Finally - It's a bull!

Well, with Ruby over her due date by (to me a record) 5 days, we were all getting just a little frayed around the edges.  It is all well and good to say that the gestation tables are averages, and that as long as she is not in distress things are fine, but I wore a path to the barn, and Harold who is the one to dispense such wisdom got up at 4 AM to check on Ruby for the last week now.

Yesterday Ruby finally decided that it was time to end the madness, and got down to business.  Because she is a sweetheart, she waited for me to come back from walking the dogs, gave me time to put them in, and then her water broke.  About 10 minutes later (I didn't have time to look at the magazine I brought along instead of the camera or the phone or something useful, blame sleep deprivation) we had hooves sticking out, and as far as I could tell they were angled in such a way that it looked good for them being the front ones.  Now about all that could go wrong was for the head to be folded back, but after another push or two, I saw a snout and a tongue, so I relaxed.  Harold came home just between these events, and changed, brought dog towels with him (why didn't I think of that?!), and together we watched the rest of the show.

Ruby makes it look easy, and it didn't take long before the head was out, and a push later the front end.  I waited for the hips to clear, Harold said, "You might as well go in and help," when Ruby got up, and the calf slipped out.  The drop doesn't really do them any harm, I think it is her way of swatting the rump, she did that last year as well.  We moved in with the towels and helped Ruby clean off the calf, a big bull - of course.  I would have loved to have a heifer, but when they get cooked that long, they tend to be bulls.

I was going to lift him by the hind legs to drain the snot, but that sucker was heavier than I thought (at least 55 lbs) and longer too, and he was breathing pretty well, so we just kept wiping him off.  The stupid cat Token picked this time to run through the scenery, and Ruby charged him, but she did not mind her people at all.  Harold finally dunked the cat in the trough to get him to leave us alone, since we didn't need an aggravated cow.  So I guess we had a baptism too.

I cleaned Ruby's teats up, and milked out some colostrum, and before Buster even got to his feet he had a pint of that, which kick-started him nicely.  The big ones can be a bit slow and klutzy, but eventually he figured the whole thing out.  Harold called Natasha (my dairy consultant) to tell her all was well, but the phone messed up, so a half hour later Natasha rushed in, thinking there was trouble.  She gave us the thumbs up, not even mad that she had wasted a trip.  She still gets excited about the calves as well.

We let mom and baby rest and a bit later I milked Ruby again, getting some more colostrum.  By bedtime Buster had had about 2 liters of the stuff, and was good for the night.  Ruby had gotten the afterbirth out, so we could clean up and get rid of that, which should keep the wild things away from the calf.  I don't let the calf nurse if I can avoid it, they get the bottle from the start, that way I can keep the cow clean and there is no shock to the calf, they think the bottle is how it works.  We do let Ruby in the pen with Buster to lick him and see that he is okay.

This morning Buster was bawling and he got another bottle, then he curled up to sleep, and Ruby finally got to go out on pasture again, although she comes charging back to the barn when she thinks Junior is in trouble.  Ruby is still a bit obsessed with him, but soon she'll settle into the routine of milking.  

The dogs?  Oh they are very curious.  This morning they tried hard to get downstairs and SOMEBODY stole some of the colostrum out of the strip cup.  

Decibel's 'Lassie" moment

I am still waiting on Ruby's calf, so frequent checks and treks to the barn are becoming routine.  This morning we (the dogs and I) checked on her, then went up to let the horses out to pasture.  I walked back to the house (another check, still no calf) and only Decibel had come back with me.  As I opened the door, Skeeter comes racing up behind me, so I got two out of four dogs.  I wasn't too worried, as Maggie was likely just checking the wood pile for rabbits, and Ralph is a bit slow these days, and so I went into the house to look up Ruby's birthdate in my livestock book.  I left the front door open for Maggie and Ralph to come in.
Naturally I spent a few extra minutes reminiscing about the calves I had raised (most were beef cattle) and suddenly Decibel went into full alert bark mode:

"Timmy fell down the well!"

