New life on the Ranch

Spring is bringing new life on the Ranch! We have lots of baby calves being born currently. This is an exciting, yet busy time. We are out checking on the babies and their moms twice a day. It involves watching to make sure the birthing process goes smoothly. Our herd bull is bred to produce low birth weight calves which makes the birthing process easier on the moms. Once the calves are born it is important to watch them in their first day(s) to make sure they are nursing well and get that colostrum from their moms and can continue to nurse well. We love to see the calves up running and playing together, it shows us they are getting their bellies full and staying healthy and energetic.

Maybe the hardest part of all is tusting that mamma cows will look after their young and be able to protect the calves out on the Ranch. We had a first time experience just a few days ago while doing our evening check. THREE coyotes were spotted just about a hundred or two yards from where we were! One of them headed towards the herd. We drove the Ranger (ATV) around the area in hopes to scare them off. But there was one mamma cow and calf un-accounted for. It was a young heifer cow who had just had her first calf that morning! She is actually the first cow born on our farm to then have her own calf. This is very special to us. We continue to drive around and search for this new mom and finally find her. She was on the hill that the three Coyotes were on!! And she didn’t have her calf. Our hearts sank. We followed this mother around as she trotted to the rest of the herd and started moo’ing for her calf. This gave us hope that maybe she had the other mammas babysiting her calf. She continued to travel and moo for her calf and unfortunately, we never did see her calf that night. Darkness came and we decided to call it a night and say extra prayers for the safety of the new baby and ALL the baby calves.

Of course we were up at the crack of dawn the next morning. We were so happy to see that brand new baby calf nursing on her mom. As a matter of fact they were the first cows we spotted that morning! What a blessing!!! We are so thankful for protective mamma cows. We actually have a Long Horn that you may have seen photographs of she is extremely protective. We cannot even bring our dogs to check on the cows because she chases them off. We think this is a good thing and choose not to bring the dogs as we do not want her getting used to “dog-like” animals being around. Most of our herd consists of Angus cows and that is the meat we produce. We thought about a different future for this Long Horn cow so we do not throw people off when they see our one Long Horn cow and we are advertising Angus, however, it comes down to doing what is best for your farm and that means she stays. She even has recently earned a name. We named her Alexa which is a Greek name meaning “Defender”.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this “farm update” and we wish all our friends, family and customers well during this time. We hope God Blesses you with good health and spirits! Enjoy some pictures of baby calves!!