Bulls will be Bulls

So First don't forget about my giveaway that ends tonight at midnight.

And now to my Post....

So the beginning of May Caleb and I spent a lot of time looking for for a few replacement bulls for our cattle herd. Last year we ended up loosing 2 bulls, so we needed to replace them. We also decided to try and find a third young bull who will be the replacement for one of our bulls who is 8 years old and this will probably be his last breeding season :(

These are our three new boys

Bull # 1...

Bull # 2 here on the end...

And Bull #3 there on the right.

As for our other 5 bulls they have been hangin' out in a pasture together without any ladies.  Before they are allowed to go back out to pasture with the ladies we first take them to our vet and have them semen checked to make sure they have a good amount of "swimmers."

(I didn't get any pictures of this process cause well I really didn't think ya'll wanted to see that!)

Getting them in can be trying cause there is usually a few of them that think they need to strut their stuff and see who is the biggest and the best.

But eventually we get them separated and sorted off and loaded.

So something to know about me and my bulls is that I name each and every one of the guys, so let me introduce them to you...

First we have "Shot Stack." He is a three year old Gelbvieh / Angus Cross that we got last year.

Next is "George" who you have met before. George and Shot Stack came from the same farm and he is also a three year old Gelbvieh / Angus Cross that we got last year.

This here is Louie. He is the one that everyone else likes to gang up on. He is a 4 year old Angus bull.

Here we have Henry. He's a 3 year old and not really our favorite looking bull, but I am hoping that he will grow on us a little more as he gets older. I will say that Henry does throw some nice lookin' calves so that makes up for us not liking him as much.

And this is my boy Billy. He is my favorite and he is our 8 year old bull and this will be his last breeding season on our farm. He is also an Angus bull.

Things to know about Billy is...

He likes to eat and is very vocal about telling you that every time you see him...

Billy is also a "horn dog"...

The Pasture we had the bulls in was right across the road from all our heifers and a group of our cattle as well and the only time Billy got very far from them was to go and get a drink so...

Needless to say he was very happy to finally be put back out to pasture with his ladies!

When I dropped him off every one came up to see what was going on....

And Billy had to let him know that he was their man.

He had to sniff a little tail...

(it's a good thing he didn't try to rid this lady cause she's suppose to have a "bun in the oven")

Then one lady had something to tell Billy...

And this means...

That she was ready to make a baby and Billy was more than happy to help with....lol

Caleb thought I was crazy for getting these pics and sharing them with ya'll, but this part of life and how we get all those cute little baby calves and make our living.

Now I need your help, at the beginning I showed you our three new bulls who have yet to be named and I would love to hear some ideas from all ya'll on what to call our new Boys...

Give me your ideas...

JP

Girly Giveaway - x2

So it has been way too long since I have done a giveaway.  So after doing some cleaning out of some closets I found some of the jewelry that I made and have just been setting there collecting dust so I thought I would give 1...

No 2 of them away to a couple of my lucky readers.

So here's a look at your options...

#1 Simple turquoise multi-strand necklace

I like the simplicity of this necklace. I will see other people wearing similar ones, but I never think it looks as good on me as it does on others.

#2 Turquoise and crystal chain

I think this one is soo pretty, but I have so many different turquoise necklaces that I would never wear it so there is no need in me keeping it around.

#3 Red, White, and Blue Flower

I think this one is just pretty it would make a great one for the 4th of July.

#4 Turquoise Crystal Cross

I'm kinda in love with this one and almost hate the idea of it going, but I have others that are similar and I can make me another one if I really want to...

And for all you K-State Fans out there...

#5 Purple and Black Crystal Cross.

I love this one so you might think that I would want to keep it for myself...

But I already have one that is similar and I wear it all the time so I don't need two that are almost exactly alike.

(BTW - that's me with my brother and one of my sisters last summer when my hair was still long)

I know that this is kinda a girly giveaway, but Guys these would make a GREAT present for your momma or your favorite girl.

OK Here's the Rules:

Just leave me a comment telling me which necklace you would choose.

The first person I choose will get first choice at whichever necklace they would like and the second will get to choose between the other four.

