A lil sumthin'-sumthin' to make your lady bits pucker

Oh yes, folks.

Awhile back we had a cow that had a prolapsed vagina. A pregnant cow, with a nursing calf, with a prolapsed vagina. First, the mere idea of this made me cringe in sympathy for this poor cow. Then I saw it. Yikes!

We were in the middle of work, so I didn't snap a picture of my own, but here's the gist:

 If you're hurting in places you can't mention, then I'm sure you're quite normal. This sort of thing happens on occasion and during a cows pregnancy, can almost be normal. Sometimes when a cow lays down, you might see a little something poking out, but generally not quite this size. When she gets up, it gets sucked back in. I think generally the further along the cow is, the more apt it is to happen. However, once in awhile, in early pregnancy, like what happened with our cow, the above image happened.

This is not something ranchers like to see and take care of, because typically this means that as soon as her current calf is weaned, she'll need to be culled before she calves. If you keep her, you'll have to be there for the birth as there are likely to be complications. So, to save yourself the headache, you'll get rid of her before she calves. Also, once a cow has had this happen, she's likely to do it again, and become a migraine instead of a regular headache.

The vet came out and cleaned it up and put it back in. He also put sutures in to prevent a recurrence. 

So, for our cow, she's still out with her herd-mates, nursing a calf that will probably weaned in the next month. After that, we will amicably part ways.

Last Friday, K calls me a few minutes after 5pm saying they had just pulled a breeched calf (meaning it's butt wanted to come out first), and the cow had a prolapsed uterus. She couldn't remember Dr. J's cell phone from the voicemail, and asked me to call him. I did, and left a message. It was close to 6pm when he finally got back to me, and I told him what was going on. He said he'd call me as soon as he was done with a horse he was working on. About half an hour later, he called me back and told me he was on his way. K and her brother had stayed with the cow in the barn. The calf survived, and is doing well.

Mamma obviously wasn't doing so hot because a vital part of her anatomy was hanging out on the barn floor. Not sure about y'all, but when K told me about the prolapsed uterus, I swear I felt a twinge.

Dr. J and K's brother were the two trying to push this poor cows uterus back inside her body, where it rightfully belongs. Some things we gals just don't want hangin' in the wind. Now, I stole the following pictures from another website, obviously, and I feel I should warn you about their graphicness. As you can imagine, this is a bloody and serious mess, and in the ranching world, is a serious emergency as a cow could easily bleed to death. So, I've given fair warning, these are pretty ugly.

 It's definitely a two-person job. The goal is to safely get all of the uterus back inside, without puncturing it.

 In our case, K's brother kept getting back spasms. You can see why, as it's not as easy position to push on something so heavy.

 It's easy to feel sorry for the cow, as she basically has to lie there and take it. Most times, the cow is given a sedative. Also, as you can see, barn or field, it's a challenge to get it back in clean. (FYI, at this stage, this particular cow in the picture, they got about half of it back in)

 It's also easy to see that Dr. J left my grandparents a bloody mess, literally. He had to basically shower before going to his next emergency. (Yes, he had a late night)

 In the end, a cow gets sutured up, and gets lots of antibiotics to help ward off infection.

Just so you guys know, both cow and calf are doing well. Mama cow is still getting antibiotics, and has bonded well with her calf. We are keeping them in the barn at the moment, so we can easily get her in the head-catch to continue the antibiotics. This cow will probably not get culled from the herd. According to my grandparents, it's not likely to reoccur  - not like the vaginal prolapse.

Oh and poor Dr. J had a rough night. After cleaning up after this bloody mess, he went to look at a horse that hadn't been able to pee for a couple days. Wound up having to do some special surgery that he's never done, as the bladder was so damn big and they knew there had to be a stone somewhere in there blocking up the poor guy. In the end, the pee came gushing out and guess who got hit? Yup, Dr. J. Poor guy.

Postcards and Eye Candy

First off I have a postcard to show y'all! I got my postcard a few days ago from the lovely Hazel over at Pablo's Angel. And it totally makes me want to just hop on a plane for a vacay. If only I had money and time. If only.

So, now, to officially announce the next sender of postcards for April! It will be the lovely Lyndylou over at The Giggle Fest!!

Now, onto the eye candy.

Many vet clinics open their arms to senior vet students, which allows the vet students little time to gain some experience in the real world. The clinic I work for is such a clinic. A couple weeks ago, Dr. J brought over to the Sticksville clinic a young lady (and no, she's not the eye candy), who was very nice. Dr. J asked me to take her to lunch, so we went to one of the two restaurants in town (the faster one) for a burger. She could be a good candidate for a hire, as her fiance grew up about an hour west of here and really doesn't want to leave.

