Our cows and calves go south for the winter. No, not to Arizona, Florida or Texas. Bill hauls them to Winter Resort Ranch, about 45 minutes away, where they will receive sumptuous catered meals of silage and hay. Our farm is not set up to provide such lavish accommodations through the winter.

Boarding area play pen for the children.

Ear tags and inoculations are required prior to traveling south for the winter. If you haven’t already received those, we’ll provide them prior to boarding.

Pre-boarding is now open for children under one year old. 

We have a full load today. Carry-on luggage is limited to one bag per cow. 

General bovine boarding at Gate H is now open. Please have your boarding passes ready and proceed in an orderly fashion along the chute-way. 

Taxiing up the driveway. Cricket sees them off.

Leaving behind a cloud of dust, not a contrail, the cattle are on their way.

Neighbor's cattle watch enviously as ours leave. "Gee, sure wish we could go south for the winter!" 

"Here we are!"
"Which way to the beach? Cow-abunga!"
"I'm hungry. How soon do we get silage?" 
"What do you mean there's no beach? Did I board the wrong trailer?" 

Back at Hilbert Hauling Terminal service area: There are no lavatories in trailer-class.

Thanks for traveling with Hilbert Hauling! We’ll be happy to provide return transport next spring. Until then…

While we were dealing with the Trooper tragedy, another adventure was unfolding at one of the other rented pastures.

When Bill made his daily round of the pastures, he found one of the cows with a new calf. When he checked again the next day, all was well. By his calculation, no other cows were due to calf for a few days, so he didn’t check again until a couple of days later. On this tour of the pasture, he found a small calf, thin, weak and apparently abandoned. He loaded it into the back of the mini-truck and drove around the pasture to the cows that hadn’t yet calved to see if any would claim it. None did.

Bill theorized the abandoned calf was the one born a couple of days earlier. The cow may have delivered this one first, cleaned it and let it nurse. Then when nature told her, “Hold on. You’re not finished yet!” she birthed the second calf, claiming it and eventually abandoning this one.

Now we had an unclaimed calf needing a mother. But wait! We also had a cow suffering the loss of not only her own calf, but an adoptee. Sweet Pea was historically a good mother and we were distraught at the prospect of selling one of our favorite cows. Could we pull off another adoption?

Bill brought the calf home and put it in the barn. Not knowing if it received much colostrum from its mother, he gave it some just-add-water substitute. After Trooper died, he’d relocated Sweet Pea to our timber pasture, a quarter of a mile from the barn, so she wouldn’t stand at the corral pen and bawl for her dead calf. He found her and coaxed her to the barn, using his best imitation calf bawl.

The introduction did not go well. Sweet Pea butted and kicked at the calf when it tried to nurse. But the calf needed milk and the cow needed milking. Bill herded her toward the squeeze chute. Sweet Pea’s sweet disposition hadn't yet returned and we suspected she may have permanently sworn off humans. Getting her into the chute required much tactical herding, prodding and muttering. Placing a tub of grain outside the head gate finally lured her into the chute and kept her distracted while Bill milked her. He netted about two quarts and bottle-fed it to the calf.

The next morning, Bill repeated the milking and feeding procedure. He went out to repeat the process in the evening, but this time he lowered a side panel of the squeeze chute and let the calf nurse from the cow. By now, herding Sweet Pea into the chute was a routine she accepted and probably even anticipated, because she knew there was grain to munch on. 

An essential element of this calf adoption was missing: the hide from the previous calf. As a substitute to encourage Sweet Pea to lick the calf, Bill used a product formulated specifically for first-calf heifers and their calves to promote the bonding experience. The product is a granular concoction described as a flavored lick for cattle. The key ingredient is molasses, which is candy to cows and they love it! Bill used this product previously to encourage a first-calf heifer to accept her calf. I wrote about it in my book in the chapter “Marginally Unfit Mothers,” sub-chapter “Candy Calf.”

Bill dampened the calf’s back, sprinkled on the granules and left the pair together in the pen. His comment was “Maybe this will take, and maybe it won’t.” 

The next morning, Bill went to the barn, walked Sweet Pea into the chute, lowered the panel and let the calf nurse. He could see she had licked the calf, because the hair on its back was a sticky mess! He reapplied the molasses product and put the pair back in the pen. This was on a Friday and Bill was officiating at a high school football game in the evening. Before he left, he returned to the barn for the evening feeding. He found the calf nursing on its own and Sweet Pea was licking its back. His diligence was rewarded with success! Hot dang and hallelujah! 

