Onto my thoughts for the day. A couple of weeks ago I was with some other older ranchers and I was showing them the video of how we Scour Guard our cows. I thought they would get a kick out of it since we’re just tying them up and not running them through chutes. The video I’m talking about is viewable on the Back Valley Ranch facebook site. It shows Jerry calmly walking up to a group of cows, putting a rope over one and she walks over to the fence with him, ties and gets her shot. It’s all very low key and not a lot of fuss.

To my surprise, one of the ranchers said that he thought this was more cruel then putting them through a chute. “You’re choking the poor thing” he said. I didn’t really know what to say. I tried to explain to him that the rope loosens when the cow steps forward and if they ever get too tight then there’s a quick release knot to let them go. But he still just shook his head and said that he didn’t agree with it. I decided not to get into it as there was no point. I just thought to myself that he can’t handle his animals like we do, so which way is more cruel?

I’ve seen cattle in chutes, clanging around and getting stressed out. I’ve even seen where they’ve gotten stuck or flipped over backwards. After they’re treated they go running out of the chute and get as far away from the human as they can. Yet when ours are tied, they don’t run away after we release them. It’s a lot better for them we find as they don’t feel as trapped as in a chute.

I definitely don’t feel like we fit in with most conventional ranchers with our different ways of doing things. But our cattle are calm, easy to handle and live stress free lives. I’m currently reading “The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer” by Joel Salatin and I’m comforted by the fact that we are not alone in being different.

One day I would like to see all feedlots gone from this world. I know that will probably never happen, but I can always hope.

Speaking of miracles, I have another one of those stories. Let me introduce you to Ducky our lucky little cow. Last spring Jerry was walking around our yearlings and noticed that Ducky, who was one of the smallest and youngest yearlings out of the bunch, was getting not just fat, but really really wide. Like pregnant belly wide. This was very bad. Here we had a 500lb year and a half old heifer that was about to have a baby. Jerry figures she must of been bred by about 7 or 8 months old, this is highly unusual; especially for a small heifer.

Either way, we found ourselves in a situation. Ducky is so small, how was she going to have a baby herself. We brought her into the front yard, got the calf pullers ready and prepared ourselves for a very difficult birth. We just hoped that Ducky would survive but we were a little sceptical. Ducky kept us up for 2 weeks thinking that she was going to calve at any minute.

Now here’s the interesting part…not only did Ducky have the baby. She had it without assistance and didn’t require us to show her how to nurse the baby. Usually heifers need help when they first nurse because they don’t really know what to do. But not Ducky, she was an instant mother. We named the calf Lucky because he sure was a lucky boy to be alive. She’s done an awesome job at raising Lucky and he’s turned out to be a nice looking boy.

Despite her small size and the fact that she will remain stunted, we decided to keep breeding her. She obviously loves being a mom and she does such a good job. Needless to say we had our eye on Ducky this week knowing she was going to birth soon. Last year she had a small Hereford baby, but this year she was bred to an Angus which would mean a bigger baby. Ducky gave birth today to a healthy baby boy who we called Lotto. May as well continue with the lucky names.

We now have 16 babies born in just 6 days. That’s quite a few. Jerry and I are looking forward to things slowing down a little and maybe getting some sleep. But we love having all the babies around.

I always joke about how Murphy s Law follows Jerry and I everywhere on the ranch. On Wednesday we left briefly to help out another ranch with a baby and I said now that we’ve left the ranch something will calve while we’re gone. If that happens I’m going to name that baby Murphy. Sure enough, we got home and there was Murphy laying on the ground with his momma Stripes licking him dry. Damn Murphy s Law; at least it all worked out this time. You’ll hear a lot more about our friend Murphy throughout the blog, he likes to pop up a lot.

Ruby one of our prize mommas had a backwards baby. I’ve never had to help pull out a backwards baby before but it can be a scary process. You have to pull the baby by the back legs, but there’s a tricky part. Once you see the hips then that means the umbilical cord is cut and the baby no longer has any oxygen. You have approx one minute to get that baby out of the cow before they suffocate. We managed to save Ruby’s baby and little Breeze doing quite well now.

Although the weather has warmed up quite a bit. Wednesday was a warm but very windy day. Four out of six of the babies born were too cold to stay outside so in the house they came. Everyone was pretty well behaved in the house. Thankfully they were only in one at a time though and not all together.

