Cow Drama

"Get a cow," they said. "It'll be fun and easy," they said. "Heck, may as well get two!" they said. Hah.


I didn't expect it to be easy, but I have to admit it has been more difficult than I anticipated. My first trouble was with T-Bone, the smaller calf. I followed the instructions I was given on him, except for one part- it was recommended I give him some calf starter grain each day. I went to my favorite feed store, and they'd never heard of such a thing, and they had a lot of cow people come through. So, I figured it probably wasn't that important and didn't do that. Otherwise, I fed them bottles at the intervals suggested. The seller gave me a roundabout idea as to when he would be ready to wean. Within a couple days of that, I saw him out in the field, chewing his cud, which is a sign of readiness to wean. I wanted to be sure, so I watched the next day, and saw it again. I mentioned to the seller what I saw, and that I was planning on beginning to wean him. I cut back from two bottles a day to one bottle a day, and followed that for nine or so days, which was longer than the week I was advised.

A couple weeks after he weaned, I noticed he was looking skinny, and was worried, but figured the seller would mention it to me if it wasn't normal. Turns out it wasn't normal, and he was in bad shape. So, I'm back to feeding him two bottles a day. I went to another feed store and bought the calf starter, though so far, he hasn't expressed much interest, though Casanova LOOOOOOOVES it (he gets a little treat each night too). Most days I don't mind; it's like having a 200 lb puppy. I did feel hurt because I got the distinct impression that people felt like I was neglecting the calf, or being lazy. I was just trying to follow instructions, and felt hurt that they'd see me that way.

So, it's been a little over a week since I started Tbone back on bottles, and he's doing really great (other than a cold, which seems to be clearing up ok).  But then yesterday, I notice that Casanova's right eye seemed wrong. It was very runny, and just looked off.  I got a better look at it, and it looks exactly like the pictures of pinkeye in cows look. Awesome. I hate pinkeye.  I call the seller to see if he'll take a look or offer insight. After hearing my description, he felt like I should call a vet.  Great. I feel way out of my depth, so I'd like to get a real professional involved.

I call the recommended vet, and describe what I'm seeing. They say that it is either pinkeye, or a foreign object that has caused an infection. Either way, I'd want to treat it with LA 200 injection, and that runs $.30 a cc. How much does my cow weigh and do I want to come pick it up?  

You're just going to trust me?

Don't you know who I am?  I don't know a thing about cows! I mean, I'm calling my calves "cows" and they're steers. That's an obvious newbie mistake!

I don't even know how much he weighs!

So, I went outside, tried to take a fully body picture so they could get an idea of size, and attempted to get a couple of eye pictures.

I walk out of the vet's office with two giant syringes and instructions to inject them into the muscle, 48 hours apart. I also should use a water bottle to attempt to cleanse the eye. If he'll let me, try to sweep my fingers between the eyeball and eyelid to see if I feel anything.

oooookay. This'll be easy, right?

 I take a few minutes to collect myself (ok, an hour), and I head out there armed with my pink mucking boots, a squirting water bottle, and a syringe.

TBone sees me and comes running. The fact that I'm holding a water bottle compounds the problem. He's convinced this bottle is for him and keeps trying to drink from it. Meanwhile, Casanova thinks me squirting water in his eye is a terrible idea, and he doesn't like the look of that needle either, so he's trying to make a run for it.

All this commotion got the attention of the other cows (steers) so they moseyed on over to watch everything.

This all ended with a cleansed eye (no sweeping under the eyelid though) and a cracked syringe, and no shot given. I decided it was insane to think I could do this alone. Even the smallest of the cows steers weighs more than me.

When J got home, I asked him to help me. I got the bright idea that I should bring some of the calf grain into the field as a peace offering to Casinova.  

Well, the grain got the attention of Baby, the horse. She wanted some of that. Badly. So she's chasing me around the field, trying to get her nose in the bucket. I know she's on a very strict diet, and I'm fairly certain that diet doesn't involve calf starter, but it was looking like she was going to win that battle.  I sneakily gave the bucket to J, and Baby continued to follow me. When J was mostly to the "time out corral", she noticed HE had the bucket, and took off at a gallop to get to him. He got there first and was home free! I felt very lucky that only TBone and Casanova had noticed I was back with the white bottle.

Eventually, I was able to give the injection, and I irrigated the eye a bit more. I brought a rubber glove so I could try to sweep under the eyelid, but I lost my nerve. I did try to peek and didn't see anything though. After that syringe was empty, I put the contents of the cracked syringe in the intact one, so that dose is ready to go.

