Had a really good weekend at the farm and got a bunch of long standing projects done. The biggest of which was getting the sand moved into the barn. I had been using the standard wood shavings as bedding but there was just too much of a mess to deal with. So I began to look at the message boards and asked around to find a better alternative. One solution that kept coming up was sand… And I just so happen to have a whole lot of sand. You see there was once an indoor riding area at the farm (now we use the arena for equipment storage which is just fine with me) so I have this mountain of free to me sand! The only downside I have been told is the amount of time that is spent blowing the sand out… But under the JJB method of cattle prep they don’t spend too much time in the barn anyway so the more blowing while they are in the better! I also got the barn cleaned up and it is starting to look nice again.
The only negative besides my hawkeyes getting roughed up by some wildcats is the two fall calving cows still haven’t calved. They have looked like they are about to pop for sometime now and I was sure the rain this weekend would bring me calves. One of the cows to calve was a heifer on the side of a cow that I purchased from TRM down in Alabama. I sold her first heifer at the Iowa Beef Expo last February and can’t wait to see this calf. The other one due is a heifer that is owned by Max Cherry. She is out of my donor cow at Star Lake, Lucky. Lucky was born in Iowa and I showed her up here rather successfully. The heifer to calve is sired by the breed icon Online and I can not wait to see this calf as well, momma looks awesome and I will be sure to get a picture of each once they calve but for now we wait………