This week, Dr. J brought another vet student - the eye candy. He was a very nice guy, seems knowledgeable and had a good sense of humor. Which was good considering Dr. J must have slipped something into his coffee because he was on a roll. All day long.

I had two kitties knocked out by the time they got to the clinic, and Dr. J had Mr. Eye Candy do a couple kitty neuters and a kitty spay. The spay took him a total of 45 minutes. I knew he wouldn't be fast, considering he's on the large animal track and therefore doesn't practice much on the fluffy things. Like cats. But the cat survived, and we moved on.

It too me until noon to figure out who this guy looked like, because I had this nagging feeling he looked vaguely familiar, even though I'd never laid eyes on him before. At noon, it hit me. Took all I had not to go "AHA!!!" out loud. Because that would have been, you know, embarrassing.

Anyhow, just after lunch I posted my status on Facebook as this:

"The senior vet student that's here this week from UC Davis? Cuuuute. lol" 

Well, someone commented that I should "nonchalantly take his picture". Several people agreed, and I was left with the conundrum of slyly taking a picture of this guy in all his 6'2"-ness. My mother asked when I was bringing him home to meet the parents. I asked if this weekend was too soon. (note: in reality, he's not meeting my parents, and after today, I'm pretty sure he'll be back in Davis soon and I'll never see Mr. Cutie again.)

So, I slyly took a picture. Although, I'm not sure how sly I was, but no one said anything, so I'll just continue to think that I actually got away with it.

  Comments were as followed:

 The last comment was from my mother. Probably got a good laugh over all of it. I sure as hell did!

I slyly snapped another picture a little bit later, but no comments on it. lol

 I thought he resembled Ben Affleck. Now, I'm not a huge Ben fan, but the man is nothing to sneeze at. This guy just made the work day a wee bit easier. hehe. ;o)

I left work, went to dinner at my grandparents house, and shortly thereafter was helping them get a cow to the barn as her labor hadn't progressed in an hour. We pulled a calf - all 90 pounds of it! - and it's alive and well with it's mama in the barn. It's no wonder mama had a tough labor. eek! (sorry it was too dark in the barn for a picture and I didn't want to disturb bonding by using flash, otherwise I'd totally have a picture for y'all).

Thanksgiving weekend. Plus some extra.

I hope that all of my American followers had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I myself had a nice relaxful one. My grandparents were awesome and gave me the day off, so I didn't have to get up at the butt-crack of dawn to go feed some hungry cows. That and I was still a little limpy on Wednesday. I slept in until like 9:30. OMG. It. was. freaking. awesome. K's parents came over for dinner - the traditional turkey dinner with stuffing, cranberries, corn, green bean casserole, roles, and the like. With pumpkin pie for dessert.

I've had a few things I wanted to post about, so this is going to be a hodge-podge of stuff. You know you like it. ;o)

A couple weeks ago, it was freaking cold. And snowy. And it snowed the day before I drove over our lovely mountain to go to work on that Saturday. Which meant the road was . . . well . . . white when I went over it. The speed limit was listed as 35mph (about 55kph for my international friends), so it was icy.

Yes, it was as cold as it looks.

The entire pass looked this way, both sides. Luckily it didn't look anything like this on the way home.

When I made it over the hill to work, the temperature had dropped significantly. Oddly enough, our little valley is about 10* warmer in winter, but 10* cooler in summer than Town on the other side of the hill. Very strange. So, this is what my temperature gauge in my car said (and it's pretty accurate):

Yeah. 7*(F), which is about -14*(C) for my international friends. The parking lot at work was pure ice. I sprinkled ice melt all over the parking lot. I skated while doing it. And I'm no skater. Just sayin.

Luckily, it hasn't really snowed since, so most of the snow has melted. At least in the valley. But it's only a matter of time before it comes back.

Now, also, a couple weeks back, I had two very large dogs come in to be neutered. Now, this gal had brought in a dog the week for that, and she was at least 100lbs. She'd never been off the ranch so the woman and I had to literally carry the dog inside the clinic. Well, when she brought the two boys, they were larger and just as determined not to go anywhere. She'd loaded them in her two-horse trailer, and it took her, myself, and the tech that came with the injured doctor to carry these two monsters into the clinic. When the tech and I had to do it alone after they'd been sedated, we could hardly do it. The injured vet who isn't supposed to lift anything, had to grab the middle with his good arm so dogs wouldn't become frozen in a permanent "U" shape. They were so sweet, but seriously, WHO needs dogs that freaking big??? Okay, I understand that these dogs are great at fending off coyotes (which can be a problem for those that raise smaller livestock like sheep or goats, but geeze!