Or as she says it:

WOOO-WOOO-wooo-WOOOO-WOO!

She charged out the door, barking, raced back in, (C'mon, Mom, someone is in trouble!), back out.  I followed her and saw Maggie coming down the path, she was fine.  That wasn't it, Decibel ignored her 'sister' and kept running out and back, ears up, barking, and wanting me to follow.

The trouble?

Ralph, who is no longer spry, had followed me out on the pasture when I turned the horses out, but he had not walked back through the gate, but rather had followed me through the paddocks, fallen behind, and was now 'trapped' in the bottom paddock.  To get out he would have had to walk away from the corner closest to the house, through two paddocks and back out through the pasture gate which is high enough so dogs can easily go under it.  But Ralph decided that he was trapped in the paddock and barked for help in the corner.

He was locked in!

I put Maggie in the house and told Decibel to show me and find Ralph.

Oh, she was ready for action!

She poked and pushed me, charged ahead, raced back to make sure I would come and did her best Lassie imitation, if Lassie ever poked people in the butt to get them moving .  I 'rescued' Ralph, who then had to suffer the excited kisses and playful jumps and such from Decibel.  She was right proud of herself.
What a good girl.  She rescued Ralphie!

And she knew it too.


The above was so fun and amazing, that I had to brag about Decibel, and almost forgot all about the neutrinos exceeding 'c' that they supposedly observed at CERN.
I was going to blog about that; neutrinos being faster than light, something I had proposed way back in April 25 1985 (really, I got it all witnessed and signed and such).
My universe has neutrinos go faster than light, but since time flow reverses at such speeds, it APPEARS to an observer that neutrinos are slightly slower than the speed of light, with the energy that is needed to overcome the speed of light in a vacuum and distorting time observed as 'mass' of a neutrino, using good old E=mcc.
It all made sense to me back then, and while my understanding of particle and high energy physics is pretty rudimentary, I did independently come up with the notion of Planck time back then as well, and I am still proud of that.  Only took me twenty years to find out it was Planck time I had 'invented' back then, but that is another story.  Still, they named an institute after him...
As for the neutrinos... well, maybe they can go faster than light since they are not obligated to follow the curvature of space-time, whereas light has to, and maybe I was right in 1985, and either way, I was certainly A LOT cheaper than CERN, or maybe they just didn't measure it right and I am completely wrong, but still WAY cheaper than CERN.  Time will tell.
In the meanwhile I am rooting for the neutrinos.  I never did like speed limits anyhow.

Decibel about town

Today I took Decibel along when I had some errants to run.  The errants involved handing pieces of paper to people at the local post office and at the Farm Service Agency the next town over.  Both are places where Decibel can come along, and we had not done much 'socializing' of late.
Decibel did get some petting and attention outside the post office, but inside, GASP, a person who I know has dogs SNUBBED my sweet Decibel!

Decibel immediately took offense at such an affront, and jumped up on me to get a hug.

So slightly miffed we went on to the FSA.  A new person came to the counter, and efficiently took the paperwork, again ignoring Decibel (well, she didn't see her).  Dang, what is it with people today?  But then one of the usual ladies stuck her head around a corner, and soon Decibel was the center of attention as the whole office took a quick break to pet and compliment the girl.

Decibel accepted the praise and petting with good graces and perfect manners.  We both went home happy.

More luck fishing

We spent another evening fishing at the neighbor's pond, and I had so much luck that I had to break out a new lure, after fishing with my old 'roostertail' for the last decade or so.  The fish bit off two of the three hooks, and I decided to let the old lucky lure go.  

Harold was so busy getting the pesky fish off my hook that he hardly had time to catch anything.  As you can see, I don't really like catching the fish.  

Fish on!

EEK!  Hurry with the photo!

Double Rainbow

Somewhere there should be two pots of gold....

The honey do ... done

A while back [June 2011] I mentioned Harold's infatuation with Emily... all the Emilys (Emilies?) buzzing about the place.  He has a thing for busy working women, I guess.