We get to repeat the antibiotics shot on Saturday. Whee!!

Trip To Zion

We actually have been on two trips to Zion recently. We took the whole family in the RV at the end of July. The kids absolutely loved it. I was really impressed at their mad hiking skills. We were going into the Narrows, and figured we'd go in a bit, and then turn around. We made it all the way to Orderville Canyon, and then walked to the waterfall at Orderville before turning around. All told, we walked almost 8 miles that day, and the kids didn't complain once. When we were about 100 feet from camp, Z did ask to be carried. I was so impressed with them.

Then, J and I decided to go back to celebrate our 17th anniversary. This time, we decided to tent it. I have to admit that I haven't gone tent camping in 6 years, so I was a little apprehensive. It was nice to sleep under the stars (we kept the rain fly off, so we could see them), and it really was fun. For a long time, it's been on J's bucket list to hike The Subway from the top down. We managed to win the last minute lottery, and got a permit for Friday.

The Subway is a 9.5 mile hike that has a 2000 foot elevation change, three rappels, bouldering, and some required swimming. It's rated as 3B III.

The problem with the Subway is that there's two parking lots, 7 miles and 2000' elevation difference between them. People have two options: they can hitchhike, or they can pay for a shuttle. The shuttle cost $30/person, which offended me. We decided to take our chances and hitchhike.  The night before, we found a group that also was planning on going, and we got them to agree to give us a ride from the bottom lot to the top lot.

They ended up being a really fun group of people, and we did the entire hike with them. It came in handy for them because nobody in their group brought gloves, which are really, really, really nice when rappelling. Also, their rope was only 50', and for the first rappel, you really need a 60' rope.

I didn't bring my fancy camera, and 95% of the time, I was so relieved I hadn't. This hike was definitely the most intense, most technical hike I've ever done. That would've been tricky to have along. But, there were a couple shots I'd really wished I'd had it. Instead, I brought my little point and shoot in its' waterproof bag.

I was nervous about the rappelling, or downclimbing, whatever the experts would call it, but it ended up not being a big deal at all. My upper body strength was better than I thought, and the "obstacles" were kind of fun. The weather was hot, so the water wasn't too terribly cold. I brought 3 liters of water, and ran out about 1/2 mile from the trailhead. We had purification tablets, so if there had been an emergency, we would've been fine.

The views were utterly amazing.


We got through the narrows part, and still had a couple miles to go. There was a lot of hopping around over rocks, which got pretty exhausting. Then, we had to climb about 400' through switchbacks to get out of the canyon. That was rough at the end of the day, and with sun. It was getting a bit cloudy though. In fact, once we got out of the narrows, we started to hear thunder, which made us quite nervous, and we picked up the pace.

Once we completed the hike, we got in the car and started to drive back to camp. Within 15 minutes of getting in the car, a flash flood warning was issued, and rain started to pour. J and I have always wanted to see the main canyon in the rain, so we hopped the shuttle to go check it out. We saw several new waterfalls, some of which were quite large. It was amazing to see.

The next day, we were both very, very sore in our quads. So, we decided to hike some more!!  We wanted to check out some family friendly hikes we'd heard about, but were unable to find when we had the kids. We found several great ones this time around though.  We ended up checking out the Many Pools hike, as well as the Hidden Gardens and Weeping Rocks hikes.  We also wandered around town a bit.

Sunday morning, we decided to go for a little bicycle ride, so we went on the Pa'Rus Trail. I was a little unsure about this, as I was really, really hurting at this point, but J convinced me, and I'm glad he did. It was a lovely, scenic trail, and it was still fairly early, so it wasn't too hot.

All in all, we had a marvelous time, and are excited to go back next year.

We bought a cow!

Our neighbor has been leasing barn space to a guy who buys day old calves, bottle feeds them, and then sells them or takes them out to his acreage a few miles away.  After a few weeks of watching all the cute calves, and even being able to feed some of them, we made a crazy decision.

We'd buy one. He'd gotten some beef shorthorns in, and they are supposed to be great for meat.

We'd raise it up for 14 months or so, and then hire a butcher to come process him for us.

However, we would never be able to store an entire cow, so we started asking around to see who wanted to split it with us.  We had so many volunteers that we ended up buying TWO.

T-Bone/Chuck laying in the grass

When we talked to KC, the seller, we had two options: we could buy a (mostly) weaned calf of about 8-9 weeks old for $450, or we could buy a 6 week old for $350. We thought it was worth the extra money to buy the weaned calves.  However, when we tried to commit to that, KC didn't have any left.  The next day, one of his buyers backed out, so we bought one weaned, one not weaned.

