"Whitetail Hollow" - 90 Acres NE Oklahoma.

Getting a little dry here in Oklahoma. No rain in over a month and lots of triple digit temps…

First picture is May 28th and second one is today…

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Well, I guess providence has opened another chapter in our life. My wife and I got baby chicks from the coop in late April to raise for egg production and they are all doing well. I am in the process of building a larger coop as they have started to outgrow our Tractor Supply coop and it is coming along well but slowly due to all the other obligations I have. They are Rhode Island Reds and I free range them whenever I am home.

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As of late we have had a lot of Raccoon issues and I have killed 6 in the past 2 weeks along with 2 possums. I haven’t lost any birds but the predators are definitely coming around. I made a little YouTube video of some of the issues this morning.


Our goal is to try to get some semblance of self sufficiency with egg and poultry production and the chickens have really been a joy. My wife also raises vegetable gardens so it has been a little challenging with the chickens but so worth it.

Now our next venture comes into play. My wife has always wanted cows and my family used to raise cattle on our family farm where Home 10 is. I have been having to Brushhog the 30 some odd acres we own over there and it just seems a waste as all I ever do with the place is kill a couple of does off of it a year. About a year and 1/2 ago a woman my wife and I attend church with lost her husband to cancer. She had a cattle herd of brangus cattle that she tried to keep with the help of her son but he decided he didn’t want to do it so they offered to sell us some of the herd before they sent them to the sale barn. At this point we have 14 head and 3 have been born since we bought them. I should have fences fixed on our old place by next weekend good enough to hold them with 3 different pastures. Old Doug Gallow would be proud I reckon...

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This little guy was just born today...

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I took a picture of your post about having cattle now at the Home 10 and sent it to Doug. Here is his reply:
"Good! Place needs to generate income or it’s a money sink. What we saw many years ago. Have a bull working for customers near Talequah and a spring herd at Vinita. Hay is tight this year and grass not carrying like an average year."
 
I took a picture of your post about having cattle now at the Home 10 and sent it to Doug. Here is his reply:
"Good! Place needs to generate income or it’s a money sink. What we saw many years ago. Have a bull working for customers near Talequah and a spring herd at Vinita. Hay is tight this year and grass not carrying like an average year."
Well, tell him I was offered the hayfield they had a deal on for this year and found someone to bale it and I got 116 4x5 bales off of it and since our place hasn’t had any cattle or any livestock on it we still have some forage for them...haven’t moved the cows from their home pasture yet and as a bonus we can use their pasture as long as we like...every year...so we are sitting good even in this wild drought we are in this year...
 
Good on you Johnny! Free range eggs are in the same category as home-grown maters...nothing store bought compares. Best of luck with the cattle. But something tells me you won't need any luck.
 
Let me tell you a little story about cow 19...

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Cow 19 would let me pet her until she had this heifer calf. I went down to tag the calf the day after it was born and she ran from me until the calf ran right through the fence and down into the canebrakes on the river bottom and didn’t come back until sometime up in the night. I finally did get an ear tag in it when they came to a lot with the rest of the cows to eat but 19 lost all trust in me then...

When cattle moving day came to move all of the cattle to home 10 from where they had been born and raised we caught all of them except 19 and her calf...they were wild as a March hare and wouldn’t come in no matter what so we loaded the rest of the cows and took them to their new home...

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I thought if we catch her calf we can get her...my plan was to feed her every day until we get her to go into the lot and then close them up...

This was Tuesday after the Saturday we moved the cows...

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I moved the trough a little closer to the lot and this was Wednesday.

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On Thursday I moved the trough into the lot and Friday afternoon the cow and calf went in and I called the previous owner and asked them to shut the gate as soon as these pictures came through...

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19 paced back and forth all night and I had set up the move for Saturday and just before dawn she jumped out of the lot but her calf couldn’t get out so we still had it.

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We tried and tried to get her to come up on Saturday but she was wild and would have none of it so I had her calf in the barn and it was bawling for her and I hid in some brush and waited for her. She finally came and went in the barn and I tried to shut her in but she heard me and busted out before I could get the gate latched...flung me against the corral and broke a post on her way out...

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I tried the rest of the day to no avail and while waiting her out I contacted a cowboy and pleaded with him to come give me a hand...younger fellow but very accomplished. He agreed to meet me there at 7 am the next morning. The cow had been in the barn all night with the calf but went back into the trees just before we arrived. His plan was to push her into the open field and try to herd her into the corral using his horse and a dog...that didn’t work at all as she kept running straight back into the woods so he decided to rope her and we would drag her into the trailer. When he went into the woods to push her out she busted through the barbed wire fence and ran down into the river bottom so he trailed her by tracks until he found her mired in a mud slough...

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He roped her and she got so mad all she wanted to do was kill anybody near her. The cowboy used that to our advantage and got her out of the mud and she chased him all the way to the truck and trailer.


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We got 2 ropes on her head and one on her heel and we finally drug her into the trailer.

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He told me she would destroy our corral if we unloaded her there so he said he would either take her to home 10 or the sale barn. He recommended sale barn because he said she would make all the rest of the cows wild...I hated to sell a cow I had just bought who already had me a real nice heifer calf but I finally told him to haul her to the sale barn. Unbelievably they sold fairly well and I didn’t lose any money on the deal and bittersweet I have her calf from last year still because I bought her as a pair with that year old heifer calf. Crazy cow...


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As for the rest of them they had been on my original 10 acres 2 weeks so we moved them to the other 20 acre paddock today...

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That just happens sometimes. They can be different animals after giving birth. As I was reading the story I kept saying. "Sell her"
You are now Cowboy Kubota
 
At least you got some money for that mean ol cow. I would have shot her. I hated dealing with cows like that in vet school.
We thought we were going to have to but with good help we made it happen. Luckily the Tulsa sale was on Monday and we caught her on Sunday. I just hope whoever bought her and the calf observed her well in the ring...it’s like something totally snapped in her head because before that calf came she was the first to the feed bucket...
 
That just happens sometimes. They can be different animals after giving birth. As I was reading the story I kept saying. "Sell her"
You are now Cowboy Kubota
I tried to justify every way I could in my mind to keep her and the calf but in the end it just made no sense...I don’t have enough help to deal with it and I don’t want any neighbor problems around home 10 so it was the only sane thing to do...on another note I almost bought a nice 3 year old Brangus Bull at the sale barn yesterday but I stopped bidding before I hit my limit because I don’t have a cattle trailer yet...he was a great looking bull and he was pretty calm in the ring...
 
Oddly, even as a kid I had a fear of cattle. Didn't help that my cousin was gored by a cow when he was about 9. Your sho-nuf cowboy neighbor came in handy!
 
You got lucky with the gate,I treated a guy that got hammered by a gate and cow he broke his femur.Be careful they are way more dangerous than equipt.
 
She's a good momma! Not a good herd cow. They get past you once and they learn something. Get over a fence once and they learn something. Bust open a gate and they've learned something. They never unlearn those things. Lot's of broken ribs from people pushing a gate closed. More safe to pull it closed but that isn't always an option. Glad you got her taken care of before it got too serious. We had to use a cowboy to rope one last weekend (after it broke 3 fences and was on the neighbors place).
 
She's a good momma! Not a good herd cow. They get past you once and they learn something. Get over a fence once and they learn something. Bust open a gate and they've learned something. They never unlearn those things. Lot's of broken ribs from people pushing a gate closed. More safe to pull it closed but that isn't always an option. Glad you got her taken care of before it got too serious. We had to use a cowboy to rope one last weekend (after it broke 3 fences and was on the neighbors place).
Did it get a trip to the livestock auction?
 
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