Nose Ring Update

'Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.'  Is the forgiving way of saying - we blew it!
The nose rings did seem like a good idea- an excellent idea. In the past we'd tried the more conventional methods of weaning our cattle with a mediocre success rate.

On a small farm,  a fretting cow's bellow can be heard echoing across the valleys and hills for a kilometer or so. No matter how we separate mothers from calves, they know where the missing family members are and fences are no obstacle.

Our small acreage led to the nose ring solution, no need for separation and anxiety, the spikes on the calves nose ring just make life too uncomfortable for the cow and she does the weaning by herself. A win-win situation.

In any form of mass organisation, it only takes one to break ranks for the system to falter. Most of our cows baulked at the calf trying to suckle with a great yellow medieval torture device stuck on the end of their noses so the weaning was looking good.     Except for one hyper maternal mother, who gritted her teeth, spread her legs and put up with her udder being pricked and poked and butted by some instrument left over from the Spanish inquisition. Yes, a total mummy's boy who would not go out with the others and play in the paddock.

Kids being kids, it didn't take long for a game of copycat to develop. The other calves knew well enough to leave their own mothers alone, but that didn't stop them from harassing hyper maternal mother by ducking in between her back legs for a quick slurp or performing pincer movements to out wit her. Either hyper mother had to harden up or the humans had to step in.

hyper mother

With a bit of lateral thinking we thought of making a spiked bra to fit over the cows udder, something like a size 600 EEE, with a bit of research and development it might just work in the future. I'll have to consider adjustable shoulder - make that hip straps, but it should be possible. I'm thinking black rubber and large chrome spikes.

Meanwhile we tightened up the nose rings till the calves eyes watered and sent them out to eat grass.

Dealing with the weather

Watching the cattle during the heat wave in February made me feel happy not to be a cow. They have a built in summer and winter wardrobe,  as memories of scarce winter feed fade they shed their heavy winter coats along with their scrawny shapes. They are down to their summer short back and sides but they now weigh in at a hefty 600 to 650 kilos. There are shoulders and hips in there somewhere but they are well padded by burgeoning rumps, sirloins, briskets, chuck and rib eye steaks. Lugging that sort of weight around creates its own portable heat wave.

By mid morning the cattle head for the shade of the trees by the dam and there they relax till late afternoon. Occasionally one will channel it's distant relation, the hippopotamus and wade shank deep into the dam. Cattle don't have a vast range of facial expressions, but the blissed out face of a Hereford standing in a dam on a 37 degree day is a joy to behold.

Come winter, our cattle cope well with the cold weather by growing in a woolly coat on top of their already thick natural leather jackets. If only the grass in winter would grow in the same way. Where we are, winter means scavenging over thin pickings supplemented with hay. If you want to train a herd of cattle to sit, roll over and beg, bring them bales of hay in winter.

4 degrees outside and not much better on the inside,
the calf is wearing an old jacket  

All of this brings me to the Asian water buffalo  Bubalus bubalis. 


While extreme weather plagued our east coast, we were in the hills of northern Vietnam, trekking through the winter rice paddies.

The Asian version of a tractor, plow, cart, family transporter and producer of baby buffalos - the water buffalo,  spends most of its life in cool squishy mud, the water buffalo has no need for a winter coat because winter in Asia is usually a non event. This year the temperature in the hills around Sapa in Vietnam was close to freezing for days on end.
Water buffalos died in their thousands- over 20,000 to be exact.  

That's 20,000 pieces of multipurpose farm machinery gone.

The ups and downs of Spring

All was going well down on the farm, as Spring emerged so did our new calves.  Looking back there were signs of trouble we didn't pick up on for one of the cows. She gave birth easily enough- but not without consequences because out came the calf and her uterus as well.  There she was slowly wandering along dragging her uterus behind her. One look at the dirt, stones and sticks she was picking up would be enough to make you think she didn't have a chance.