Anyway, the two boys slept the entire day, like comatose sleeping. They were just content and couldn't be bothered. I finally went in and snapped a picture of them sleeping to show you how big they are. Now they don't look like they each weigh 125-150lbs, but trust me, they really do.

They are Akbash/Kengal crosses. The one in front looks like a polar bear!

And the weekend after Thanksgiving was busy! On Friday we weaned the calves in our spring herd. There were quite a few, that in the end we had to split them into two groups for feeding and space purposes. We moved the fall herd to a new pen and that went swimmingly, and they even got a bull put in with them. All went off without a hitch. Then it was time for a quick spot of breakfast.

There was our problem. By the time we got to the spring herd to move them, they were no longer that hungry and therefore were not so interested in the feed truck. So when we hit a nice spacious pasture, they decided they'd go spread out and graze and ignore said feed truck. K and I were the herders on our ATV's while Papa D was driving the truck. I know K cursed a lot, because I know I was cursing a lot. We would just get the cows to start going the right way, when one cow bold said, "Whatever", and went the opposite direction, so then every other cow followed her. K and I whipped around on our ATV's and when that didn't work, we jumped off and ran after cows with whips, screaming "SHOO!" or whistling. (Now just for clarification, the whips are not used to beat the animals with, they are used as a tool to block a hole to hopefully prevent said cows going through said hole. Often times just swinging it and using it to make a noise to get the cattle to move where we wish).

Now, I'd only been walking normal since Thanksgiving, the day before. So there I was running around these fields trying not to twist it again by slipping on a cow-pie, or stepping in a hole. Again. Eventually grain worked to entice them, but by then they were completely scattered. But, K and I were finally able to keep them in a group and once in the lane to the corrals, it went perfectly. Then we sorted the cows from the calves, which actually went pretty smoothly. Then we started working the calves - they needed three vaccinations and a few had lost their ear tags, or had mean mothers and couldn't be tagged, so needed new tags.

We filled up the syringes, and K and I both wound up piercing ourselves with new needles. I later went and got a tetanus shot to be safe, since my last one was when I was 16. The swelling is already gone and it's only slightly tender.

K and I got into a really good rhythm of getting a calf into the chute, handing off syringes, and sending the calf on it's way. We worked until about 12:30pm and then it was clean-up and splitting the calves into two groups. That went really well, too. Then we finally had lunch. Sitting down never felt so good.

Sunday was a busy day as well. K proclaimed it a perfect day to do yard work, so that's what I did all day. Well after feeding the cows, that is. I borrowed some old laupers from K, and trimmed my roses back. Papa D brought over empty protein tubs for me to put my yard trash in, so then I had to chop up the roses even smaller to fit them into said tubs. Then I raked my front lawn to get rid of leaves, and put them in a tub as well. I washed my front windows, swept my front porch, and cleaned off cobwebs off it, too. Then I set to work in the back yard, in which I raked up pine cones. I also pulled out my Christmas decorations and started working on that. Somewhere in all that I had a spot of breakfast and lunch. I was soooooo sore at the end of the day.

Me after my day of yard work. Yikes - no makeup!



Random Happenings

You know what happens when you're busy? You don't blog.

Seriously. It's either that or writers block. Which sucks, by the way.

I have a post I want to do for y'all, but I will wait until it's published in my grandparents paper. But I will give you a heads up - it's about the town my ancestors settled. Complete with pictures. Anyway, that got me on a genealogy kick, and I admit, that's just one of the several reasons I haven't blogged in the last week. I'm too busy killing my eye balls at Ancestry.com.

Life around the ranch has pretty much been the same. Although our fall herd is starting to calve, so it could get interesting. Oh wait. It did.

My grandmother had to be out of town for two days. The night before she left, one cow had twins. We were all a bit nervous about tagging the calves because K wouldn't be there. I haven't actually tagged calves, but I figured between Papa D, myself, and K's brother we'd get it done. We did. It totally helped that the twins mama was super nice and wanted the hay more than her calves. K's bro roped each calf and I gave the shots, and Papa D iodined their navels.

You probably went "awww" when I said that the cow had twins. She had a boy and a girl. I have since learned that if a cow has twins, you don't want one of each. Reason being is that the girl winds up being exposed to too much testosterone while in the womb and is quite often infertile. Not good when you usually use those little heifer calves to replace old cows in a couple years. But they are still cute little buggers.

Work at the vet's has been good - last Saturday was actually quite busy. I was a bit annoyed with the high school helper. Very nice kid, very friendly, very outgoing. It's just that, a little of him goes a very long way. Today, was a nice laid back day in the Sticksville clinic, though. The doctor actually washed his truck as our surgeries cancelled, so he had two free hours. I'm just glad he didn't make me do it.