To be sure this new bond held, Sweet Pea and her new adoptee stayed in the pen for another day, then were turned out into our pasture. Sweet Pea has forgiven us for the horrible, but necessary, experience the day her first calf was stillborn. She eats range cubes out of our hands again.

Bill named the abandoned-turned-adoptee calf “Maybe.” But, there’s no “maybe” about it—Sweet Pea loves this calf! Life is good!

So glad those are leaves covering the ground and driveway, and not snow!

Chain Saw Man cuts these trees into much smaller pieces then runs those through the log splitter so they will fit in the wood furnace. Cricket does her part to help haul the split wood to the house.

Without pretty flowers, June's Junque looks, well, junky! We'll empty the containers and store those and the yard art until next spring. Then the junk will once again become junque!

Hedge apples, also known as hedge balls, litter the ground in the yard and timber. These greenish-yellow bumpy balls are the fruit of the Osage orange tree, and plummet to the ground in the fall. On a recent walk through the timber, I was startled by a loud PLOP on the ground beside me. I had narrowly missed being concussed by a large hedge apple! Does anyone know why hedge apples come from Osage orange trees? Seems like "apples to oranges" to me! OK, I couldn't resist! 

Hedge apples are potentially hazardous for cattle. If a cow swallows one without chewing it, the apple can become lodged in the throat, suffocating her; or lodged in the esophagus so she can't swallow or burp, causing her to bloat and die. The latter happened on our farm last year.

Some people believe scattering hedge apples around the house foundation repels spiders. When I was a kid, my parents put hedge apples in the basement to repel crickets. Though some people swear this works, most sources I checked consider there is insufficient scientific evidence to support it. But, hey, if you think it works, by all means do it. It's harmless and doesn't expose you and your family to pesticides.

Hedge apples also provide a pop of bright green to arrangements containing gourds, pumpkins and fall foliage. I've created displays in an antique wooden dough bowl. Very autumn-ish!

The cattle go south for the winter.

By the next day, the bond between Sweet Pea and Trooper was as solid as if she birthed the calf herself. Bill loaded the new family and hauled them back to the rented pasture. We were relieved the adoption was successful, not just from the financial aspect, but because Sweet Pea was one of our favorites and we had grown fond of Trooper. 

On Saturday afternoon, we were literally walking out the door to attend a wedding in Lawrence when the phone rang. It was the neighbor who owned the pasture. Trooper appeared to be sick. He was lying flat on the ground and hadn't moved from that spot for several hours. Sweet Pea would nudge him, but he wouldn't get up.

Bill grabbed farm clothes and drove his pickup to the pasture. I followed in the car. If Trooper wasn't sick, we would leave the pickup and go on to the wedding. But he was sick with scours, a severe form of diarrhea, and too weak to get up. We returned home, Bill changed his clothes and, grabbing his hypodermic syringe and medicine, returned to the pasture. This emergency caught him without any electrolyte supplement so we would stop at a farm store in Lawrence to resupply.

We missed the wedding but arrived in time for the reception. The groom worked for a large cattle operation and also owned his own small herd, so he understood and sympathized with the reason for our tardiness.

The next morning, Bill mixed up the electrolyte mixture in the calf bottle and took it to the pasture. Trooper was too weak to suck, so Bill used the feeding tube he'd thought to take with him.  He returned later and tube fed more electrolyte mixture.

On Monday, Trooper showed no sign of improvement so Bill hauled both him and Sweet Pea home. He thought the scours might be caused by the richness of the cow’s milk upsetting the calf’s digestive system. Prior to the adoption, we fed him the less rich milk replacer for several days. Bill separated the pair, penning Trooper in the barn and putting Sweet Pea just outside in a corral pen so they could at least see each other. This arrangement was not acceptable to her and she displayed her annoyance by bawling and pawing up the ground.

On the advice of a veterinarian, Bill tried a different medicine on Trooper, continued the electrolyte solution and resumed feeding him a little milk replacer. He began to show improvement and, by the next day, was up skipping around the pen and bawling for his new mother. Bill removed the barrier panel between the two pens and reunited the pair. We were relieved we’d apparently survived another crisis and happy for our pet, Sweet Pea—she would have a calf to mother.

Late the next afternoon, Trooper relapsed. Medicine, electrolytes and milk replacer couldn’t bring him out of it this time. He died a couple of days later. We were crushed. Bill had never lost a battle with calf scours. I felt sad for Sweet Pea, losing two calves in the span of a week. Maybe their brains don’t process the information in just that way. I hope not, for her sake, but my brain does and I grieved for both of us.