The great thing about the bush we keep discovering is that when you make a phone call things happen rapidly. Down here  'your phone call is important to us'.  The local vet was there in 20 minutes with a drop sheet,  a bucket of water and antibiotics. A good wash and a fair amount of shoving and the cow and her uterus were back together. After an hour or two she perked up and at the end of the day she ambled back to the herd, calf in tow.

All seemed well for the next month, then the same cow went missing. We found her caught up in some fallen branches- 3 steps backwards and she would have been free. Instead she had tried to push forward, had exhausted herself and was down. Again the phone calls went out and this time within 10 minutes the neighbours started arriving, some we knew and some were called up on the bush telegraph- strangers with a bale of hay, years of experience and  and the time to offer what ever help was needed.

She hung on for another day,  but she could not get up and so we lost a cow and gained an orphan calf. Life was not looking all that promising for the calf, but when a hungry calf needs a drink it finds a way.

The little orphan quickly worked out that cows can't count and they can't see behind them either, so as soon as one of the other calves sidled up to its mum, the orphan dived in between the cows back legs and slurped up as much  free milk as it could get away with. This tactic kept it alive but was not without it's dangers. Cows don't announce when they plan to empty their bladder or their bowels and when they do, it comes with an almighty rush. If you happen to have your eyes down concentrating on a surreptitious suckle from the rear end of a cow then you often end up with a pile of shit on your head. Our poor little orphan often looked a sad and sorry sight wandering around  motherless, with its coat matted and dripping.

He's still there, smaller than the rest and always one or two steps off to the side of the herd but he's going to make it all by himself in the world.

How to Get a Phone Connected

I think I know at least one reason for the direction of this Telstra graph

Our farm is not far from anywhere, the nations capital is less than two hours away but we have zero phone reception.  No mobile and no landline. In some ways the idea of being cut off from the pressures of life is appealing but these days communication seems to be essential. We've tried walking up the hill and waving the mobile around hoping for at least one bar of reception, we've tried a booster aerial and failed. Finally we decided to take the ultimate step - contact Telstra to get a landline connected.

Here is a handy step by step guide to getting a Telstra landline
* the total number of hours left on hold =   for my own sanity I stopped counting!

Step 1   make at least four phone calls to different numbers
before you discover that you are not getting a phone connection, but a 'pre provisioning order'

Step 2   receive a pre provisioning order number and wait

Step 3   after several months of no action call to find that your order number has been misplaced and nothing has happened

Step 4   go to the back of the queue

Step 5   many weeks later, contractor arrives and begins work, says as soon as he confirms work we will have a phone.      Time frame - 7 - 10 days.

Step 6   after several weeks of no action call Telstra to discover that additional infrastructure work is required and the job will be scheduled in the future

Steps 7- 12  keep calling and waiting

the job that only took 8 months

Step 13   receive a phone call to inform us that we must be present on site for the next stage of work, and contractor will call to confirm. Explain that there is no phone reception so no use calling

Step  14  contractor gets lost, calls for directions, but as there is no reception I miss the call

Step 15  several weeks later, receive phone call from contractor asking what needs to be done, tell him we thought he would know.  He says no, but he'll go and find out.

Step 16  Exactly eight months to the day after first contacting Telstra we have a landline.

The Cattle Yard Shopping Expedition

With the help of our neighbours we've had several cattle round ups, but it was becoming clear that one day in the near future we were going to need our own cattle yards. As part of our research on yards we discovered that we needed to learn 'cattle yardese.'  Here's a quiz- what is a 'man gate'- too easy, so here are a few more --

what is a :-  crossover gate, baulk gate, bullock pacifier, race, forcing gate and  don't forget the double gudgeon because it can either cause trouble or stop trouble.

