Farm Work

Today I've gone riding, tied up the calves, dragged the arena, and helped fix the holiday trailer. Riding went well, My horse was fine, I just walked her around the arena a bit and jogged a little. I also tied up the calves and washed the heifers again. The heifer I'm showing has calmed down a lot and I think she will do fine in the show. The bulls still need a little bit more work.

Before I went riding I drug the arena. I hooked up the arena groomer to the quad and drug it around the arena. This gets rid of all the hoof prints and imperfections in the sand. Then we watered down the arena so that it wasn't so dusty.

In preparation for the show we had to get the holiday trailer ready. The slide-out wasn't working and we had to work with the batteries and charge them in order to get it to work. It finally did and now we just have a few more things we have to do to prepare it for the show. We will be camping up by the show ground during the show so we have to get it ready.

Other than that nothing much else is going on. I'll keep you posted.

-JT

Preg Check

Yesterday we washed the two bull calves we're taking to the summer show. They did well and it calmed them down a lot. Then we blew them off and clipped them so they looked nice and spiffy. Today we did the same thing with our heifer calves and now they're all nice and clean and ready for the show. When we clip the calves we take a pair of clippers and  basically try to make them look longer, wider, and more square. I mostly had to clip their shoulders, back, underbelly and tail. We usually do something called "rat-tailing" this is when you shave the middle of the tail down a lot so the calf looks wider.

Also today we preg-checked our cows. This is when we take an ultrasound machine and check to see if the cow is pregnant. It went fairly well except for one cow got caught in the chute by the hips and we had to push her back out the side. She didn't enjoy that very much. 

We have a water trough out in our field that supplies water to our cows, the other day we noticed that it wasn't full. The water trough depends on our dugout as a water source. It turns out the pump had drained the water on top and was now sitting on the shore of the dugout. It wouldn't reach it anymore so we had to go and get some more pipe so it would go out farther. Now everythings alright.

It's been a very productive couple of days and everything else is going alright.



-JT

Rodeo

Today was the Airdrie rodeo and I had to go out and support my sister.......yay!  (the italics mean sarcasm) So I watched the Parade which was pretty good, and the rodeo went well. It was a pretty nice day out today, it was hot and then cold and then hot and then cold but overall it was good. I rode my sister's horse a little bit to get it warmed up before the rodeo.

After yesterday's work I have a pretty nice sunburn on my arms and face. My back is also sore from bending over to pick up weeds all day. Worth it. I'm pretty sore so I think I might go in the hot tub later tonight. I still have to get the calves in tonight.

Summer has been pretty good thus far, can't wait for the rest of it!

-JT

Weeding

You have to maintain your farm when you're in agriculture. This includes cutting grass, removing weeds, picking rocks. I did all that today, not at my own farm but at my neighbors;

Today I was working at our neighbors farm. I was kinda volunteered by my mom but hey, money. So I spent my day picking weeds around some bushes and also picking rocks. It went pretty well, it was a good solid day of actual work. I've been riding my horse which is going well and getting the calves ready for the show. Tomorrow is the Airdrie rodeo which I am going to. Ill be watching the Parade and which should be good and interesting.

Not much else going on, just getting into the feel of summer. I'll keep you updated.

-JT

Work

Now that school is over it is summer time and I can relax..... sort of. There's still alot of work to do during the summer. Today I'm going to change the battery on our fencer. The battery is electrifying our fence by the road. The reason for electrifying a fence is so that our livestock doesn't get onto the road. The battery is dead and so I have to go get a fully charged one and replace it so our cows don't get onto the road. There are many of other jobs to do on the farm during this time of year, since it is not cold out we can get alot more done. We have to clean out the barn, mow the grass, water the plants, organize all our equipment. Basically just making sure the whole farm is in order.

We have been working with the animals we are going to take to our Summer cattle show. We have been getting them in the barn and working on growing their hair by dumping water on them and putting the fan on them. We've also been walking our heifers which are still tame from our 4-H year. Mine follows me without hesitating and I think she'll do well in the show ring too. Soon we will be getting a pen system that has fans, sprayers and everything built-in so that will make our operation easier for spraying our calves.

The summer has been going good so far and I am looking forward to our cattle show, it should be a good time.

-JT

Done-ish

Finally, I'm done with my presidential 4-H year. I just finished my last 4-H meeting, which means I should be done. Technically though I'm still president until September, but we only have a couple more events until then. We still have to do the parade for Pete Knight days, and we still have our year end banquet. But I'm pretty much done. It's a relief, but also kinda sad that it's over.

Now that 4-H is pretty much done, it's time to start thinking about summer. I've got Summer Synergy to look forward to, it's a cattle show that's in July in Olds. It should be fun and I'm bringing my yearling heifer and two other calves.

My heifer

My sister's bringing the same and we've started feeding them and working with them. Today we put them in the barn and tied them in a pen. Then we fed them and misted them, misted is just basically spraying water on them. Then we put the big fan on them, this helps them to grow more hair to work with when the show gets here.

The water and fan makes the calves cold so they grow more hair. With more hair you can groom them to make them look thicker and longer. We're going to do this until the show comes so by then they should have lots of hair.

That's all for now

-JT

Final Safety Video!!



4-H on Parade

I haven't blogged in a while because of 4-H on Parade. For those who don't know, it is much like achievement day except with many other clubs from around the Calgary area. It was lots of fun and I took my steer, heifer, and cow/calf project. I didn't take my 3 year old because her calf is still very small and it just means less work for me. It went pretty well and we had lots of fun.

Showing

I'm happy with how my steer did, he came in 5th in his class which wasn't bad. I got $2.40 /lb for him in the sale, he weighed 1098lbs so I got around $2600. It was a pretty good weekend I'd say. Everyone in my club does this every year; they buy a calf at the beginning, raise it, and sell it at the end. It's a good experience and you gain lots of skills.

Fitting before the show.

Almost every year the 4-H on Parade committee comes up with something fun we do on Saturday night. This year we did a tug-of-war, the maximum for a team was 10 people so our club split into 2 teams. At the  beginning everyone was kind of skeptical about how fun it was going to be, but in the end everyone had a blast. We started and both our teams won their first game, we were happy as well as a little bit surprised. We kept playing and having fun and our confidence and celebrations increased. By the end both of our clubs were left and we had to face each other, although my team didn't win I was very proud that our club won gold and silver. It was lots of fun and I hope to do it again next year.

My Team

My Club

Overall, I enjoyed my presidential 4-H on Parade.

-JT

NEXT SAFETY VID!