Feed Cows?

When Angus was quite little (maybe three years old), he'd inquire conversationally of his father over every lunch, "So...how was your day? Feed cows?".  I think he got tired of just asking what his dad had done that morning (and it was ALWAYS "fed cows") so he just took care of business right away. Even now, when the kids get off the bus in the afternoon, I'll ask them how their day was and "Feed cows?" which is our code for "Everything pretty much the same thing?"

This winter, I've been given a little bunch of cows to feed every morning!  They're last year's first calving heifers, only now they're really big girls....coming threes!  

I put the kids on the bus first thing, then go over to the Big House to get my wretched white feed pickup that no one else wants to drive.  It's a six speed never-in-the-right-gear diesel machine with no emergency brake so if I park on any sort of slope at all (in neutral, of course) it rolls away.  This means that in order to open the gate on the hay corral, I have to put it in Granny, then shut it completely off so it doesn't merrily take off down the hill. (Granny is the slowest, lowest gear...at least that's what my dad called it.)  

The Beast has a good radio (for which I'm eternally grateful) and I can get KGHL on AM which is the radio station my Dad always listened to when he fed and I rode along. "Tradio" is on while I'm feeding...a radio show where people can phone in if they have something to sell or are looking for something to buy.  Usually it's guns, household items, the random puppies, but this morning there was a free fresh deer hide for anyone who wanted it, AND the opportunity to get (also free) old hens if you were willing to go catch them.  KGHL plays classic old country music, so when it's not Tradio, it's Ray Price and Patsy Cline as the soundtrack to my morning.

Here's my good help:

Here's why she loves to go feediing cows:

Bunnies live at the haystack.

Really DUMB bunnies.

And they run deliciously fast and sneaky like!

The Beast has a hydraulic bale bed on it, so I can lift the bale onto the back of the pickup without having to have a tractor.  (Please note the fact that the arms are almost perfectly centered in on an imperfectly round bale. If they AREN'T centered, the bale won't unroll well and the feeder person will end up pushing it down a hill by hand.  I'm thrilled to have this placement documented for all the world to see, because I have to run controls inside the pickup, looking in the mirrors and over my shoulder out the back window to get it placed and loaded. This was a fine moment for me!)
(And yes, I had to shut the pickup off to take this picture so it wouldn't roll.)
(Like my father-in-law's eyes if he sees this particular blog post, bless his heart...)

 Often times, when I lift a bale I end up exposing a hidden, dumb bunny which results in happy yipping and a good chase while I close the gate.

 Here are my girls:

 This happens to be the bunch with my heifer Rosie and Maggie's heifer Lucky who you will see in the following picture.

We noticed a funny thing about the cow named Lucky....the sum of the numbers on her tag (223) ends up being lucky 7!  She's easy to pick out of this herd because she's the only one with a white beard, as Maggie says.

This is what the bale looks like when it's all unrolled.

(They're suspicious of me taking all these pictures. Something's up, but they don't know what...)

I also check their water every day to make sure it's not frozen over and look to see if they have plenty of salt'n'minral (sic). 

Then I return the Beast to the main house and resume my day if they don't need me to feed any other bunches that day. 

This day went pretty quickly because I didn't have to fight a lot of snow or mud, and the water wasn't frozen over necessitating me chopping and scooping ice out of the tank. 

It's a pretty good way to start the day! If you want to come ride along, I'd love the company...