Chow Time

It's been a bit busy around Moosters Meadows lately, so not many pictures have been taken.  A post without pictures isn't much fun, so the camera finally made it outside today.  All three feeders for the big herd were empty.  If you are a Mooster, that's serious!

Time to fill the feeders!  The girls hear the tractor and come running when it starts up.  The biggest challenge is to get the bale into the feeder without three or four cows attached to it. 

They will follow those round bales anywhere!

Even Miss Carnival comes to the sound of the tractor delivering hay....   She's getting so tall already.  Lots of leg!

 Sometimes it's more work than play at Moosters Meadows.  This was definitely not a play day!  We were holding two bulls in our corrals for Tiny Twisters (the bulls had hitched a ride home with us when we picked up our latest cows - more on that later).  Our corrals weren't exactly designed with horned bulls in mind. 

Let's just say that we learned that a water hydrant can be unscrewed (and bent) by a bull who needs to rub against something.  The offending bull (pictured behind the tractor above) had managed to twist the hydrant round and round enough that it came undone - not broken - five feet below ground.  Hoping that it was black gold bubbling from the ground rather than water (well, we can always hope), we discovered the source of the leak and the digging started.

Our soil turns to quicksand when wet like this.  More than once I thought Chris was going to sink to China!  That mud weighs a ton per shovel full!





The hydrant has been replaced (and surrounded by posts to prevent this from happening again), the water has been turned back on, and the bulls have moved on to their new homes. 

We're just happy that this didn't happen when it was 30 below!  Winter is coming to Wyoming.

A True Disappointment

Wynter did not become pregnant last year and she came up open again this year.  Since she's such a beautiful girl, we were naturally disappointed that we haven't had a calf (despite using two separate bulls).  Given that it's nearly time to put the "fall calf" girls in with the bulls, we decided it was time to have her vet checked so as not to go through the issue again.

After a full pelvic exam, our wonderful vet delivered the bad news.  She has ovaries and a uterus, but they are not free floating as they should be.... she'll never be able to have a calf.  He said it could have been a result of an infection that never manifested externally or it could be a congenital defect.  In either case, the news was just bad.

She'll be our first cull animal.