I went to the feed store and bought a bottle and calf milk replacer and a bale of alfalfa (J was THRILLED when he realized I'd taken the civic for this errand. Really. I have a giant SUV AND a pickup truck, and I end up in the car for that errant?).

We've set up a dog kennel in the back field because all of the calves will mob you if they see the bottle. We get the calf into the kennel and feed him in relative peace there.



The bigger calf only needs one bottle a night, and tonight is his last bottle.  The younger calf needs two bottles a day. Each bottle is two quarts of this milk replacer (which bears a rather disturbing resemblence in smell and texture to my protein shake.  ugh)

The older calf, Casanova, has a heart on his right flank, and another on his forehead.





The younger one is mostly brown, with a little white on his forehead.














Both are very sweet, very friendly, and I really hope they aren't quite as wonderful by the time they're grown or I'm going to have a really tough time when it comes time to process them.

This is a picture I took of the younger one (name not totally decided, but T-Bone and Chuck are front runners) this morning while I was feeding him.





As a fun side note, we took this video a couple weeks ago in the field. J was trying to secure the netting on top of our new chicken enclosure, but the calves were making it impossible. So, he had us come out and distract them. S did a fantastic job, and I caught it on video. We'd wanted to buy the calf chasing her, but we were too slow to commit, and he was sold before we could buy him.

Advice from a fire survivor

A friend of mine recently posted some advice that she learned the hard way, after her house nearly burned down a year ago.  It was so sensible that I wanted to repost it. She gave me permission, expressing the hope that it would help someone.


Dear Friends and Family,

Today marks the 1-year anniversary of our fire. I cannot even tell you how happy I am that this year is over. I remember right after our fire someone asked me if I had any advice for them on how to prepare. I didn't at the time, but I do now and I thought you might all appreciate knowing what I have learned.

1) If possible, store your 72-hour kits somewhere other than your house. If you have a shed, detached garage, or other similar building then put them there. I always thought that we would grab them on our way out if there was an emergency, but I never thought that the emergency would happen when we weren't home. Our 72-hour kits were wrecked right along with our house. Had they been in the shed and the shed had the fire, we still would have been OK since we would still have had the house. 


2) Make sure you have full replacement coverage on your belongings and home (belongings only if your are a renter). There are two kinds of coverage: full replacement and depreciated value. Full replacement means you go buy a new one, submit the receipt, and they reimburse you however much the item cost. Depreciated value means they look at how much that item cost and how old it is and then give you less money based on how old it is. Our big TV cost us around $1500 9 months before the fire and they would have given us $200 for it. Unless you have the cash on hand to replace your whole house, it is worth the extra bit for the extra insurance.

3) Make sure you have enough insurance. We lost 90% of the possessions on our top floor and maybe a few hundred dollars worth in the basement and we maxed out our policy. Had our house burned to the ground and we had lost the basement items, too, we would have been in trouble. Remember, even if you get a great deal on something, you will likely be replacing it with something new and not on sale, so either plan to have your disaster right before Black Friday or plan to have enough coverage.

4) Keep your data backed up somewhere other than your house. Our hard drive melted, but so did the back-up. I recommend using on-line back up services, or putting a portable drive in your shed, relative's house, etc.

5) If the unthinkable does happen, I strongly recommend purchasing one of those receipt scanners that they sell on TV ASAP. I think they are pretty cheap and I wish we would have bought one. We lost a few receipts along the way waiting to scan them in with the big scanner. It would have been so much easier to just scan them along the way. We could have even been scanning receipts when we were living in the hotel, before we replaced our scanner.

6) Keep your vital documents in a fire-proof safe and then retrieve them immediately after the fire is over.

7) Keep as many of your belongings in plastic containers with snap-on lids as you can. The restoration lady said that not only are they smoke proof, but they are also water proof if you have a water disaster. Our actual fire was contained to the kitchen, but we still lost almost everything we owned to smoke. My sweaters, however, were all just fine because they were in a plastic container with a snap-on lid.

 Last but not least, when you leave your house, make darn sure your stove is turned off 

Love you all,

Debbie

This was her facebook status today: 

1=years to the day since our fire
3=weeks living in a hotel trying to manage 18 food allergies and 5 energetic children
5=months in a rental house worrying that it would sell and leave us homeless again
50+=hours spent doing fire related paperwork
250,000=total dollar amount of damage to our home and posessions
Millions=Blessings and tender mercies we received along the way, both through friends and strangers and directly from the Lord.

