Getting Shots

I've long heard the stories of how painful it is for parents to have to hold their babies while doctors and nurses poke them with needles, so I certainly can't really complain about what it was like to watch Daisy Mae get a shot of vaccine -- but I also had no idea it would be such an ordeal.  I naively assumed that cattle had tough, thick hides, and since Sydney (my dog) doesn't react much, if at all, to needles, that Daisy wouldn't notice either.  However, as John pointed out, Sydney's not that difficult to hold at 40 pounds.  I also realized that tough, thick skin doesn't necessarily mean less sensitive and may in fact mean more difficult to puncture.

Long story short, Daisy's fine, and she got the shot that will keep her healthy once she gets pregnant.  We should have tied her up before even trying the first time, but after John fed her halter through the bumper of one of his old pick-ups, it made everything a lot easier.  And with the exception of the oxidized auto paint she rubbed onto her face, Daisy survived without much of a mark.  She's now one step closer to being ready for motherhood.

10 Things I've Learned

10.  Cattle have an olfactory organ on the roofs of their mouths.  When they want to smell something, they use their noses, but they can also tip their heads in the air with their mouth slightly open.
9.  Black is the dominant gene color in Angus; red is recessive.
8.  The large flap of skin that starts at the lower neck is where brisket comes from.
7.  The estrus cycle of a cow is 21 days on average.  Gestation is 9 months.
6.  One cow produces an impressive amount of manure!
5.  A heifer needs to gain 1.5 pounds per day to weight enough to breed as a yearling.
4.  Cattle have no top incisors (front teeth), just a hard dental pad -- and it IS hard.
3.  You need to be choosy about your bulls because they can spread STDs.  Do you know whom your bull's been with?
2.  Bucket calves like Daisy have potbellies.
1.  As my Raising Beef Cattle book says, "It's bovine nature to be bossy and pushy, " and Daisy better learn that I'm "top cow."

Keeping Busy

I can't believe I've had Daisy for over a week and I've only posted once about her, especially since there have certainly been things I could write about.  The first week back to school with a new set of chores to do went fairly smoothly.  Most days, I waited to get dressed until right before leaving because I've discovered that I get very dirty very easily when I feed and water Daisy.  Sometimes it's the mud, but usually it's when she hopes I have more food hidden somewhere, and she apparently thinks that somewhere is on my person.  Cattle are slobbery creatures!

I feed her in the morning -- about 4 pounds of cake, creep, and corn -- and again when I get home from school.  The after school feedings are a little more varied.  One day I bought apples for myself at the store, but they were both really mealy and nasty -- so I fed them to Daisy.  As I wrote in an email to my mom, she acted as though I'd given her crack and she was hooked the first time.  In my reading I've also discovered that cattle will eat potatoes and if there's anything we have a lot of it's spuds, so I fed her a potato one day.  Mostly, however, I just give her about half the ration of feed that I give her in the morning.

I also check her water twice a day, which wouldn't be as necessary to do if she didn't dump it as often.  I don't know if she likes to play with the giant-sized blue bucket or if she tips it over when she scratches her head on the edge, but half the time I find it somewhere across the yard.  Eventually I think we'll be tying it down, but John's the one who knows what to do with that.  I'm just the student.