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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Shootin' Cattle

This morning we needed to give a sick calf a shot. Usually this involves Caleb getting on the back of the truck with a rope and me driving around chasing the calf...

usually until the calf gets tired enough we can chase it down on foot or Caleb is lucky enough to get the rope around it's neck.

Yes I said "lucky enough" cause he's not much of a roper and well neither am I. But if you don't believe me check this story out about what happened last winter.


Anways, I really don't like doing it this way cause all the chasing and running really stresses the already sick calf.

So once we catch the wore out little guy we pull out the syringe and needle and give it a shot.

Well yesterday morning we tried this way and well it ended up in a fight and us not catching the little guy...

I didn't want to chase the little guy cause it still had a lot of energy and we were just gonna make him worse, and I knew we had access to an easier and less stressful way...


We'll just shoot the beast...

and yes with a gun.

WHAT!?!?

Don't worry, we might be using a gun, but the calf wont get hit with a bullet...

It will get hit with a syringe and needle full of meds.

The great thing about this method is the animal really doesn't have a clue whats going one till they get hit with the needle and well all it feels like is getting a normal shot.

The gun we are using is Caleb's dad's gun he bought earlier this year...


Umm it's amazing!!


So when you get to the field you have your gun out the window and ready.


Then once you have a clear aim at your target...

Pull your gun up and fire.

And since the gun is a 22 there really isn't much noise, so you don't freak out all the rest of the cattle.


There you can see the needle stuck in the little guys rump. Once it hits the calf it delivers all the meds and then will eventually fall out.

As you can see this little guy just walks away like nothing happened. No stress...

I love it!!

JP

It's a 22 caliber rifle that is set up to shoot a medicine filled syringe out and not a bullet...

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Tractors

Every Farm has it's favorite / most used tractor and our farm is no different. Around here it's Pop's loader tractor...


It's used for hauling hay...


Feeding hay...


Feeding silage...


Doing dirt work...

Just about anything you can think to use a loader for and then some we do with this tractor.

Caleb has often made the comment that if this tractor goes down we are in trouble cause we really don't have a good back up.


Now there is another loader tractor on the farm, but it's not as big and doesn't have a cab and really isn't all that handy to use except for on the small projects.

We had this little beast down at our house last winter to help with the cattle chores and clearing snow last winter...

and it wasn't long after this picture was taken that Caleb thought we should be looking for another loader tractor with a cab!

Well finally about three weeks ago he found one in our price range and with the amount of hours he wanted on it and in the condition we wanted it to be in...

and it was only a couple hours away.

So Caleb, Pop and I make the drive over there with the truck an trailer to check it out.






After driving it around and checking it over Caleb gives the owner a call to haggle on the price a little and when they finally come to an agreement...


The guys write their checks and...




Load it up and head back home.

It took us about three hours to make it home and had to change one flat tire on the way, but all in all we were pretty happy with our new toy. 

JP