Decorated Cast, part 2

Ironically enough, the dolphin cast did not survive swimming and baths. The dolphins fell off, leaving pristine, clean marks on the cast, leaving the rest looking pretty grungy.  We decided we'd paint with craft paint, giving it an entirely new look.

I just used basic craft paint for this. I first did a coat of black, and once it dried, added the hearts and the stylized S shapes for S's name.  It's been a couple weeks, and it's started to rub off a bit in the most highly used areas, but it's held up really nicely.

She gets her cast off tomorrow, and is very excited.

The dolphin cast

The only thing that seemed to cheer S up when she broke her arm was the promise of me decorating her cast with dolphins.

So, I was terrified that something would happen that would prevent me from doing that. I looked for dolphin fabric, since I suspected that would be easier to mod podge on than stickers/paper, but I didn't have much faith. When I made her kaleidoscope quilt, I'd looked for weeks for dolphin fabric with no luck.  I found some great dolphin stickers at Amazon for $2.43, so I bought those, and they arrived today.

When we got to the sports doctor today for followup, he confirmed that it is in fact broken, and showed me one of the other angles of the xray that I think shows the break a little more easily.






S chose a light blue for her cast color, and they told us they had a water resistant base material for the cast, so swimming, sprinkles, etc are NOT forbidden. We're just supposed to try and dry it a bit afterwards.  S made sure to rush home and tell her sister that HER cast is waterproof. Hah! K admitted to being jealous, even though she hasn't broken an arm in years.



When we got home, S wanted to get the dolphins on it right away. She wants to keep the cast forever, even after it's removed, but I told her she couldn't. Because of that, she got a little stingy with the dolphin stickers. She chose four to go on the cast, and is keeping the remaining eight.  I think it needs at least two more; I may talk her in to adding more tomorrow.













I used mod podge to attach the stickers.  I learned a couple things from the experience.  First, I spread some mod podge around the area where the sticker was to go.  I found it very helpful to get the stickers wet prior to applying- they laid a lot more flat that way.  I think that fabric would go on a lot better than paper, but since dolphin fabric with dolphins of the right size is so scarce, we had to make do.  Once we got the four dolphins on (and I may work on her to put more on there; we'll see), I put a light coat of mod podge everywhere, and shook some fine glitter on it.  Unfortunately, that doesn't show up in this picture, but her reaction to her cast is obvious.

A close up of the cast.

Broken!

This week, I've been babysitting a friend's 5 year old while she vacations in Hawaii (lucky girl!). I've had this nagging feeling that *someone* was going to injure themselves, and I was just hoping it wasn't the boy I've been watching.

On Friday, S wore a beautiful long dress and crocs. Of course this is the very best outfit to wear while climbing fences. She fell while doing this. She ran in, crying that she hurt her left arm.  It was not hanging at a funny angle, and she had a very specific spot that hurt the most.

Now, I have to admit that while she's tough compared to the average kid, she's definitely not the toughest of my kids. So her wailing and carrying on is a daily occurrence.  But, it was Friday night, 8:40pm.  My beloved Layton Kidscare closes at 9pm on Friday. So, I decided to take her in.  J felt like I was overreacting, and honestly, I was only about 70% convinced she had genuinely broke her arm.  I am in the "didn't take my kid to the doctor for a broken arm right away" club, and I'd rather not be a multiple entry member, so I decided to err on the safe side.

We got to KidsCare at 8:54pm. Plenty of time!

They got us in right away, and S didn't want to talk to the doctor, even though she was really sweet and nice and being really great with her. I explained what happened.

The doctor did a brief exam, declared her to be a very healthy girl otherwise. She said that S was letting her mash down on her arm pretty hard, but that they'd do xray, just in case.

After the xray, the doctor came back in and said it was a good thing we'd had it xray'd; there was a little buckle fracture.  Upon hearing the news, S dissolved into tears. She was so, so upset to hear that she'd actually broken a bone. It was kind of cute.

They gave us a brace to wear, and we're supposed to go see an orthopedist on Tuesday, where they'll give her a regular cast. I assume they will, anyway.

We were back in the car by 9:25pm. On the drive back home, it dawned on her that swimming is going to be out for a while. She was even more worked up then.  I have promised that when she gets the regular cast, I will mod podge dolphins onto the cast. That really calmed her down and cheered her up a bit. Because of that, I'm worried that when we go to the doctor to get the regular cast, he'll decide not to, that it's not broken badly enough, and the brace is sufficient.