How to Show a Cow

So you want to show a cow, eh??

Welp, seeing how I've been to a grand total of oh, not that many cattle shows, this may or may not be a relatively concise lesson!  Ready?  Here we go:

1)  Wash 'em.  A lot.  Cause they poop.  A lot.  Gotta have a clean cow to start with. 

Squeaky clean!  For about 5 minutes...until someone poops again.  It's never ending.

2) Line 'em all up like this!  You don't really have to, it  just looks cool.  Good morning girls!

3) Pretend you're in beauty school.  I'm serious.  This part consists of clipping, spraying, blow-drying, tail teasing.  Then you clip, spray, blow, and tease.  After you're done doing that, it's important to clip a little more, blow, spray, and tease that tail again.  Then, when you're done, you need to clip some more...(are you sensing a trend?  Ok, good).

Basically, the idea is to get each animal to embody certain desirable characteristics.  For example, you would want a heifer (young female cow, hasn't had babies yet) to look feminine and dainty, yet able to produce an able-bodied calf.  Say the heifer has a blemish you are wanting to hide, say     This whole process is called fitting, 

The cow stands in a temporary chute like this one above, so the guys don't get stepped on while they're making her look like a moooovie star (I'm sorry!).

Here's Ryan, demonstrating a little blow-drying technique on this cute lil chunky way prego heifer.  Get 'er done kiddo!

Here he is again, fluffing up her leg hair to enhance the appearance of a clean, straight leg. 

Such intensity!! 

Ok, now we're walking up to the show ring.  I wish I could've snapped a photo of what I'm about to describe, but I was occupied by importantly (haha) carrying towels, hair spray, brushes, etc.  Anyway, the hilarious part:  when someone stops to poop while walking up to the show ring (the animal, not the boys! ha.) this whole wagon train comes to a screeching halt so the deed can take place without getting poo all over the clean, clipped, purty cow.  Then, the LUCKIEST (i.e. whoever happens to be standing behind when this happens) member of the wagon train gets to wipe the poo off of the cow backside so the procession to the show ring can start back up again.  Once you've seen it done a couple of times, it's not quite as amusing, but there's is just something about watching a grown man wiping poop off a cow's butt! 

Once in the show ring, it's up to the exhibitor to display the animal to it's full potential while making sure the judge sees it's best side!  All while avoiding running into other cows/people, grimacing every time you hear the 'splat splat splat' of you-know-what hitting the ground, and hoping like heck your cow behaves. 

Easier said than done, you win some you lose some, but don't worry, there will always be cow poop!

The end.

Cow(boy) Butts

The other night I went to work with that devilishly handsome man I married to help him feed all 114ish of the January bull calves.  By hand.  Which involves hauling buckets of feed...by hand.  Lots and lots of buckets.  Buckets of buckets. Ha.  Luckily I got distracted by taking pictures!

Anyway, according to his boss, by the time this period in the bull calves' lives is over, hubby's gonna be a hulked out muscle man...aka more than he already is...aka oh baby oh baby!  Ha.

So back to business, whoops.  These kids are roughly 8ish months old and where recently weaned from their mommas, so it's kind of a stressful time in their wee little 500lb lives.  For that reason it's muey important that they get adequate nutrition, appropriate husbandry, etc.  Hubby feeds 'em by hand and walks through the herd every day to make sure they're all eating and that no one looks sick.

I love it when they line up at the feed bunk!  It cracks me up.   It also cracks me up when they decide to stand in the feed bunk.   Why does this seem like a good idea??  Weirdos. 

Taken in early spring...check out that grassy-type stuff!

 Stay tuned for more weird animal stories.  There's lots of material for that around here!

 

The End

Haulin' Hay

The hubby and I hauled hay the other day.  Which actually means I sat in the tractor and 'supervised.'  Not really.  I sat in the bouncy little sidekick seat and enjoyed some quality time with the devilishly good looking man I married.   

Anywho, this is the proper procedure for haulin' hay...
1) Take your tractor, your hay trailer, and your oh so useful wife out to the baled hay pasture.  This is the trailer we used the other day.

2) Park your hay trailer somewhere and find yourself a lone round bale.  Now spear the heck out of  it! 

3) Take your bale, tractor, and wife back over to the hay trailer and drop off your speared chunk of forage.  But do it carefully or the trailer's gonna tip...this definitely DIDN'T happen...hehe.

Why in the world did I think it was a good idea to snap all these photos from inside the cab??

4) Repeat step 1-3

5) Make you fall in love with meeee! (Name that 90's song!)

5) (For real) The trailer we used could hold six bales, so after loading up six, we speared a seventh with the front bale spike (cause farmers are efficient like that) and hauled everything over to the hay yard. 

6) And unloaded it all from the trailer in nice, straight rows.  I don't know if I can express how bumpy and rutted-up the hay yard was...I think my teeth almost fell out!  I know my badonkadonk left the seat and I'm pretty sure we were airborne on more than one occasion (just kidding).  That's what happens when you have to use a tractor to feed round bales to the cows in the winter time when the ground is half frozen, half mud, and all gross.      

7) Then did the whole thing all over again! And again, and again, and again...

This was actually taken in the early spring.  See all that weird, green stuff on the ground??  Totally a foreign concept right now.

Now these girls will have something to eat come winter time!  Gotta feed the cow so the cow can feed you.  Now go have some beef for dinner, Matthew McConaughey says so!

Beans!

Beans, beans, the magical fruit
The more you eat, the more you...ummm, yeah

This is the bean field that's behind our house.

 Are they the beans from the oh so lovely, above mentioned little jingle my dad used to sing every time we'd have baked beans for dinner growing up?  Not exactly. 

These are soybeans, a pretty common form of row crop here in central Missouri.  Is it our bean field?  Nope.  Our landlord rents this ground out to someone else who decided to plant it in soybeans this year.  Have you ever eaten a soybean straight out of the field at night while road tripping to the river with your girlfriends and a case of beer?  I definitely, positively, absolutely, may or may not have done this.  


One of the quickest ways to pay off land you've just purchased is to plant it in some type of row crop like soybeans.  Corn would work too!  Don't own the uber expensive equipment needed for planting and harvesting?

Do you take checks?

No problem!  A lot of people hire a farmer who already has this equipment to do the planting and harvesting for them.  Profit from the harvest goes right back to making the land payment (minus the expenses of paying someone to plant and harvest, cost of seed, etc.).

Soybeans are good because they are cheap-ish, easy-ish to maintain, and are less-ish demanding on the soil than corn is.  Ish ish ish, ha!  But, if all the cards play out right (aka good growing season, adequate rain fall, good soil quality, etc.) corn may turn a higher profit.

I don't know about the rest of the country, but here in central Missouri, it's been a little dry, toasty, and gross this summer!  I snapped a picture of this poor, sad lil corn field while on a run yesterday morning.  And then I ran faster cause the corn started rustling.  Thank you Mel Gibson for creating the movie Signs and forever scarring me for life.

The end.