June's Note: Regrettably, we have no pictures of Trooper.

Bill arrived home from the livestock sale. The same thought had occurred to both of us—attempt the adoption process with Sweet Pea and Trooper.

We caravan-ed out the driveway in what I was beginning to think of as the Hilbert Cattle Emergency First Responders: Bill driving his farm truck pulling the stock trailer and me driving the mini-truck. The image would have been complete if we'd stuck our arms out the windows and slapped those flashing red Kojak lights on top of the vehicles! 

Bill was concerned Sweet Pea would become even more upset if she saw the truck and trailer, so we left them parked on the side of the road and took the mini-truck to the pasture. Sweet Pea was lying down next to her dead calf, but with her head up. When she saw us approach, she bawled a warning, hauled herself up and stood in front of her calf, as if to protect it. I sadly wondered if she would ever again trust humans.

I parked the truck near Sweet Pea. Bill loaded the dead calf into the back, then directed me to drive to the catch pen. Sweet Pea followed, bellowing and tossing her head. When we arrived at the pen, Bill dragged the calf through the gate. Of course, Sweet Pea followed. We shut the pen gate.

We drove out of the pasture, closed the gate behind us and went back down the driveway to get the truck and trailer. I led the way back to the pasture, opened the gate for Bill, followed him through with the mini-truck, then closed the gate. Bill backed the trailer to the catch pen, opened the trailer gate, then the pen gate. He dragged the calf into the trailer and bolted out before Sweet Pea trampled him in her haste to get to her calf. We closed the trailer gate and headed home.

Once home, Bill unloaded Sweet Pea into the alleyway leading to the corral, then herded her into a pen in the barn. He drove around to the double doors, then dragged the dead calf into the barn near the pen where a furious Sweet Pea was bawling and kicking up dirt. Once again, he used his deer skinning knife to cut the hide off the calf, then cut holes for twine. He sent me to the house to mix up a little milk replacer appetizer for Trooper.

Bill grabbed a rope from his shop and we went to the other barn to get Trooper. We gave him a swig of milk replacer, Bill tied the rope loosely around his neck and we walked him into the barn. I straddled him, firmly grasped the rope in one hand and held the bottle with the other, while Bill draped the hide over his back and started tying it on with nylon twine. Sweet Pea closely observed this process through the pen gate and fussed her disapproval at us. She knew we were doing something with her calf and whatever it was, she didn't like it! Oh, if only she could comprehend what was happening.

Trooper drained the bottle and looked around impatiently for more food. Then he butted me in the crotch, not hard, but with just enough pressure that I suggested to Bill to please hurry the heck up! To keep the fidgety calf still, I bent over and put my arms around him while his new coat was fastened. In the absence of afterbirth to smear on the hide, Bill rubbed his hands over the skinned carcass, then quickly smeared the slime on the hide and over my bare arms. Hey, I’m not the adoptee here!

When Trooper was dressed in his slimy adoption coat, I opened the pen gate and Bill pushed him through. Sweet Pea sniffed him, looked him over and sniffed again. She took a test lick. At that point, we left to give them some quality bonding time. I fervently hoped Trooper would prefer his new mom over me and the bottle of milk replacer!

Bill went out half an hour later and Trooper was having supper while Sweet Pea licked his back. When Bill came in and told me about the successful adoption, I nearly cried again. Another hallelujah moment on the Hilbert farm!

Bill had a high school district playoff game last night, so it was just us girls—Cricket and I. And, of course, the herd. Since we've had almost three and a half inches of rain in the past couple of days, making our walking route very muddy in places, I decided to take a more leisurely walk. I strapped on my camera, stepped into my gumboots and we set off to do a photo shoot update on our calves. 

Remember our first calf of the fall calving season, Gussie? Here she is. I couldn't get a current picture of #20 and Gussie together. The calves are at that stage where they don't want to hang around Mom except for meals!

Initially, one of our first-calf heifers, Ginger, needed a quick Mothering 101 course. Fortunately, she caught on quickly. Her calf is thriving!

Fogerty, son of Creedence and grandson of Proud Mary, is still quite the little rascal and ringleader of the calf herd.

Remember when I said Calf #501 had her mother's eyes? Well, I was wrong. She actually has two black eyes, not one. You can barely see the black ring around her left eye in the "Now" picture.

Remember how skinny Proud Mary was after Tina was born? She is filling out nicely.

The calves are at the age when they would rather hang with their friends than with their moms.

"Aw, c'mon! How 'bout a little kiss!"

Smoochie, Smoochie!!