Another new decade, all this opportunity. What to do with it all? Choices, choices, choices. Our decade started with half our calving already done and it was not even suppose to start until mid-February, proving nature has its way of making some choices for you. Other choices are more planned like last month's comment about the coffee cups sitting on fence posts out here.
The coffee cups actually hold my morning tea. I hate going out in the dark and cold in the morning so I take some transportable heat along in my cup and always think I will finish the tea before I get to the manger to feed, but nope, never happens. I feed and then forget about the tea in the cup, clean out the manger, check to make sure ditch water is still running in the pen and that the cattle don't have limps or coughs, just clear eyes instead. And monitor the cows' new babies are nursed and healthy. By the time I get back to the house the tea cup is long forgotten sitting on a fence post somewhere, next to the manger, a gate, along the lane, or by the creek. Coffee cups dotting the landscape are a sign of winter out here.
These unexpected new calves are cute as bugs with shiny black eyes and knobby knees in skinny legs. They buck as they run as soon as they figure out the walking thing. Their first day alive is all testing. Can they stand, walk, nurse? And sleeping takes all day.
Next days are lots of sleeping, too, but by day three everywhere a calf has gotta go they have to get there in a hurry, running either ahead, behind or along side its mother.
And everything must be inspected the wood at the manger, the fresh hay, the neighbor cow, the sage brush, the rock, the clear cold. Everything needs a good sniffing. Then as the calves develop more muscle control their days are a whirl of running, jumping, bucking and hiding behind their mothers.
If you stand really still, the new calves will tempt you to touch them as they stretch their necks to stick their noses out to you. But if you reach a hand forward to return the touch, off they go as fast as new black hide can turn and run. Which is a good mechanism helping keep them safe from furred predators patrolling these fields.
All this early calving happened because the bull caused so much trouble two years ago with the few steers we keep over for our own consumption. Last year he was not separated from the cows.
The bull usually goes in with the cows May and taken out Aug. 1. But two years ago the bull took down five barbed wire fences and bent steel posts at regular intervals and we were afraid he would hurt himself persistently getting where he wanted to go. Fence fixing became a tedious daily chore so last year we let him stay with the cows all year. Explaining this year's early calves. Branding will need to come early too with this many frisky calves already running around in the sagebrush.
And those steers we usually keep the bull with were taken to slaughter. They have an interesting story to tell too, but next time. This new decade, so much to do, so much to tell. What to leave out? So many choices, got to make them count.
Marie Johnson is a Carson Valley rancher.
