It was a long day on Sunday.   I went to work landscaping in the morning and worked until the wind got bad again.  It’s been windy here for the last 4 days now.  Gust are usually around 20-30 mph.  Makes cleaning up leaves and plants almost impossible.  Luckily there are some jobs I can do that doesn’t involve plant material flying away with the wind.

After I got home and got some food we all went out to get the cattle.  The Fall born calves were sorted as to who would be going up to the grandparents farm to clean up the newly combined corn fields.  The rest would stay here.  When that was done we went to the lower pasture to get the Spring born calves for weaning.

My Australian Shepherd stock dog, now around six months old, is already close to herding like a pro.  There was a big hole to fill when we lost our previous dog to old age last year.  I think she’s well on the way to filling that hole.  You never realize how important a stock dog is until you don’t have one around.   She’s still scared of horses so we will be doing everything on foot until she gets use to them.

We sorted the calves off of the cows and sent the cows back down in the pasture.  The calves weren’t as heavy as they usually are, most likely due to the incredibly hot summer we had, but they still looked pretty nice.  We should get a good price.  Next came the decision about which heifers to keep for replacements and which steers to keep for butchering.  We picked out some of the lighter weight steers for feeding.  We chose a nice bodied black, a hereford, and a deep red white face for replacement heifers.  Hopefully they’ll produce well.

I sold two calves, a heavy steer and a decent looking heifer.  The other calf I have will be kept for a butcher since the cow’s calf I would normally keep ended up dieing this Fall from and unknown cause.

I did chores while my parents hauled the two loads down to the sales barn.  I was then able to work on my mountain of laundry, paperwork and work emails while they were hauling.  They finally got back to the house at around 9:30 p.m. Thankfully everything went smoothly.:)

Fall calves.