Missy's New Baby

It is calving season at the farm. One of my favorite times of year! I love going out every morning and seeing new baby calves everywhere. What I don’t enjoy in getting a phone call or a text that says, “Heifer in trouble, I need help.”  That is what I happened Tuesday around lunch, except the text said, “Missy is in trouble.” Now, we do not name all the cows on the place, but there are a few that are show heifers and they usually get names. Missy is one of our heifers that was shown by a local high school student. Of course, we watch all our cows and heifers closely when it is time for them to have their calves, but the heifers that have been shown are watched more closely. These heifers are usually fed more, so they are at higher risk of having bigger calves that can cause trouble.

So, when I got the phone call I took off running. When I got to the barn I found Papa and Cooper with Missy, who did not seem to be in any distress, but Papa wanted to make sure!

Cooper kept asking, "Papa what you doing?"

First moments of life - AMAZING. You can the calve's tongue sticking out, what you can't see is the calve was flicking its tongue. Funny.

Its tough being born.

We moved the calf over to some fresh hay, and brought Missy over to see her new calf. Missy was pretty happy and went to work cleaning the new calf up.

Missy gave birth to a very pretty, 70 lb heifer calf. She was very proud of her self and so were we!

Andi Beth just told me she named the calf MK, as in Mary Katherine, from the movie Epic. If you know anything about our family you know that we watched Epic for 6 family movie night in a row. (6 Weeks) Andi Beth is obsessed with the movie Epic.

Did anyone notice the pigs photo bombing ALL this pictures?

Life

Several friends and family have asked me to continue blogging about the family and crazy things that happen here at the farm. I really enjoying writing, so here we go again!

My goal is to post 2 or at the most 3 times a week. I will post about the kids, the cows, and all the silly things that happen. I will also post some of our favorite recipes. I really don't know what days of the week I will post, it just kind of depends on what is going on here. I intended to post this last night, but when I finally made it in the house I crashed. 

Yesterday, I spent a good deal of time at my desk planning an upcoming meeting for a state wide organization I am a part of. I also learned that I will be writing a monthly article for this organization. I am looking forward to this. It will be a little bit interesting because it is due more than a month before it is published. I know this is how the magazine world works, just new to me. 

While I was finishing up my phone call around lunch, I got a text from Papa (my father-in-law) that said, "Need you at barn, Missy problem." Missy is one of the heifers that had been being shown and was due to have her calf any day now.  Papa seemed to think she was having some trouble having her calf, so we  got her in the chute and helped her out a little. Missy is the proud momma to beautiful heifer calf. I am working on a post all about Missy and her calf for later this week

After we finished birthing the baby calf, Papa took Cooper to the house for a nap and I started feed cows, filling calf feeders and putting out hay. Feeding cows is always slightly exciting and yesterday did not disappoint. More on that later. 

Finally, Andy, Papa, and I spent the evening taking out Nana and Papa's master shower. It has been leaking for a while, and needs to be repaired. It was a fun evening of busting glass blocks. 

Most days are not as busy as yeasterdy was, but some days are. 

Where Does Your Chicken Come From?

Most people buy their chicken in the grocery store in nice neat little packages, but how does it get there.

Well, mostly it comes from a broiler farm, like my families.

Recently, farmers in general have gotten a bad reputation, for their treatment of animals. Yes our chickens are raised in houses, but we do treat them ethically. I saw where someone posted recently on Facebook – “Treating your animals humanly doesn’t mean that you treat them like humans.”

We could get into a discussion about why God created chickens, pigs, cows, or other animals, but that is a whole other post.

Back to the chicken houses.

We have 12 chicken houses – 8 400 by 40 foot houses, about a 20,000 bird capacity and 4 500 by 45 foot houses that hold more….I can never remember…..so the long and the short of it is we have over 240,000 birds on this farm approximately every 8 to 10 weeks. This is called a batch or a flock. We raise between 5 and 6 batches or flocks a year. OK, so that is a lot of chickens.

Our chicken houses are pretty automated. There is a controller in each house that monitors the temperature, the amount of water the chickens drink, when the feeders run to long.  When something isn’t right, the controller communicates with an alarm that will call me. We all have different names for the alarm, the hubby calls it “Oh S—t,” my Father in Law call is “D-mn You.” (Sorry for the Language) I try not to call it anything profane. I usually have the kids around when it calls, except at 3 am, when the alarm calls at 3 am there is a lot of profane language.

The birds are kept in a very comfortable environment, with complete access to feed and water.

We get the birds when they are a day old and keep them for 49 to 52 days.  Over the next several weeks I will take you through a batch of chickens with us!

Right now the houses are empty. The hubby has been cleaning them out, and the gentleman that works for us is washing the equipment inside.

So, part two of “Where Does Your Chicken Come From?” will be “Cleaning the Chicken House”

This Blogging Thing...........

Here is how life works at the farm – Either there is nothing going on at the farm or there is so much going on that I don’t have time to write.

Hopefully that is going to change around here. The hubby has gotten on board with this blogging thing, as he calls it.

He has been getting technologically savvy in the last few weeks, and his friends on Facebook have encouraged him to blog. For a little more than a week, he has been posting daily updates, with pictures, on his Facebook feed. So, together we are going to work on this blog.