Oh, I almost forgot. The excitement of the past week has been Burning Man traffic. If you haven't heard of it, it's where 50,000+ people spend a week in the alkaline desert of Nevada. No power, no RV hookups, no showers. This part of the state sees a lot of these people drive through. In every kind of vehicle to compact sedans, all kinda of RV's . . . people even rent U-Haul and Budget moving trucks to haul all their stuff out there. Insanity. And you always know them when they return - every inch of their vehicle is white from the alkaline dust. 

I'm just glad that the traffic is gone.

Dancing with cows.

Okay, so a real rancher would say they were sorting cows, not dancing with them. And in all reality, I was helping sort cows, but it kinda felt like a really weird dance. Somewhere, God was laughing his patootie off, and every rancher up in Heaven was shaking their heads in disgrace.

Last Friday, my grandparents and I needed to sort out some cows in the spring herd. We were wanting to move the herd to fresh pasture so they could gorge themselves on grass instead of feeding several bales of hay every morning. However, there are still some cows we are waiting on to calve. Plus a big ol' bull has been in with them, and we did want to get him out as well. Not to mention we had a few cows in there that had lost calves or for some reason didn't do their duty and get pregnant. So, our goal was move all the cows with calves out to pasture, and keep the rest near the house until calving is complete.

Sounds easy.

We slowly moved the spring herd out of their current pasture. The cows themselves are pretty easy to move. Their calves however are completely clueless. Slowly we got them all into a smaller pen. Papa D would be the gate man, as he couldn't move fast enough to block the hole, or move through the cows to sort them out one by one. K took the job of diving into the herd to sort out our short list of cows to keep near the house. I got the job of blocking the hole.

It was me against 50 or so cows and their clueless calves. Each cow probably weighs around 2000lbs. And one cow is meaner than all get out when it comes to her calf - we can't tag her calves because she doesn't let anyone near them. I fear her like I fear heights. My biggest fear was her stupid calf getting past me and her coming after me. Seriously folks, she's a "mad cow".

So, I'm standing in there, blocking the hole with one whip. I'm only supposed to let cows on our short list through. Easier said than done. Five minutes in I took a freaking nose dive. Actually it was a knee dive because that's what I landed on. Nothing suctioned me in this time, but it was really chunky ground and not easy to move around in. After about an hour though, I had a made smooth ground. After my fall, K got Papa D's whip as he didn't need it, so I could easily cover both sides of me. Give me more presence, if you will.

I felt like I was doing line drills in volleyball - side to side, back and forth. Diving this way and that way to keep a cow from crossing my barrier. Or from trying to come back after we'd sorted her. I had to stay on my toes and keep my feet or legs moving if I was to beat a cow to the fence line to keep her back. It was an odd little dance I was doing.

You might wonder why we didn't use a chute or something. The reason being is there were tiny calves involved. While this version of sorting is a pain in the rear, it's a little less stressful than the chute and less chance that calves will get trampled in the process.

Once the cows were sorted, we put the short list back in their original pen. The main part of the herd, we had them follow the feed truck down the lane. Easiest way to move cows - put food in front of them. Their four-chambered stomach does the walking. K and I followed trying to keep the calves on the right path and not getting on the wrong side of the electric fence.

By the end of the day, my hips were sore from dancing with the cows. I will say that it is slightly unnerving being the sole blockage to 50 or so 2000lb animals. I mean, they could easily over-take me if they wanted to.

I'm just lucky Miss Mad Cow's calf didn't cross the line, otherwise . . . . I wouldn't be blogging.

Just Your Average Day In Sticksville . . .

I didn't post about the first one that happened simply because I was in the middle of the April Blogging Challenge. However, I am at liberty to post more random stuff about the happenings of Sticksville, USA.

I have now witnessed not one, but two cattle drives down Main Street. The reason why these guys are having to move their cows down Main Street is that the desert area they usually use is full of water, so they can't cross it. They have no choice but to drive them down Main Street in Sticksville to get their cows to the range.

No. I am not kidding. I have pictures of both to prove it.

By the time I got the gates closed in case stray cows wandered down our side road, they were past my grandparents house. This group surprised us, as we weren't really expecting them on a rainy day. We had to rush to close gates and block off the front yard.

These guys had their cows well under control as they drove them down Main Street. Plus they were moving a small herd - much easier to control.

Unlike the folks that moved probably 400 head of cattle just this last Sunday.

Luckily, I saw them coming from a mile away. I was able to race back to my grandparents place to close gates and warn them so we could get the driveway blocked. I wound up blocking a side street across the street to help them prevent cattle running through the neighborhood. As you can see, it's a huge herd.

They are directly in front of my grandparents house.

And there goes the first set. They kind of had the herd separated into two groups. In reality, it was kind of a cluster****.

