When the Cows Came Home

Apparently waiting until the cows come home is a long time, and for us it certainly has been.  When we found Joyce we had been looking hard on craigslist for nearly three months in search of a good deal on feeder calves.  It's not easy finding good calves at an affordable cost.  Also, getting into cattle is an expensive endeavor, but with 20 acres of pasture we want to make sure we're getting good use out of the land.

Oh, Joyce isn't the name of one of the cows, she's the lady we bought the cows from.  After contacting several sellers and asking about their cattle we decided on buying some cows from Joyce because she's super nice and very knowledgeable.  She was offering nice looking, well cared for calves at an unbeatable price.  From what we gathered talking to her she puts a lot of time and effort gentling her calves, properly vaccinating them, and a healthy feeding program.  So this past weekend we hitched up the stock trailer and drove all the way up to Woodburn, Oregon to load up the start of our herd.

From left:  Patty (belted gallaway-angus-jersey cross heifer), Ron (angus steer), and Becky (limousin heifer)

Deciding on what breed of cows to get was not an easy decision.  Everyone knows Angus because of all the successful marketing and while it's recommended when starting a cattle operation to consider the market demand, we didn't want to decide solely on the business aspects because our little family farm is more about the love of the animals and the life experience.  Since we're not interested in a dairy or breeder/calving operation we could be a bit more flexible and not worry about registered breeds.  Cross breed cattle can be heartier as well, so we opted for a couple heifers with some traditional beef cattle and heritage stock lines to start with.  We picked up a limousin heifer and a Belted Galloway (Oreo Cookie cow)-Angus-Jersey cross heifer as breeding cows.  We also grabbed a cute little Angus steer to keep the young ladies company for awhile.  When the time comes we'll breed the heifers with a gentle limousin bull that's easy on first time cows.

We spent the past couple of weekends getting ready for bringing cows home, patching up some pasture fencing, replacing old or missing posts, and re-hanging gates so they worked properly.  We got the smaller pasture all ready to go and thought we were well prepared to just drop some calves in it, but being rookie cow pokes we didn't think about a transition space to get the new calves acquainted with their new home.  Joyce dropped that bombshell on us as we were chatting and loading the calves.  She asked if we had a small solid fenced off area we could keep the calves in for a couple of weeks so they had time to adjust to their new owners and farm space, and we responded with a positive yes.  It was more of a yes, sure we've got this and we will have a space for them...just as soon as we get home and whip one up!   Thankfully we have a barn and I had a quick plan to get space in it ready, but it took a bit work when we got home.  Much of the work we already intended to do because we planned on turning the barn into some horse stalls anyway, but this gave us some urgent motivation and helped us clear a third of the barn for getting the calves settled in.

The next two weeks will be handling and getting them ready for pasture.  The herd begins.