Yesterday (Thursday) we were so sure that it would be quieter. Boy were we wrong. True there were only three babies born compared to yesterdays record breaking six. However, we had ourselves another backwards calf. This time it was not so easy. The mother, Peanut was pretty upset and didn’t want to cooperate with us. She ended up running all over the yard until we were finally able to catch her, that’s not so good for baby if they do that. After catching and securing Peanut, we ran into the next issue. This baby inside of her is huge. It was looking to be a slow pulling which is no good. Jerry and I secured the legs and pulled with all of our strength. Out popped this 100lb baby girl and she wasn’t breathing. Oh no, I did not want to loose this beautiful little girl after all that work. Thankfully Jerry was able to get her breathing but she’s not out of the woods yet.

I named the big girl Tinker and we immediately brought her into the the house as she was shivering and barely breathing. I’ll admit, I really didn’t think that poor Tinker was going to make it. But she’s a fighter. We had her in the house all night, bottle fed her milk from her mother and shook her awake every time she looked like she was slipping away. Much to my surprise, Tinker is still alive and with us today. I wish I could say she’s out of the woods and she’s doing great but I can’t. She’s outside now under our deck in a nice bed of hay. She walked around a little bit today but she’s still having a lot of trouble breathing. However, her tongue is no longer hanging out of her mouth and she’s breathing through her nose, so that’s an improvement. She was without oxygen during birth for too long and it’s taken a lot out of her. I will keep you all updated and hopefully there will be happy Tinker updates.

Unfortunately you usually can’t save every baby on the ranch. Things go wrong during birth or a calf is just too weak. We lost two last year. One was born in about -26 degress and although we got to her early after birth it was just too cold. That was another unexpected birth. The other one, Bruiser, was born and lived for about 9 days. Then one day he just got sick and died within 12 hours. We can’t tell you what was wrong with him, but sometimes that just happens. But Tinker is a fighter and I have high hopes that if she’s made it this far she’ll make it in life. Fingers crossed for little Tinker.

Just wanted to let you all know that there is some extra beef available right now at the farm in Steveston.

Currently available….

- Stew beef: $5.00/lb (only a small amount left)

- Ground beef: $5.00/lb

- Breakfast and Dinner sausages: $7.00/lb

- Tenderloin: $12.00/lb

The ground and stew beef is a 25lb min. order. Tenderloin along with breakfast and dinner sausages are a 10lb min. order unless you are ordering it with a ground/stew pack then it is a 2lb min.

If anyone is interested in anything please email Jerry and Suzanna at sales@stevesfarm.com

Now I work with horses for a living and I’ve heard a lot of things and dressed a lot of wounds. But I’ve never heard the term “prolapsed rectum” before meeting Jerry. For the past few years Freckles has had this issue a couple of weeks before giving birth. What’s a prolapsed rectum you ask? I made the mistake of asking that question myself. It’s were the rectum comes out of the cow and the only way to get it back in is to push it in by hand. Yes, you read that right, by hand! It always stops after she gives birth, but until then, you never know when you’ll have to push a rectum back into a cow during a calf check.

Much to my luck, Jerrys always been around during these times and I’ve only had to watch. I look in amazement how he just casually walks up to Freckles and pushes it back in like this is something everyone does on a day to day basis. Then came the day that I was dreading. Jerry was gone for the afternoon and I was doing a calf check. Much to my dismay, Freckles was showing something out of her back end that wasn’t a baby coming out. Well I couldn’t leave her that way. Not that I’m a Star Trek fan but I’m going to say there quote that I was going to bravely go where no person has gone before (other than Jerry that is). I was reaching for Freckles and just wishing for a divine intervention when I got my wish. Around the corner I saw Jerry driving down the road coming home. Yes! I was saved. I met Jerry on the road and informed him that Freckles had a present for him.

Freckles is no longer with us this year. Jerry and I both miss her, but we definitely don’t miss her little birthing issue every year. Now that birthing season is here again I also hope that no other cow will take on the same issue.

We don’t commonly like to run our cattle through chutes unless it’s necessary as we believe it causes stress on them being locked in a metal compartment where they can’t move around. When we have to work on the girls we just bring them a group at a time into a pen, rope them and tie them to a post. Now, when I say we rope them, I don’t mean we race up on horseback, throw a rope over them and drag them away. No, I mean we calmly walk up to one, gently place the rope over her and most times they will willingly go to the post. I have posted a video on our Back Valley Ranch facebook site to show how the procedure is done. Jerry and I had never watched a video of this until yesterday and we couldn’t help but laugh and how calm everyone was.

