With the cooler fall weather and the shorter days, fall has arrived.

Monday was Kade’s birthday, he was the big 1 6. Happy birthday Kade. Toni was still sick on Monday, or as she says, she is fine if she does not eat…. For Kade’s bday he did absolutely normal stuff, including riding his horse, working with the show calves, etc. He did work on his HOCO poster and asked his mom for a simi show heifer for his birthday.  Kaine is also asking one of his friends to HOCO but his other friend’s mom made his poster for him. Not his own mom, his friend’s mom. Kind of funny. Some of the cows had broken the clip on the gate (since we weaned their calves on Sunday) and were out in the driveway. Knocked over grain buckets, etc. Mom made banana cream pie for Kade’s birthday, it was really good.

On Tuesday Marlo washed the Evergreen steers, McCall washed the Nile heifers, Kade turned Queen on the hill because she was getting too fat. Jaxsen had a football game and he had a big cheering squad. Mom, Dad, Skip, Marlo, Sherri, Barry, Kade, Kicker and Toni. Kick got pizza for everyone to have at the game. Mom made fun football earrings with Jax’s number 50 on them with her sublimation printer. She also made some for Kaine. Kind of a fun perk with a crafty mother. Mike Chubb called and could harvest the two extra steers, so Kaine, Ben and I got them in.

Wednesday morning Mike was out at 7 to harvest the two steers, he was also supposed to get the neighbors pig for us but according to Toni he can not follow directions and could not find the pig. She finally tracked him down and they decided they couldn’t get the pig out of its pen and Mike would come back on Thursday. Toni said she did pat the pig on the back. She is afraid of pigs. I told Toni mid-summer the extra steer she picked for Jaxsen was not going to work, if Jaxsen needed an extra he was just going to not show,  that his steer was wild. Toni said that she picked the tamest one for him and he was fine. Guess what, Mike said one of the steers tried to get him and guess who it was… Not Kade’s extra that was halter broke. Luckily Jaxsen had his “good” Angus steady eddy steer and didn’t need the extra was it really didn’t become an issue. It might have been funny to see how that was going to go, but a bullet dodged. Wednesday afternoon/evening the wind came and we had blowing dust. I needed to go down and get some videos of the bulls for a guy, so that was fun. We did chores and Toni went to stay with grandma, who did not sleep well.

Thursday everyone at my house missed their alarms, I did not sleep in too much, but Kade did most of the catching and tying up Thursday morning. Ben normally ties up Anna’s and feeds them before he goes to work.  I stayed with grandma on Thursday night, she still was not sleeping well.

On Friday our hay got baled. Toni wandered out in the horse pen, Comet was acting off, but she is 24 years old. Toni gave her some meds for colic and Comet was fine. Comet likes to scare us about every 3-4 months with a colic episode, we all get worried, and she is up and acting fine the next day. It was a beautiful day so some good pictures of horses, foals, and Bunny the mini mule were taken. Toni and Kade went for a ride, Toni said the mosquitoes were terrible, and Reina did not like it. Dad, Marlo and I went to College Place to watch Kaine play football. Connell, won, it was a good game. Billings horse sale also started Friday night so Toni and Kade were watching that like a hawk. Toni really thinks she should have bought ME a horse Friday night. She had one all picked out if only she had bid a little higher. Kade and Toni were also bidding on heifers for Kade because he wants a simi heifer.

                Happy Birthday Dad on Saturday, the 4H kids came to pick out their steers. I think they all made great choices. Anna and McCall got some new pics of Haul when they washed him. We had two groups of people come out to look at foals Saturday. Which gave us the idea of Opal’s story.  We have a tiktok on Opal and her twins that are in the same sack. There was also some fast and furious bidding at the Billings sale online that luckily amounted to nothing other than Toni complaining that the horse market seems very strong. We also got our super awesome new backdrops with our brands for the cattle shows, a big thank you to Alyx Corey and CoreyTalk. They are AWESOME! We got another foal weaned Saturday, so up to 8 foals weaned. We had a great family fun night with Dad and Kade’s bday. Dad is 79 going on 50.

Still windy on Sunday. We got the Hereford steer that is sold in and on a halter. Worked on the calves. Put hay out with the horses. It was a cold windy day. Kade went for a ride on Joss. You can’t make a good horse if you wait for the perfect day to ride. The big highlight for us on Sunday was the Traynham/Cox sale was going on. We have bought heifers from them for the kids to show for a number of years. We pretty much liked all of their offering. We were able to get a really nice 24k heifer for Kaine in our price range. We are really excited about her and now just trying to get her home so he can show her. Her name is Jewel. Kade was also able to finally get a simi heifer bought Sunday night that he is really excited about. As sometimes things just work out, one of our family friends, who happens to be a hauler, was already back in the midwest so is able to go get that heifer next week. We also got halters put on the four foals we plan to halter break for the week. We are really not very excited to start that process but it must be done.

Now for a Copper update. Copper suffered a catastrophic injury to her hind leg in Aug. Because she is an amazing filly, we were able to get her in and have doctored her now since that date. Lots and lots of consultation with our team. It takes a really good team, especially the home team, and absolute dedication to get a foal to pull through something this big. She cut the leg down to the bone and needed a brace on the leg until she could walk on it. We had our vet, farrier, nurse practitioner, everyone in the family working on this foal and with creativity and patience we have been able to keep her going. As of this week we now have complete coverage over the bone and she is really starting to walk on her leg. There were some weeks where we didn’t think we could get her through, and I don’t want to jinx it, but it looks like she is on the mend. I have not taken pictures of the wound.

With the cooler fall weather and the shorter days, fall has arrived. We are still going to cattle shows but are around some weekends for anyone that wants to come look at foals.