I will probably continue with the writing and most of the pictures, but Hubby is going to help with the ideas. And, hopefully he is going to help me find the time to write, edit, and post!!

I am working on several posts about the chicken houses, but in the meantime, here is a few of pictures of what is happening around the farm.

Rosie!

Cooper helping me with feed inventory.

The kids chilling at the barn during a late night AI session

The last baby calf of the season. He is a cutie!

Dad practicing his AI technique.

A Girl and Her Dog

Andi Beth has been asking for a puppy for about 2 years now. I kept telling her we would get one someday. We have two sweet labs, Micky (short for McKandles) who is a black lab that is 13, and Buck is a chocolate lab that is 11. I just did not think that now was the right time for a third dog.

This is Micky taking care of my Baby Boy. Micky has always loved Cooper. My Baby Boy is so little in this picture. Buck basically ignores the kids so, I could not find any picture of him. 

Well, sometimes I don’t get to make the plans.

Andy has a friend that is an older gentleman whose health is declining. Sometime back Andy had given this gentleman a bird dog. Since this man’s health is declining he decided to give the dog back to Andy. The dog is a sweet bird dog, named Lady. We decided that Lady is going to be Andi Beth’s dog.

Andy brought her home Sunday afternoon as Andi Beth and I were leaving for choir.

Monday when we went out to play we let Lady out with us. We had to spend some time keeping up with her. We didn’t really have a leash, so we used a piece of hay string. Andi Beth and Lady had fun running and playing.

After rest time, Andi Beth went out to play with Lady some more. She brushed her and talked to her and just loved on her

.

This is what they have done every day this week.  If you would have seen them this week, you would not believe that Lady has only been with us 5 days. They love one another.

I guess we did need a third dog.

January Wrap Up

Wow, It is hard to believe that January is almost over. Gardner Farms has been a busy place. I have been traveling back and forth to Houston for photography classes, so maybe my photography will be getting a little bit better. We also took our standard trip to Ft. Worth this past weekend. It was a good weekend, but busy.

The kids enjoyed the show as they always do. Andi Beth got to join the Texas Jr. Angus Association this year. She was pretty excited.

As always we got to see old friends and make some new ones.

Here are some pictures of the kids in Ft. Worth.

One of Andi Beth's favorite things to do is to go "find" Elsie the cow.

This is "Missy" a heifer that we raised. I am very proud of "S." She did a great job showing her and was placed 6th in her class! Way to go "S"

Cooper always wants something on his feet discovered his sister's boots on this trip! This cost me 2 pairs of boots!!

My spoiled children each with an iPad. Cooper has mine and Andi Beth has one one that Santa brought the family this past Christmas. They are waiting in the truck while we are unloading the sale cattle. Unloading can be busy and dangerous with trucks and trailers moving constantly, so kids in the truck with iPads make mom feel better.

Crisis Averted

Saturday night we drove in from the Ft. Worth Stock Show, in Ft. Worth Texas. There had been a slow drizzly rain most of the way home, and our suitcases had been in the trailer so they were a bit wet. In effort to keep the clothes from souring and to keep myself from having too much work on Monday, I quickly through them all in the wash with a color catcher and thought they will be fine. Sunday after church I through them in the dryer so that they would be ready to fold this morning, or so I thought.

I dropped the sheets from my bed in the washer first thing and turned on the dryer to fluff the kid’s clothes before I got them out to start folding. I found a basket (I had to fold the clothes that were in it) and went to get the clothes from the dryer. Now by this point both kids were up and playing. I opened my dryer and started pulling clothes out of the dryer. The first thing I pulled out was one of Andi Beth’s white shirts; I looked like something had faded on it. I looked closer and something brown was on it, I thought cow poop? Then remembered that she only wore this shirt a short while and not to the cow barn. I looked closer and realized that something had gotten on it in the wash. I would later figure out it was in the dryer actually. I looked at a couple more things and there was more of this brown substance………………Thinking, thinking…..hmmmm……When I took the clothes from the wash there was purple candy paper in there……....It was coming back to me now. When we were leaving the banquet Friday night, Andi Beth put a piece of dove chocolate in her pants pocket to hide it from Cooper…..Dig in the dryer a little more….here are the jeans she wore and look a square brown stain right at the bottom of the pocket. Pause; don’t lose your cool mom….CALLING FULL NAME IN A LOUD VOICE…..Andi Beth comes running. She confirmed she did put the chocolate in her pants and forgot to take it out. We had a long talk about how there are certain things that we NEVER put in our pockets and chocolate is one of those things. Oh and Note to mom…..Start checking pants pockets.

It is important to note here that we were in Ft. Worth for 3 days wearing 2 suits of clothes every day. My kids don’t have that many good clothes so, ALL of their best clothes were in that load of clothes. I was trying not to panic and be upset, because after all it was as much my fault as it was Andi Beth’s, maybe more. I took all the clothes from the dryer and checked it. No chocolate left inside the dryer. Put the sheets in the dryer. Put the now Chocolate covered clothes back in the wash with a lot of liquid detergent and Clorox2 and turned the machine on soak. Fortunately, the chocolate had gotten on the clothes after the dryer had gotten hot so it was not completely dried on. After a couple of hours of soaking and another wash cycle, the clothes are back in the dryer with NO chocolate on them!! So much for being ahead of the game today!!

Crisis Averted!!!