Despite our girls being so well behaved they have still learned some tricks of avoidance. Some will tuck their heads to their chin in a “don’t pick me” stance. My favourite though has to be when they kneel down. For example…Luxy did just that yesterday. As soon as the rope went around her she just kneeled to the ground. She refused to move, so we ended up just giving her her shot right there in the middle of the pen. Then there’s the pushing to the fence routine. You’ll get the rope on them and they don’t want to move. So we get right up behind them and have to push and shove and drive them to the fence. I seem to remember seeing other cattle that would just flip out as soon as a rope touched them. Ours just stand there like a lump and refuse to move. Not that our herd is perfect, we do have a few spunky ones. Those are usually the young ones. But as they get older, they learn the routine and realize that we are not there to hurt them.

I love ranching and I’ve always loved helping out other ranches. But I don’t think I would be able to do this on a full time basis  with wild cattle all the time. I like being able to walk among them and have them not fear me. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to move around when there’s some big butts in the way and they don’t feel it necessary to move just because you want them to. But I would rather have that then the latter. It’s quite humorous and we find ourselves laughing about it all the time.

So, Scour guard is done. The cows most ready to calve are in and the weather is snowy but warm. Let’s bring on the babies!

Last year was quite the birthing season as there was a long nasty cold snap during March. We ended up bringing 7 of the calves in the house and 2 in the vehicles with us to stay warm. We unfortunately lost one due to the nasty cold snap. But last spring also saw two sets of calves born to the ranch. Only about 1 in every 50 cows have twins, so it was a rare treat to see 2 sets born. Some of you already know about one set through our facebook site when we had you name the calves. Mocha and Latte are doing well. The other set came from a first time momma named Mercedes. She has raised 2 very beautiful calves who we called Bambi and Ike. So far we believe she is bred to one of our new Limousin bulls for July. We can’t wait to see what she gives us this year.

We get asked lots of questions regarding bringing the calves in the house. What do the mommas think of this? How do the calves act in the house? Do they pee in the house? Since our mommas know we’re not out to hurt them or their babies, they are pretty understanding about us taking them. We give them a few minutes to lick the calf and get familiar with their scent before taking the baby away. The momma cow will usually lay down where the baby was born and wait for her baby to come back. Once in the house the calf usually doesn’t move around very much since they’re pretty chilled. We put blankets down by the fire for them to start getting warm. I’d like to add that I’m very glad that it’s tile floor and not carpet in the house. After a couple of hours the calf starts feeling pretty good about themselves and starts trying to get up and run around. That’s when Jerry and I have to start holding baby down to keep them by the fire. It takes about 3 hours for a baby to dry off enough to be able to go back outside. As for the pee question, no they don’t go to the bathroom in the house as they haven’t had a chance to drink any milk yet.

After the 3 hour mark and baby is good and dry, we bring them back out to momma and let them start the feeding process. We always hang around for a little bit to make sure baby has the hang of sucking before leaving momma and baby alone to bond.

I’m hoping that this March isn’t going to be as cold as last year, but we’ll see. There will be lots of new baby stories as the little ones start coming, which is going to be any day now.

Starting in June our cattle go to their summer range of approx. 18,000 acres. It’s 4kms straight up to get there. There’s a lot of forest there but lots of nice grass to eat throughout the summer. Around September the girls make their way off the summer range and come to another range just beside our property. This range is about 1,200 acres and they eat there for a couple weeks before coming into the ranch. We also have some private leased land where our yearlings go to fatten up on some nice grass. In October, once they’re in the ranch we graze them on our pasture before letting them into our irrigated hay fields. We like to make sure there’s been a good frost before letting them into the hay fields so it is safe for them. Although they know when it’s almost time to come in to the hay fields and they sometimes sneak in.

Once they eat everything at the ranch we start feeding hay. We feed quality hay from our ranch as well as locally grown hay down the road. Our main hay supplier lives 25kms down the road from us and grows beautiful alfalfa hay. He leaves his final crop unharvested on the hay field and around December after we’ve had a couple of hard frosts we move the entire herd, excluding the bulls to his place to graze. We graze everyone on the hay fields and once the pasture is gone the girls come home for calving and the yearlings and weaned calves stay there until May. No one gets locked in tiny pens where they are chest deep in their own feces. They eat their hay on the hay fields where there is lots of room. At the same time the cattle are fertilizing the hay fields so in the spring all you have to do is harrow and start watering. No need for conventional fertilizers.