The initial question for those in a cattle yard free zone is- to go with timber or gal, that's galvanised steel of course. The vision of an old timber cattle yard with corner posts so huge a grown man can't get his arms around them is appealing, but the modern cattle yard has no corners. Cattle inherently love corners, they herd into them head first with their rumps facing the world and refuse to budge.  Its hard enough to make a mob of cattle stay in forward gear, so forget an orderly reverse out of a corner.  To over come this problem, cattle yards these days are built in a series of octagons, hexagons, pentagons and wedges.  That's just the yards, the piece de resistance is the crush. The deluxe model comes with slide gates, vet gates,  chin bar, split slide gates, baulk crush, and hydraulic fold away handles. Who could resist, shopping for  cattle yards is a bit like buying an ice cream, why would you buy vanilla in a single cone when you could have a triple flavour in a hand rolled extra large waffle cone with your choice of toppings.  It's a no brainer!

When it comes to making a final decision, shopping for cattle yards is like choosing your child's school or buying a new car, everyone thinks their choice is the best and  loves to tell you why.  Browsing on the internet is helpful but there are no cattle yard shops, you can't just drop down to Bunnings and pack one onto a trolley on Saturday morning.

So once again it was off to a farming field day where we could kick the metaphorical tyres on the yards to see exactly how they worked.

In the past shopping with 'cattle yard man' has never  been a truly satisfying experience, he has an  attention span of approximately 35 minutes and then we buy 3 pairs of identical pants and forget about the shirts or the red sweater because it all gets too fraught.

On a cool Autumn morning we headed up the freeway on a mission to find ourselves some cattle yards.  Field days are a wonderful magnet for everyone buying and selling anything rural.  Once through the turnstiles, the first few hours were spent testing out yards, then a second circuit of testing was needed, then a third was suggested.  I sensed that my superior experience gained at many Christmas sales was required.  Why once I had managed to grab three pairs of shoes, a handbag, two sets of sheets and a 60 piece cutlery set in just 40 minutes.

'We can't just go and buy a set of yards' moaned cattle yard man.

'Why not.' was my exasperated reply.  'Thats what we came here for.'

'No one just buys them.' he rationalised.

We were in serious trouble, we were on a shopping expedition and about to go home empty handed.

So back we went to the favoured  manufacturer only to discover that we were in a queue. There were two people ahead of us, both with their credit card ready, both buying a complete set of cattle yards.

Five weeks later, the yards arrived on the back of a truck, custom designed to our requirements. In the end it was like shopping at Ikea,  the yards came in a giant flat pack ready to be erected. I expected a huge allen key to be included, along with instructions to 'insert A(2) into T(4)' but no, they came with Troy who set up our yards in about two and a half hours while carrying on

 a running conversation about the joys and pitfalls of cattle farming,  romance, trucks, chocolate cakes, horses and football.

It doesn't get any better.

The First Great Cattle Muster

Our small herd of Herefords consists of five cows each with a calf, four heifers and one little bull calf. And now the time has come to turn the little bull into a steer. These days this is done with elastic bands, they're slipped over the bulls balls and a couple of weeks later they drop off and - da dah! you have a steer.  No pain, no blood and best of all no great skill involved.

An early problem was quickly identified- we have no cattle yards, well we have the decaying remains of what we refer to as the rustlers yards, now mostly used by termites to sharpen their teeth and breed their young.  So what do we round the cattle up into.
Problems like this are easily solved in the bush. You talk to a neighbour and not only will the offer of their yards be instantly forthcoming, in our case the offer of their kids to help round up the cattle was also thrown in.

A family muster was organised on our side of the fence and on the appointed day our surfer dude son arrived down our dirt road in his shiny black car. He came fully equipped in thongs, Oakleys,  boardies
and a straw Fedora.

'Don't worry Mum, I've come prepared.' was his response to my raised eyebrows.  With this he kicked off the thongs and changed into a pair of white leather Nikes.  The eyebrows stayed raised.

Sensing that something was up, the cattle had chosen the far corner of the property across two creeks to  check out the possibility of some new grass.  The humans set off like a pack of Blue Heelers to bring the cattle in. They took the scenic route but eventually they were herded toward our open gate out onto the road and hopefully down the road to the neighbour's yards.
There was a slight hesitation at the gate and in a flash the cattle weighed up the situation and took off in a dozen different directions into the bush across the road.  In a Mt Eyjafjallajokull like moment - chaos erupted   -ahead of the cattle was dense bush and a rocky escarpment leading to a 4 metre drop into a creek.

