Monday was a beautiful day, but a little windy. Per the norm these days, Anna did the morning check, nothing new in the morning. Toni does a “drive-by” check from the road with binoculars on her way to pick-up the kids just in case. Toni and the kids did their school work in the morning, Toni has a big job keeping Jaxsen on task, but he is doing better, getting into the groove of things. Toni also had Court on the phone in the morning, yes she still has Court and her job as well. Dad, Kaine and Kade went and got meat from McCarys in the afternoon, if anyone needs meat we have a little we will sell out of the freezer for 3.95/lb (already cut and wrapped) and we will have a few steers done in the next month or so, hanging weight is 2.75/lb. Toni and Anna moved Ro and Ellie out with Leroy and brought Fancy back to the house. They wormed and gave West Nile to Leroy, Ro and Ellie. Ro and Ellie were not happy to leave the house were they were getting hay and grain, because the kids were feeding everything grain that has a baby, or is old, or they like… Fancy was not happy to leave Leroy, the love of her life. So basically, Toni and Anna made everyone they moved angry. They also moved King into the corral so we could separate the yearling colts and fillies, we put the yearling colts in with Louie, our two year old by KR Gun Powder. Louie is not dominate, so he is fine in with the yearlings. Toni and Anna also moved Cleo and Walt across the road so Cleo didn’t get bred to Double, turned Double out, and put Eddie and Tuffy in with Double, West Niling and worming those three as well. Then we did chores and went out and checked the mares. And guess what we found? CeeCee had a CUTE buckskin colt by Gunner. Monday night our Governor basically issued his Stay Healthy Stay Home order, but we are all considered essential workers in Ag, so that didn’t change our day-to-day work much.
Tuesday was a little chilly but there was no wind. Ben and Kicker did not get any new post holes dug for us, so Toni and the kids pulled out some of the old posts. Toni and the kids were going to go to Grandma’s and work on her yard, but decided they didn’t want to be around her just in case anyone of us is a carrier. Toni and Anna moved Whinny and Shady in with Double because we use Double’s pen as the heavy pen since it is right next to the house. They also moved Ivy and Smoke across the round in with the yearling fillies, Ivy and Smoke are in their 30s, so we did not want them in with Double to get bred. When I got home we finished up at the corral, and moved King’s pen around so when Ben and Kicker did come and run the post hole digger they could just drive right in and start digging, and not have to go through any gates. Then we went and checked mares, no new foals, Toni keeps telling Lura she needs to foal.
It was a little chilly again on Wednesday, but Ben and Kicker dug some holes, so Toni and the kids put in some rail road ties and we put up some poles when I got there. We got two sections done before we needed to go out and check mares. We have railroad ties in all of the holes on the East side except one, and we can’t find any more “good” ties laying around. Toni has been searching high and low, measuring every tie she has found on the ranch, none will work. Still no new foals, however, we have lots of mares with foals we need to put out with studs this weekend.
Man, Thursday got here fast, as did the end of March? Hopefully April is better for the world than March was. I added Cupcake and Maggie to our for sale page today, we have been discussing it for a while. They are both nice mares, they just do not do well in the big herd setting and need to live in a different environment. Kool had an episode on Thursday, she has been locked up all winter with Double, so they have extra food. We turned them out on Tuesday, but the gate was open for them to come back to their pen for their food, and she went out in the field and went down. We got her back up and back to her pen, it was slow going. We also completed two more sections of the corral fence and put in 6 more posts. We checked mares, no new foals, but the same ones.
There were no new foals in the Friday AM check, however, there was a new calf, a really cute black ballie out of 611T. Toni was busy on Friday, on top of teaching the kids she had conference calls, ordered new batteries for the solar fencers, ordered more gate handles, ordered circle walk-through gates for our next fencing project, and our alfalfa seed t got ordered. Most of the fencing stuff was delivered around noon, so we are ready to role on that front. The kids all did their lessons and then worked on fence in the afternoon.
We got a lot done on Saturday, if you ever wonder how we get so much done in one day, Toni, she is how. Ben, Anna and I got up and went out and checked the mares and cows.
Abs had a new buckskin filly by Dude, she is a fancy buckskin filly with a blaze.
Next, we all went out to get the mares in out of the desert, yes, it takes everyone, there are a lot of places they can go and hide and we cannot get them out of. Abs was up in the trees with her group, of Rose and Lendy, so Ben let them up in the pasture behind the house. Then we sorted them into groups, the mares that have not foaled went back out into circle 5. Gunner and 6 mares went out onto the desert. Sagebug and 4 mares went out into the middle of 4. Mud we took over to Jackpot and put with the mares he already has. Vegas went in with Colonel and Fancy went in with Dude. Bell went down with Leroy, who already had Ro and Ellie. We hauled the sale heifers, since we don’t want them bred yet, down to mom and dads, where there is not a bull. All of the foaled mares and the studs got their spring shots and wormer. We pulled hair on Shiney’s colt, Shiney Bug, to color test him.
And lastly, we did our afternoon work, chores and fence building. The corral is getting so close to getting done Toni is NOT going to give us a day off.
Saturday night while on Facebook I saw a drawing our cousin Ryan Bennett had done of Abs and Whiskey, after talking to him he does sell his work. $50 for the original and $25 for prints in any size up to 8 ½ x 11. It would be matted ready for a 11×14 frame.
Sunday we got circle 4 in and sorted all of the steers off so the kids can pick their show steers and we can leave them in on feed. They already have their club calves in but they each have at least 1 beef calf too. We also had to get circle 5 in because there was one steer and one heifer in with the Herefords. We used the circle 5 corral the day before to sort horses, but Ben decided on Sunday that we needed to do some maintenance to it, so we spent 20 minutes pounding in nails, cutting stuff that was sticking out off, putting poles back up, just general maintenance stuff that a person has to do all the time. We also picked up a new bottle calf, “Rooster” (since we already have the Duke), while out there. If anyone is interested in feeder steers, we have a couple left after the kids picked theirs.
Ben, the kids and I ran into Othello to get groceries at lunch time and we got Checos to go. Toni, Kade and Jaxsen went down to work on the corral after lunch. I guess Kade kept looking out to the driveway to see if we had gotten to Mom’s yet and begged Toni not to make him build fence before we got there. Ben and I weighed the steers and Anna and Kaine went and finished up the miniature horse pen. Then, Anna, Kaine and I took the minis back up to their pen and went down to help on the corral. We would have gotten the one section done but we ran out of battery on the impact wrench, yes, we have three batteries, that is how much fence we built. We also played with the yearlings for a little bit and got some pictures.
Although it is not an ideal time to have the stay home stay healthy order, because normally we are already giving tours of the ranch and selling foals, we can’t help but see the good in this time too. The kids are home and we are enjoying our extra time with them, we are all seeing a lot of each other (probably not more than normal but still, staying positive), and so far we are all still healthy. Toni is going to start having the kids write letters to people, so if you want a letter, let her know.
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