This guy on the horse thanked me for my assistance in blocking a side street to help the cattle moving in the right direction.

I captured a tiny video of it as well.

I Survived . . . But Just Barely.

After blogging for six days a week for a month to complete the A-Z April Blogging Challenge, I found myself crawling on all fours begging for April to be over with.

Okay, no not really. But it was still tough. That's a lot of blogging and a lot of ideas to come up with. And with three jobs I still managed to blog my brains out. Elizabeth Mueller was totally awesome and made an award for all of the blogs that participated in this blogging challenge. I think in the end, well over 1000 blogs participated in this challenge. That's some serious blogging power, my friends.

Now I can get back to telling y'all about my exciting ranch life. And my exciting life in publishing. And my exciting life at a vet's office. It may sound exciting, but really, I'm so busy I barely know what to do with myself. I wind up in bed well before 10pm anymore. I'm exhausted by 4pm. My cat has decided to hate me most days and she has shown it. Several times in April I found that she peed on articles of clothing. Yeah, she was pissed. I'd get home from being gone all day (either at my grandparents house or at the vet's office), be home for a short bit, and go to my grandparents house for dinner. I'd come back and check up on my emails, play the 11 Scrabble games (online), check on my Facebook, and write the next day's blog for the challenge. Then it would be off to bed. My poor cat basically didn't get much lap time unless I was given the day off. So I've had to do some extra laundry thanks to her being all mad at me. You'd think laying next to me or sleeping next to me all the time would be the same as laying on me. Guess not.

I did manage to find my USB cord for my cell phone, so now I can work on getting that video of that calf I recorded over a month ago up on my blog. By the way, that calf is still doing good, and has been reunited with the herd.

I actually did watch the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton on Friday. I had no intention, but I wound up with the day off due to my grandparents having to drive to Reno for a doctor appointment. I got home after feeding and turned on the boob tube, and channel surfed and came across the wedding.  Since nothing else was on, I spent my morning watching it. I really had no idea that William was already bald up top - poor kid. He's, what, 30 and has a huge bald spot on his head. You'd think with all his money he could do something about that. Whatever. I thought Kate looked elegant. I thought the majority of the hats worn by the guests were hideous - especially the one that seemed to get it's own Facebook page. Seriously? A Facebook page for one of the ugliest hats ever? I don't understand the hat thing. Some of the hats were fine. But most of them were plain ugly and worn on the side of the head or on the forehead and that would just annoy the hell out of me. Why would they voluntarily wear such hideous things?

Saturday was a massively crazy day at the vet's office. I got in and saw that we weren't booked solid and hoped it would be a decent day. Nope. I was wrong. At 9:30, a gal came in with a dog that needed a C-Section. She'd pushed out three puppies but hadn't pushed out anymore since 2am and there were still puppies in her. The vet had me call our other morning appointments to see about rescheduling them, but none of them were home. The appointments showed up and luckily they were very understanding and I rescheduled them for later in the week. We never caught back up. The afternoon was busy mostly because we were all behind. Fortunately for us, our clients were understanding. I didn't get cussed out because someone wasn't seen at their scheduled time. By the time 4pm rolled around, we hadn't even had time to do the regular cleaning. We had to leave notes for the Sunday crew to do it for us. As it was, we didn't leave until at least 4:30. Oy ve.

Okay, I've rambled on long enough. Go rest your eyes now.

Job Interview, Party Of One.

Yesterday (Wednesday), K and I went out to fix some fence. We spent pretty much the whole day pulling some older, weak posts out and replacing them with newer heavier duty posts. K had also called the vet to come check out the newest calf, as she wasn't sure if it just had the world's weirdest umbilical cord, or if it's intestines were slipping through it's navel. We left Papa D at the house in case the vet called, so that he could call us and we'd buzz up on the ATV to meet the vet at the barn.

Portion of the fence we worked on.

We hadn't been out in the field very long when Papa D called us up. K and I raced up to the barn to see the vet climbing over fences to get to the barn. I followed everyone in, and K proceeded to tell the vet about this calf. The vet looked at the calf and said it's umbilical cord, but not like one he's ever seen. He went to his truck to get some suture material. I helped K hold the calf, who decided my right thigh was the perfect place to pee. *sigh* At least she didn't poop on me.

This little girl had to be brought into the house to get warm. Still doing good!

While the vet was suturing up the navel on the calf so he could cut the umbilical cord off, my grandparents are introducing me to him (I shall refer to him as Dr. J), and telling him how I was an animal science major and that I've worked in clinics and how I might be looking for a part-time job. He was very nice and asked me a few questions, which I answered. I told him I'd worked for Cottonwood Vet in college (which is a very well known clinic in Nor Cal), and that I had worked for a Vet Lab until recently. A lab which did their testing. He was impressed by all that, and said, "Well, I'd put in an application. I think we're pretty well staffed, but that could change by the time I get back there!" Before he left he mentioned that they may be looking for a Saturday person, and that I should pop over the hill (meaning a 6,500ft. pass), and grab an application. We shook hands, and I said that I would.

