Again a day of calving and vaccinating… it was pretty much a ditto day for yesterday…
One question was posed about yesterday’s activities…
“How do you know which heifers you’ve already vaccinated?”
Which is a great and legitimate question.
One that just points out where I fail in describing our ranch and everyday actions.
Glad you commenters are out there to help me clarify certain items! 😉
All of our heifers that are turning one year old in the space of this calving season (yearlings) are kept in two corrals. One by my house, one by Johnny’s house. These are the ones that will be Artificially Inseminated over Memorial Day weekend. They then, in turn, will be calving 9 months from then. We simply vaccinate one corral’s occupants one day… then the next corral’s occupants the next day!
Voila!
Even I can keep things straight that way.
Other times of the year, especially branding time… we mark them after they are vaccinated with “chalk”. Although there is “chalk” sold for this, the stuff we really use is a greasy, waxy type of marker the same size as a stick of sidewalk chalk. A photo of that is here… just scroll down to the calf picture and see the green stripe on his face. The chalk wears off after a while. FYI, it can stay on human skin quite a while… and blue jeans practically forever. My secret… if you’ve put on sunscreen… it’ll wash right off. This is a deeply held secret… because there’s always a guy or gal at branding that just needs to grab the chalk and write on something besides a calf… your jeans, shirt, boots, or a little warpaint on your face is always good for a laugh. A little preventative sunscreen helps protect you against skin cancer and marking chalk. Now you know.
Keep those comments/questions coming!
I really appreciate them!
See?
I’m waving atchya!
Helllllooooooooooo, Everyone………