Well, it was time to harvest the honey.  We had been putting it off for a while, because it is a lot of work, results in a sticky kitchen, and finally because we still had enough honey to exceed the demand.  Now, however, there is a festival coming up in Olsburg, and we might sell (unload) some of the honey, so it was time.

This time Harold had borrowed a hand-cranked honey extractor, and we felt rather professional getting the honey out of the combs that way.  It was a lot less mess, once we had set up our work stations in the kitchen.
First though Harold had to go and get the honeycombs, which are on frames inside of supers in beekeeper speak, or at least my limited understanding of that language.  I am allergic to bee sting, and might go into anaphylaxis so I keep far far away from the bees and the hives and those thing.
Well, that sort of robbery of the bee pantry is best done during nice sunshiny weather, when the bees are out working.  Alas, this weekend was dreary, not cold, but overcast and occasionally drizzling.  All the bees are home then doing whatever housekeeping things they do, like feeding the brood or sharpening their stingers.  Harold got the honey-bearing frames somehow, and left a lot of angry bees in the orchard.  I let him check on the chickens and such, since the chicken coop is closest to the bee hives.

Then we set up the extractor and screens and jars, and a wheelbarrow with the frames and a crate for the old frames (they can be reused and refilled, bees are into recycling I guess).  Then it was time to get sticky.

Harold is holding up a frame full of capped honeycomb.  They are heavier than they look.

First the honey comb has to be uncapped.  The extractor came with a great uncapping knife (it actually worked so much better than our knives, heated in water, that Harold chose the chore, while in the past this was traditionally my job, and it made me rather sore too).  There is also a scraper/comb thing that could be used to scrape the caps off, if the bees were drunk when making the comb and it wasn't nice and straight or flush with the frame.  Harold's bees tend to be drunk a lot, and when it comes to engineering, well they have rather lax standards.



Then the frames get set in the extractor, and I cranked for a bit, and after turning the frames over, and cranking some more (it made no music, which is something they should consider for an added feature), the honey was in the extractor and the frames went into the green crate.

After a few frames the honey gets drained out of the bottom of the extractor, through some screens to keep bits of wax and whatnot out, and then it gets dispensed into jars, capped, and done!

There is left over capping wax, that we drain again, to get that honey out, before it goes back to the bees.

We got about 7 gallons (26.5 liters) of honey without trying too hard, and then we were out of jars anyhow.  The kitchen was less sticky than in the past, that extractor made the process a whole lot easier. Before we would scrape all the honeycomb into a pot and heat it gently, skim off the wax and screen the honey.  Naturally it would be all over the kitchen, along with the cooling sticky wax.  I like this 'cold' process much better.

True Colors...

Decibel is a tawny Briard, and tawny (defined as orange-brown or yellow-brown in my dictionary) is one of those dog terms that means different things in different breeds - not to mention, different colors in Briards at different times.  Tawny Briards can be rather dark with a lot of black hairs mixed in the coat, or rather blonde, if there is a lot of white hairs throughout.  Then there is everything in-between, because tawnies tend to change colors, especially as they mature.


When Ralph first came to us, he was almost gray, without any yellow or brownish tones to his coat at all.  Actually I wasn't so sure he was a tawny Briard, since they do come in gray... but it turned out that it was part of adolescence and part of the clip he had received.  Although it took several years, now he is most definitely a tawny Briard, with lots of black hair scattered throughout his back.

Ralph at first

Barley and Ralph then

                                                                     

Ralph today

Decibel came with black tips, and lots of orangey coat as a pup, which promptly turned white blond in adolescence, but lately, well I can see a return of some black hairs and a nice rich yellow-orange tone coming back along her shoulders and butt.  Her belly (which is clipped) is coated with almost bright orange fuzz.

That's not dirt, really

The tow-headed girl is maturing.  I doubt that she will ever be as dark as Ralph, rather I think she will turn out like Barley when she is all the way done, but the fun is one just never knows.
I noticed the true colors shining through when I tried repeatedly to wipe some dirt away from her eye, only to find that it was a patch of black tipped hair growing there.