One entry per person

*You can earn a second entry by blogging about my giveaway and then leaving a second comment with a link to you post.

* You can also earn an entry by sharing a link for this giveaway on Twitter and Facebook just leave a comment for each that you choose to do.

Entries will close at midnight on Tuesday, May 31 at midnight and the winner will hopefully be announced the following.

Good Luck!!

Janet

Corn Planting 2011

First if you missed the post about the tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri I made a link to it on the side bar.

So I was planning on doing some explaining of all we do during corn planting, but I did most of that in my 2010 Corn Planting Post so this year I am going to let the pictures tell the story instead.

Ok I will still add some different tidbits in here and there, but I'm not going to get really in-depth.

But as always feel free to ask as many questions as you would like and I will do my best to answer them.

This year we put in about 1,700 acres of corn, so we were hopping when we were going.

This is was my ride when I was doing field work. The tractor has a harrow hooked to it.

The harrow is used to level out the soil and make the seed be nice and smooth and ready for planting.

Before Caleb fills the planter he will grab his planter note book and will write down what variety of corn he is putting in each box.

Since I am "knocked up" I was not allowed to help load the planter cause each bag of seed corn weighs at least 50 lbs and some will weigh up to 65 lbs. 

So instead of hauling the bags to the planter I was taking pictures...

And opening the bags for for the guys and having them ready to haul to the planter.

During planting season there is a lot of time spent on the phone trying to get things ironed out.

Seriously, what would we do without cell phones...

Everyday, before he would start planting Caleb would go through and grease the entire planter to make sure that all the parts would run smoothly so we can keep going.

Occasionally Caleb would get some help hauling bags to the planter.

Well it is spring time around here so we had a few days where the wind would blow like crazy.

To make sure the planter is doing what it says it's doing Caleb will stop and do a check with his pliers.

He will dig up a row and find the seeds and then measure the distance between each seed.

No he's not working on the planter, he's just greasing it once again.

So last fall we got this new beast for the farm, and one of the up sides to getting it was that it had auto-steer on it...

Well that's true, but it's no good if the auto-steer doesn't work...

We had the guys from the dealership out a number of times to try and figure it out...

Caleb had to use the row marker most of the planting season because of this problem.

So with about 300 - 400 acres to go we finally got the auto-steer working...

But if you notice there is still a row marker mark there in front of the tractor, that is because Caleb didn't fully trust the the auto-steer system so he would make sure it was working by putting his marker down.

He was trying to pretend here that he didn't use the marker...

There now it looks like he's fully using auto-steer.

So we made it through almost all the acres without any problems...

That was till we got to the last 150 acres.

We were still needing to put anhydrous on these acres...

and where we normally get our anhydrous was always out of it.

To add insult to injury when we finally got some anhydrous our 4-wheel drive that we were going to use to pull it with had some problems and went down.

Now I know there are some of you out there that will say it was because it had red paint on it, but our green planter also caused us some problems and slowed us down too.

Once again all of this happened on the last 150 acres that we need to get planted.

So with the new tractor hooked back up we were able to get the last few acres of anhydrous put on.

While adding seed or changing out anyhyrous tanks we would fill the tractor back up with fuel.

This was another one of my jobs.

Giving directions one where to back the tractor up to hook up the new tank.

Today was dress like your dad day at work.

Thank you to Sales Brothers Seed for making sure guys always have something to wear.

If it wasn't for all the seed dealers out there, there would be a lot of farmers who would have nothing to wear!

Some times you would need to get off the tractor and move the corn around to even out the seed boxes so you can go longer before you have to fill up again.

This was our last fill up and boy were we happy to see it!

About 24 hours after getting the last of the corn planted we got about 1/2 - 3/4 inch of rain in about a 20 minute period...

That's never good...

So Caleb was out checking the seed to see how it was doing...

And we were happy to see that the seeds were doing fine.

The first corn we planted was popping out of the ground after about 6 days.

And it didn't look back!

Ok so I lied...

I wrote a lot more than I had planned but that's just what I do.

So there ya go there is my 2011 Corn Planting Post.

If you have any questions feel free to shoot them my way.

Laters,

Janet