Fast forward to today (Thursday). K and I are back to work on the fence. The day before after replacing posts, we had fixed the barbed wire that was broken in places, and fixed wires to the new posts with nice new clips. Today, we were going to put on insulators so we could string hot-wire along the fence to prevent the cows from rubbing and scratching all over it, which is one reason why the fence was in need of repair. That and the deer jump over it, but don't always clear it.

So, K and I are almost done with the fence, and Papa D calls up and says that Dr. J had called him up and said that the office manager wanted to interview me that afternoon. I could just drop by anytime. My jaw hit the cow shit. (No . . . not literally). Dr. J had evidently gone back to the clinic either yesterday or this morning and talked the OM regarding me as their possible Saturday person. I was shocked and impressed. And completely flattered.

We finished up the fence, and I went home to shower and become presentable. I printed up my resume (after I quickly edited it), and scarf down a sandwich. I drove to town and went in to ask for the OM by name. She gave me a tour of the clinic, and introduced me to the techs that were there. She asked if I had time to sit down with the receptionist to learn from her and see what she does. Of course I said yes. So, for the whole of the afternoon, I sat with the receptionist and she explained their computer program and I watched how she did stuff. I haven't worked in a vet clinic since 2001. I have a lot to re-learn! Plus to learn where everything is located and how to handle the front desk. I had a receptionist position for a few months at the Chamber of Commerce in Redding, just after high school. I didn't have a lot to do, as the phone system was automated. I've never worked up in front in a busy clinic, not for more than a few minutes to help file or something.

And Jewel's, before you start running off about the hunky vet theory (wink), just know that one of the vet's is retiring soon, so there may be an opening for the hunky vet of which you think. Otherwise, I've only met two doctors - Dr. J and the guy who will be retiring.

I left with an application, which I will try to turn in tomorrow, and talk to the OM again. I'm sorta thinking that the job is mine, but I don't want to assume anything. It's one day a week, with potential for filling in during the week if need be. I would like to work in a clinic again, I've kind of missed that over the years. Plus, like my grandparents have told me, it would be good to have a small part-time job to meet people in the community. I have been slightly sequestered at my grandparents house, which, of course, is not terrible. I mean, they feed me and give me shelter.

I'm thinking I need to pull out the notes and text books I saved from my college days. I quite possibly have lots of studying to do!

My Weekend Off

I sort of disappeared over the weekend, didn't I? My bad. I was too busy on my weekend off. Yeah, we can go with that excuse.

The weather up here in Sticksville was rather iffy most of last week, and by the time Thursday had rolled around, no one was sure if I would be able to drive the four mountain passes to visit my family. Needless to say, I was a wee bit irritated with Mother Nature. I awoke Friday morning to go feed and there was a bit of sunshine peeking through, and I just knew I could make it. Every time I made it over a pass, I texted my grandmother and my mom. I hit snow over the last pass, which for some reason is the worst pass to go over (and it's 2000 feet lower than where I currently live). As soon as I passed the summit I hit snow. Heavy snow, but luckily the roads were too wet so it wasn't sticking. By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain, it was pouring down rain. Actually pouring doesn't quite cover it. It was raining hippos and elephants. Seriously. It was a deluge.

I floated rolled into town to have lunch with Miss Jo, whom I haven't seen since she graduated from vet school about two or three years ago. She was nice enough to drive to Redding to meet me, and we visited for a couple of hours. It was so nice to get to see her again, and I hope we don't go another two years!

After lunch I ran to my old bank to close out my accounts officially. Then went to pay my car payment early - because I'm a good girl like that. Then it was finally off to my parent's house. I officially got to meet mom's new little Yorkie, Libby. Llibby is freaking adorable and I'm not much of a tiny dog person. As she runs around the house like she's on crack, we call it "herd of puppy". She's every where at once and drags toys out all over the place. The downside to Libby is that apparently Yorkies are extremely tough to potty train. My parents have never had a dog that is so hard to train. While all previous puppies we've had had one or two accidents in the house (because you just can't avoid them), they've all been easy to train. Libby isn't. My parents will sit outside with her for half an hour and she won't do a thing. Two minutes inside the house and she's left little Libby Presents. Strange dog.

