us to a stop, barely over the white line.
We called one sister-in-law and she headed our way to help tow us off the road and make a plan. Then, about an hour into waiting and after taking the driveline off, and managing to get the rig a little further off the road with me holding in the clutch and steering while my husband pushed (we were stopped on a hill), my second sister-in-law and her family drove by on their way to a ranch rodeo and helped get us towed off the interstate.
Not to be deterred, we eventually got another pickup hooked to our rig and continued on, arriving at our destination three hours later than planned. We loaded and were home at 3 a.m., then were up and back on the same stretch of road the following morning by 8 a.m. to retrieve our pickup and one sister-in-law that loaned us hers.
But, we did get the hogs, and a new boar. So, it was successful.
There has also been a trip to Wyoming to move me to South Dakota, and as I type this my house is a complete disaster of piles you could lose a small child in. But, thanks to lots of help from both sides of the family in between all these other events, the house is much cleaner and more organized than it was a few days ago.
Did I mention my husband is also the President of the Fair Board, and I am now judging the livestock show and the 4-H photography show next week in addition to starting back up with my writing?
I'm sure you get the point that we have been a little bombarded in our first month of marriage. But there have also been a plethora of blessings mixed in with the trials. For example, my husband has an unlimited miles powertrain warranty on his pickup until January 2014, so everything should be fixed for $100, which is his deductible. We also managed to purchase a very affordable, high quality boar that we hadn't planned on being able to swing right now, and need to keep up with our growing number of sows.
We are very blessed, and keep reminding ourselves and each other that without all our blessings we wouldn't have had to face any of the trials of the last month. Here's to one month down and hundreds more to come!



Doctoring Calves

Weaning calves is much like sending your kids back to school in the fall. Between completely changing environments, tossing them into a smaller space, switching up their diet and any number of other things, some are bound to get sick regardless of your best efforts to prevent it. When I say sick, I mean anything from Pneumonia, to Pink Eye, to Foot rot, to any number of other ailments, depending on location, weather, soil and other variables. "Sickness" is an all-encompassing term.

People doctor calves in more ways than you count, and for a wide variety of ailments depending on the year, their location, and other things. Some rope and doctor them in a lot or pasture, others bring them in and put them in a chute. Some use horses and others use 4-wheelers or motorcycles. Some sort them off into a separate pen, others don't. Different people, and places, deal with different sicknesses. This is one of those ranch things where there are lots of ways to do the job effectively.

This year ours have been in our corral and a small lot. This increases the odds of them getting sick, because they're in a more confined space and were eating out of feeders, which can increase the spread of sickness. However, having them close also makes it easier to get them on a feed program, simpler to check and doctor them if they do get sick and can allow you get on top of any serious illness really fast. There are trade offs to having them turned out, or in a lot or corral like we did this year.

Before you can doctor any calves, there have to be some that are sick. Obviously everyone would prefer if they didn't get sick, and works really hard to prevent sickness before it starts. There are lots of things ranchers do to prevent sickness, including vaccination programs, adding a mild antibiotic to the water for a select period of time, feeding medicated feed for a period of time, feeding a weaning specific feed or feed additive, and a variety of other feed and management options.

For the most part, these practices are highly effective where I'm from, and we doctor very few calves. But, regardless of our best efforts, there are always a few, and some years a lot, that require additional care. As with most things involving livestock, they get sick at any time of day, and you have to spend a lot of time with them during the days following weaning when they're most likely to get sick. The key is to get on top of any sickness as fast as possible. If you miss the beginning of a wave of illness going through a bunch of calves, it can result in the duration of illness lasting much longer, costs you money in loss of production and medication costs and also increases the risk of calves not fully recovering from an illness, or dieing.

Healthy calves look like the above two photos. They're alert, with their ears up, eyes bright and bellies full. The guy just laying there is chewing his cud, a sure sign of contentment in cattle. There are lots of subtle, and not so subtle, signs of calves that are healthy, or on the verge of getting sick.

You want to look through them carefully, especially if you know you have something going through them. Number 166 looks healthy, alert, full, etc...

But, unfortunately one of the things we had go through our calves this year is Pink Eye.

Even though this guy doesn't feel sick, he needs doctored because of his eye.

Here's another suspect, this time for being sick. This guy is not alert, he's off by himself, and he's not eating when most of the other calves were - all signs of potentially needing doctored.

But, before you just go ahead and doctor every calf that looks like this, it's also important not to over-doctor. You have to spend time with the calves, and watch suspects like this guy. There are some that are obviously sick, and there's no doubt that you better doctor him or he's going to die. Then there are more "suspect" types, which need monitored. Sometimes it's easier to tell the difference, and sometimes you have to go with your gut (which for most ranchers, is based on years of personal experience) and what you feel is best for that particular animal.

Here's what we use to doctor. The artwork is custom. We use this old chute because it's pretty much worn out, and useless for anything but doctoring sick calves. It's also a manual chute, whereas our other one is run on hydraulics. Using this one means we don't have to fire up a pickup every time we want to run a calf in and doctor him, and one person can do the entire process alone if they need to.

When you doctor a calf, you usually give him a shot, in a syringe like this one.

We use a broad-spectrum antibiotic, seen here. The brand name of this bottle is Oxymycin, but the general term for this medicine is LA 200. You give calves so many cc's based on body weight. This is a mild medicine that treats a number of common illnesses and is affordable. It's usually a good starting place when doctoring calves. People in some places have to deal with illnesses that require much more aggressive doctoring, but fortunately that's not the case where I live in most instances.

You can give the shot under the skin, and we give multiple shots to spread the medicine out. For Pink Eye, you can also give the shot in the eyelid. But, considering I was doctoring most of these calves alone, I wasn't about to try to mug each one's head and give what would be a very difficult shot at the same time. So, instead of an actual shot, I would fill this little syringe with LA 200, and apply some of it directly to the eye. Pink Eye is extremely susceptible to doctoring, and the direct contact of the LA 200 to the infected area (eye) increases effectiveness. That's why they recommend a shot right at they eye also.

I didn't get a photo of doctoring any calves this year, but here's an example of my aunt giving a shot. She's going to give it in the neck, and you also want to be careful not to break the syringe (the clear part is glass), and waste the vaccine. She was giving a shot to some cows, and that's why it's white. LA 200 is the color and consistency of maple syrup. It's sticky, thick, and some brands burn when you give the shot to the calf. But, it's also fast and long-acting, effective, and a much better alternative to not being doctored.

Then each calf gets a mark with a paint stick, so you can tell he's been doctored after you turn him back out. Sometimes you have to doctor calves multiple times, and you need to know if he's been doctored previously. If you doctor a calf multiple times, you can switch colors each time. This year we used one color (pink) for sick calves, and another (yellow) for those doctored for Pink Eye.

We also write each calf we doctor down, along with the date we gave it a shot, and this year whether it was a sick calf or one with Pink Eye. We keep records of practically everything.

Lots of people just put a mark across the shoulders. I added another on their hip because when they were eating in the feeders, there were times when you couldn't see the shoulders.

The paint stick marks fade over time. Here's the first calf that was doctored for Pink Eye. At this point we're pretty much past the post-weaning sickness, and I turned the calves out to pasture this morning.