Like lemmings, the humans followed the cattle into the bush.  One human ran with more purpose, the neighbour's 8 year old raced around the left flank yelling instructions to the adults
'I know where they are, go round'  and sure enough the cattle emerged with the pint sized human behind them herding them in the right direction.

To say that they quietly wandered into the yards would be some way from the truth, but to cut a long story short, they did end up in the yards, the bull calf was separated from his mother and secured in the crush.

Then it was time for the elastic bands to be applied.   In  Bull Castration 101 the first job is to locate the testicles. All the human males were down the correct end of the calf but something was missing. Maybe they hadn't descended, perhaps there was a veterinary problem. Maybe with all the excitement they had contracted.  More prodding and gentle encouragement, for city slickers its a wondrous sight to see a group of grown males murmuring soothing words as they gently stroke a bulls nether regions.  The result was exactly nothing, no balls, no result.

The ruckus we had created attracted a curious neighbour who thought we city slickers sounded as if we were out of our depth. Its interesting that he could tell this from over half a kilometer away.  He sauntered up to the cattle yards- took in the calf from the front then the rear and then had a good look at his head.  Wrong end,   we know- it -alls were thinking.

'Doesn't look too bully to me, he's been done, you can tell by the head and neck- oh and he has no balls!'

Infrastucture

Our farm on the unknown road suffers from a number of deficiencies, apart from obvious problems like no workable address, we have ancient fences, trees on fences, heavy crops of weeds, no power, no telephone,  no sheds, no house, the list of 'nos' is a long one. However that is about to change.  The buzz words today are 'infrastructure' and 'going forward' ...  so - going forward we are investing in infrastructure.

Getting the trees off the fences would classify as going forward, but there is nothing concrete to see once the trees are gone,  just less of what was once there. What we need is to ADD something in our going forwardness. We need something that says 'infrastructure'.

Now I know how the politicians feel, it's all very well to have cups of tea and meet the people tours, but what you need is bang for your bucks - a big announcement followed by a big building program!!

And so the idea of 'The Shed' is born.

The shed is not just a big idea it is an vital one, it fulfills a life essential - shelter,  and most important of all - mans primordial need for A Shed.

Shed Man burst onto the scene  - we have no phone booth or phone so you just have to imagine how it might have looked. This would be no ordinary shed, no pre-fab job here, this would be a proper infrastructure project. Shed Man also discovered that someone, sometime had once started down the infrastructure path before him, there are piles of old corrugated iron, bricks and timber scattered around, all waiting to be recycled.  There are also the remains of an old bed, a sofa, a window and even an ironing board, but that's all way too sophisticated for us.

The shed began life right on the farm as the trees growing up in our road and on our fences, they had to go, but not too far.  The straight ones were felled, the bark skinned off them and lined up in our mini timber yard.   Like all good infrastructure projects this was not going to happen overnight.  After a huge amount of calculation, the next stage began with the digging of the post holes. Several weeks and stages later it was time for the roof to go on. While Shed Man is a great handy man, this was to be his first 3 bay shed.  As the neighbours  came and went offering advice ( picture a movie in fast forward - clouds fast tracking overhead, trucks and utes buzzing back and forward)  Shed Man continued steadily on with his  project.  An old school mate arrived for a visit and became a builders labourer, one of our sons arrived for a day in the country and quickly found himself up a ladder with a sheet of corrugated iron to nail down.  Someone pointed out that a vital component was missing, if the whole structure wasn't braced it could start to list then fall neatly to the ground or worse, blow away. A stop work order  seemed the best option until and the concept of bracing was researched.

Many weeks later and now fully braced, the roof of The Shed was completed.  Its a fine piece of infrastructure -  the only piece for that matter. There it sits, providing shelter for the tractor, for us and as we have discovered, the cows who all like to camp under its roof and scratch against it's poles.  What about some walls you might ask, well the pyramids didn't happen overnight and neither will our shed.