On Saturday, my parents took me to Costco so I could spend some money there. It's not economical for me to belong to Costco's membership, but my parents use theirs a lot, so I mooch off them. Plus I've never really needed to shop at Costco before, as I never needed to really buy much in bulk. However, now that I live in the middle of nowhere, it's much more economical to buy a ton of toilet paper than to buy it every week at the local store. I also priced laptops there and at Best Buy (and I had done so with Dell online), as in a previous post I had written about my old laptop dying a slow death. Or at least the battery.

After running some errands, my parents dropped me off at Granny & Granddad's while they went to Raley's to get some groceries for them. I had a good visit with them, and regaled them with my story of faceplanting in the moop (a much nicer term for mudshit . . . mud + poop =  moop). My grandparents were both raised on ranches/farms as kids, so they could sort of relate to my plight. I'm happy to report that my Granddad is doing better. He took a spill with his walker a few weeks ago in his house, and has been laid up in the living room since. My dad got him up for a bit of walking, and my mom says that he's improved a lot just since last week. My dad was surprised that my Granddad had the initiative to walk the length of the house and back to his chair with his walker, and he did so without any issues. Sometimes it's really the little improvements that make all the difference. My grandparents are a bit miffed that their home sale dropped out of escrow after a week. If that. No one can really move on the granny unit being put in on my parents property until the house sells. I guess they're just lucky that the buyers didn't back out several weeks into the deal.

After that it was dinner with Nana & Sonny. It was Sonny's birthday, plus we were celebrating my parents birthdays (both are this week). We had a wonderful visit, and had good food and excellent desserts. I was a bottomless pit: I ate all my food, part of Sonny's free dessert (it was a fudge sundae and he doesn't like chocolate), and part of his paid for dessert (it was strawberry cheesecake shooter, but he apparently doesn't like the cheesecake portion). Hey, don't tease Sonny for dessert persnicketiness, I'm much pickier at foods than he is. Trust me on this. Besides I got to eat the good parts. ;o)  Overall, we had a wonderful visit, and it was nice to see both of them improved in health, too. Next time I'm home and visit them, Nana will probably fill me up with dessert at her place because she loves to bake and feed her kids and grandkids. And none of us complain about it, either.

On Sunday, mom took me back to Costco where I spent more money, this time on a new laptop. This sucker's batter lasts like 4 hours and mine never lasted more than maybe 2 hours. Anyway, I got quite a bit of feedback through your comments, and then some comments on Facebook regarding Windows 7, and so far, it's not as annoying as Vista was. Vista was just crap. My batter cord is longer, but I now have a new problem. This cord has three prongs and all of my grandparents outlets are two prongs. Oh well. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, right? I finally decided on just purchasing a new one, as I practically live on the computer. Whether it's Facebook and chatting with friends or family, or blogging or now writing up articles for my grandparents publication, I'm on the computer quite a bit. I know that laptops aren't built to last more than two or three years anyway, so I got good use out of my old one. I still have it, I need to transfer the data to my new one, which will take some time. I need to back up my pictures and whatnot onto a disc anyway, which reminds me, I think I need to buy some more CD-RW's. But so far, I'm liking my new computer, and I hope we have will have a few good years together.

My drive back to Sticksville was as uneventful as my drive out of it. All my passes were clear and I didn't hit much traffic. It took me awhile to unload my car, and then to put everything away. Shopping at Costco is rather fun, but when you have to find room for all that shit, it ceases being fun real quick. I managed to buy a bunch of baking supplies so I get to bake myself some more cookies. Yummy yummy in my tummy!! I'm thinking chocolate chip . . . since Average Girl's recent post regarding food and sweets got me thinking.

Now it's back to the real world of feeding cows at 7:30 in the morning. There was one good thing about waking up early this morning: THE SUN. Seriously, that little shit has been hiding for awhile and I hate a constant game of hide and seek. Or Peek-a-boo.

An update on the calves in the barn. When I left on Friday, there was a total of three calves in the barn, with their mothers. The twin that we grafted onto Miss Surrogate awhile back, is doing excellent - both mother and calf have bonded well. Another two calves were put in the barn as they had been born in the mud. One of them didn't make it after a week of my grandmother tubing it order to feed it a bottle. But the other calf was doing well. This morning we put those cows and calves back into the herd. I know I promised a video of that twin that I took pictures of in the Miss Surrogate post, but my mom didn't have the right USB cord, either. So . . . for now it's stuck on my phone and the only way to get it off is to send it in 9 second increments and I'm too technostupid to know how to piece it all back together. Whenever I can get it off, I will and post it. Until then, I guess I need to take my actual camera with me each morning in case I want a video. That I can upload properly to my computer without much hassle. My apologies . . . please don't hate me too much.

