Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Day #29~

I am so very thankful tonight that God provided such nice weather (nice, for the end of November, that is!), as we worked our calves this morning/afternoon. Towards the end of the day, we were getting cold and our fingers were getting numb, but it could have been a LOT worse, so we are grateful! Hopefully next year, we'll get this job done a bit earlier in the year?

Anyway, thank you to those of you who prayed for us as we worked! There were a couple injuries (Jerome got kicked in the hand by a cow and Dad on his shin by a calf), but the bruises are on the minor side of things, so that is a blessing.

Here are some of the calves, needing to be worked...

We were also so very grateful that Jerome came and helped us! Here he and Andrew are waiting for Dad to bring the next calf up the alley way. Andrew's main job was catching the calves and he did a great at it this time---not missing any of the 121 calves we did!


Dad brought the calves up from the small pen at the end of the alley... ...and then banded them. Jacob kept the bander loaded and handed Dad the special knife when needed. We band the bull calves in the Fall, as we've learned that they grow better as bulls than they do as steers.

Mother and Jerome were the main shot-givers, although Jacob and I filled in when necessary...



"Caught'cha!"

I had the job of writing down the calves #, color, gender, etc...; mixing up more vaccine as needed; and tagging any calves that needed a new earring. :)



We have 3 baby calves that were born this Fall sometime. They were too small to catch in the head-gate, so we caught them by hand and "Worked" them. This little guy was quite spry and, though it probably didn't take 3 of us to hold him down, we (my brothers and I) all did so anyway!

Jerome and Jacob, checking out my record-keeping system. :)




The calves on this side of the corralling are "Done".


And now, we can scratch "WORK CALVES" off our to-do list, for another season.

2 comments:

Kimberly said...

Oh, I'll bet your whole family is happy to have that job done. Whitney and Ryan's and their family worked their cattle on Monday. I've never had to do that but it sounds like work that could be dangerous. I am thanking God with you for the safety you had.

Dawn Bornemann said...

Dear Cora--my little cattle-woman,
Thank you for sharing this wonderful post of our exciting day. When we were almost done I thought, "Well, now that wasn't so bad, was it?" You would think that I'd learn not to stress about things so much, but then it IS almost December. PRAISE GOD FOR THE WARMISH WEATHER!!!!!!!!!
Love you,
Mom
PS. Thanks for mixing up the 7 way for me.