In my defense T-bone looked lonely and it was a really good deal. That is some what a theme around our farm, at least the second half of it. Hopefully this one will turn out better than others have.
I heard through a friend of a family member that they knew someone with cows and had a cow calf pair they were looking to sell cheap. My ears perked up and I asked for more information. They gave me a name and phone number and told me to give them a text the next day. I was excited to grow our herd and increase the amount of land healing poop being dropped on our pasture.
When I texted the gentleman, he was up front with me about the condition of the cow and told me as much as he could about her history as well as his best guess on her age. Pictures were sent and a date to come look for myself was set. Delisa wasn’t in the dark on this one and I had permission to use a little more of that money from the truck sale to get these animals if it looked like a worth while endeavor.
The day came and I hooked up the trailer and drove off to see these cows. I arrived mid-afternoon and was led to a pasture with a small round pen and catch shoot in one corner. There was a herd of health looking angus and one odd ball on some beautiful green grass. But in July in Mississippi most all grass is impressive.
We were able to heard the odd ball and her calf into the round pen fairly easily and I was able to get a good look at what I was there for. It was worse than the pictures showed just because somethings you can’t see in pictures. This cow was in very poor condition. They had her for only the last four years and she had always looked poor especially after calving but never quite this bad. Her bag and udders looked dry yet the calf was only 2 weeks old and nursing. They explained that they really didn’t have full confidence that she would make it through the nursing period. Essentially, I was buying a bottle baby with good genetics from the father side but a crap shoot on the mom’s side and a gamble on the mom herself.
I negotiated and we went back and forth before coming to an agreement that we both could live with. She loaded up easily with the calf being a tad bit more stubborn and off we went to the farm. Having learned from our first foray into new cattle on the farm, we immediately unloaded them into the back yard instead of the pasture for two reasons. Firstly, safety in case Peewee had a repeat freak out or if T-bone did instead. Secondly, was for quarantine. We had no idea if she had a massive parasite load or something else that was causing her to be so skinny.
We kept them in the back yard for a week and let everyone meet over the fence and get acquainted while we wormed her and did a few things. I had purposely not cut the grass in the back yard for two weeks to ensure they had good grass to eat. I noticed after a few days she seemed to have more milk and was more active than just eating and drinking. She moved around more hunting for the best grass and even looked around taking in sights instead of keeping her head down just eating.
Once quarantine was up, we released her and the heifer calf into the pasture to graze. I continued to monitor her closely as well as the calf for proper growth and progress. After another week we determined she was not progressing sufficiently and decided to supplement her grazing with high calorie sweet feed to try and get her milk production up and get her adding some more fat and muscle back. I was not happy about having to supplement her diet as we were trying for a strictly grass fed/hay fed operation. Still, she needed it, so she got it.
It became fairly obvious that she, in a previous life, had been a feed lot cow or maybe a milk cow that was retired. She knew feed buckets and was pushy to the point of almost being aggressive for feed and then would stand around waiting for more after she finished it. She was not a grazing cow by any means. We kept up the feed until she weaned her calf. The calf never picked up the habit of feed from her mom and is a great grazer, steadily growing like a weed.
This puts us in a quandary of sorts, we were hoping to breed Big Momma, one more time and then harvest her to give Little Bit, her baby, time to grow to a breed able age. With Big momma’s lack of grazing drive and propensity for fall off during pregnancy and nursing, we must decide if it worth risking her and feeding her though all that just to have to feed her again to bulk her up to make harvesting a viable option. Or do we feed her up over the coming winter with good clean feed and lots of hay and harvest in the spring when she is fat and happy.
While we haven’t fully decided which course of action we will take, both involve an intensive attempt to help her gain over the coming winter. It likely will be that we will make that decision as spring arrives when we can judge her progress and the market for available cows to add to the farm as a replacement so Little Bit isn’t left alone after everyone graduates to Freezer Camp as the wise Justin Rhodes (YouTube: Justin Rhodes) says.
We welcome any insight or advice any of you are willing to offer and we hope you are learning along with us on this journey. Have a Sunflowery day.
Sunflower Farms MS 