And here's the latest tidbit: last week, Papa D and I went to a bull sale - my first one. He was doing a membership drive there, as well as making sure those that were members of the Cattlemen's Association were identified because if they bought a bull, they would 5% off their purchase for being a member. Not a bad deal. Anyway, Papa D, two other men, and myself made $1 bets on the average sale of the bulls. I had been hearing that the price of cattle had gone up, but I was seriously impressed when I saw bulls going for $4000. We wagered before the start of the sale, the wagers between $3600 (which was Papa D's) up to $4100 (mine). And today Papa D got the results for the average price of the bulls: $4177. I totally won $4. I never win much of anything.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go swim in my $4.

Holy Flying Cow Shit Batman!

Thursday was an exciting day on the ranch. After our usual morning feeding, Papa D and  I worked on some stories for the publication. We made some phone calls to get some information, and then were to set to work writing up some stories.

I had just gotten set up in the dining room with my laptop and a cup of hot chocolate when K came out of the mud room with binoculars saying that it looks like one of the heifers had a calf. She was also thinking that same heifer had something else hanging out her back end, and was wondering if it might just be another calf. Not very long after that, she ran into her bedroom saying that heifer she'd been watching looks to have had a second calf, as she was changing back into her dirty clothes. Prior to all of this happening, when she was only supposing that heifer might have twins, we discussed this. Since the calving season started, they've lost two calves (my grandparents suppose the severe weather we're having to be at least part of the problem), and one of those calves was just yesterday. If this one heifer was having twins, they would try to take one of the calves and put it with the heifer that had lost her calf the day before, and hopefully the heifer would accept this second calf.

Well, when she realized that the heifer was indeed having twins, I asked if she needed help, and she said "yeah!". I had to borrow a pair of rubber boots that were at least half a size too small as my nice insulated muck boots were at my place. We took an ATV and headed out. A good rule of thumb while riding an ATV on a ranch - keep your mouth shut. Seriously. Flying mud and cow shit galore.

We get out there and sure enough, there are two calves with this particular heifer. One was attempting to nurse and the other was still sopping wet on the ground trying to stand. K turned over the ATV to me and she picked up the calf and held it to the "back seat" of the ATV and walked next to me, keeping the calf behind me. We did this all the way back up to the big barn. K carried the newborn into the big barn, which has a huge step up into it. As she put one foot up on the step, she hollers to me "On three push up on my butt!" Well, it is a big step, and she was carrying a 60-something lb calf.


The barn is set up for issues such as this. Either bottle feeding calves or to try to put a calf on a cow that has recently lost a calf - which the latter is what we were trying to do. We put the calf (a little girl) in a small pen, where it tried to stand up. If you've never witnessed a newborn four-legged critter try to stand, it's adorable and heart-wrenching. Luckily, this little calf had a lot of spunk and was trying very hard - sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. 

I actually recorded a 2 minute video on my cell phone, but I can't locate my USB cord for my phone, and it's too large a file to send to myself. So, if you hold tight, there will be a video uploaded of this little girl learning how to stand and walk and being only about an hour old. But this video will have to wait until next weekend when I can borrow my mom's USB cord.

Anyway, we went back to the house for lunch and waited for K's brother to arrive to help us out with the other project: getting the heifer separated that we needed (the one that had lost her calf and is now wanted to be this girl's surrogate).

We took the ATV's out and put a bale of hay on the flatbed truck and went out to attempt to get Miss Surrogate up to the barn. Mind you, the mud is still a minimum of a foot deep. Probably closer to two feet. At least in some places. We basically played "Catch the cow" on ATV's. The cows would start to follow the hay truck back towards the main gate, and then Miss Surrogate would freak out and start running somewhere else, and because cows are herd animals, the others would follow. K and I kept running circles and serpentines around cows trying to get Miss Surrogate to go where we wanted her to go.

My arms are quite sore from this little escapade.


We had mud and cow shit flying everywhere from the wheels of the ATV's. Luckily none of it decided to smack me in the face, but it did get all over my boots, in my hair, on the hood of my sweater, and of course, all over my jacket and gloves.

We finally got a small group of cows to head to the main gate, Miss Surrogate with them. We managed to get them gated in an area near where we keep the feed trucks. We then needed to separate Miss Surrogate from the others into a set of pens that would eventually lead to the big barn. We managed to do that, while keeping the other cows penned.  K and her brother went on to get Miss Surrogate into the barn and into a head catch to try to get the calf to nurse.



All that remained was putting Miss Surrogate's friends back in their pasture, which was actually done with ease. I'm just glad K and I didn't have to chase them in two foot deep mud. Because I'm pretty sure that would have ended badly.

By the time Friday morning rolled around, the calf was nursing on Miss Surrogate. They'll be left in the barn for a few days to continue bonding before being taken back to the rest of the Spring herd.