That’s one thing I never got. Why do I drive by and see these big beautiful hay fields in the winter that are empty and yet all the cattle go to these tiny feedlots where they can’t even move around? Cattle are perfectly capable of fertilizing our hay fields. That’s how it was done years ago before industrial fertilizers started coming into play.  It’s sad to see the old ways disappearing, but we are refusing to let go. This is a way healthier way to be as well as the cattle getting to live a happy life with freedom and room to move.

Anyways, getting off of the feedlot rant, for now. The key thing is to provide lots of grass and quality alfalfa hay for the cattle to eat.  Also, when we do feed hay, we do our feeding just before dark. This way the cattle eat during the coldest times and retain more calories and are able to stay warmer.

We usually have to keep our yearling over 2 winters which to a lot of ranches is just not practical. But if that’s how long we have to wait for them to be at a good weight to butcher, then so be it.

Since our girls live a very natural life on lots of acreage it seems to take a long time for a cow to get to that stage. I’ve figured it out and approx. 20 of our cows are over the age of 15 years old.  Some of our top cows are Panda, Daisy, Charlene, Charlotte, Bessie and Big Bertha to name a few who are 18-20 years old.  We love seeing these old girls who still look great and are putting out top calves. Of course when they do get too old and we do have to cull them it makes the decision even harder. But it is still a business and unfortunately we don’t have the grass to retire all the old girls. But not to many cows get to live this kind of life for that long, so that makes us feel good.

Our girls can be a little on the ornery side when it comes to moving them. They want to move on their own time and when they feel like this. Because of this we sometimes get people driving by who said they had a very difficult time moving a cow off the road for them to get through. Well to our cows, when you’re on Back Valley, you’re on they’re road and they’ll move when they want. People just aren’t used to seeing cows not move when you approach them. My favourite is when some poor sucker is driving by during feeding time. Our cows surround the vehicle wondering where the food is since we don’t feed at our ranch by tractor but by truck instead.

Through this blog you’ll here more stories about each individual girl as it comes up. But before I finish I want to leave with a little tribute to our oldest girl, Panda. At 20 years old Panda is our oldest cow on the ranch. Jerrys dad Harold bought a Beltie cross approx. 30 years ago and she along with Daisy are the last descendants from that original cow. Panda has always had boys which means there’s been no girl to keep to carry on her line. Well we finally have one. We’ll be keeping Pandas girl for breeding so the line from the original Beltie can be carried on.

We had been researching this breed called Limousin, as they were supposed to mix well with Angus and Hereford breeds. We had found a ranch that was raising natural Limousin in 100 Mile House and we were thinking about giving one a try in the spring. Well the spring turned into a 9pm phone call to the ranch in 100 Mile asking what they were doing tomorrow. We drove over there to look at 5 bulls that they had for sale. When we asked how tame they were the couple said that two of them were even halter broke. We were able to walk between the bulls without being worried for our safety, and not to mention that everyone one of them was perfect. It took us a long time to choose one as they all looked good. I ended up picking a 17 month old one with a massive butt on him. Jerry says I have a attraction to animals with big butts since my horse also has a massive butt on him. But that was my choice. I named him Optimous Prime and we loaded him in the trailer to bring him home. On the trailer ride home Optimous was so relaxed he ended up falling asleep for the duration of the trip.

We got him home and turned him out with the girls. He took one look at all the girls and if bulls could smile he would be grinning from ear to ear. I don’t think he slept much for the first week as there was lots of girls to meet and places to explore.

After a week we discovered that Optimous was looking a little tired as there were still lots of girls to breed. We didn’t want our new prize bull to break down so we phoned the ranch in 100 Mile House again and asked if we could come out again. It was time to recruit Optimous some help. We went out and bought another 16 month old bull which I named Megatron to help Optimous win the battle of the unbred cows. Well they divided, conquered and managed to breed all but 3 of the girls which is amazing stats for 2 young bulls.

So now we get to look forward to our Limousin cross babies in July. This of course means we’ll be having 2 birthing seasons. But 2 is better then half the herd not bred. They now have the winter off and they’re enjoying their time sleeping and eating.

Now that you know about Optimous Prime and Megatron there’s 2 more for you to meet. Before all this stuff happened in October we kept back 2 of our calves to be bulls when they get older. They are both a hybrid breed of bulls. Which means they have a combo of breeds in them like Hereford, Angus and Charolais. First there’s Andre the Giant. He’s our silver bull calf. Born at 100lbs during a cold snap, poor Jerry had to carry this big guy across the field and into the house to stay warm by the fire. Right from the beginning Andre had great manners and loved scratches and giving kisses to everyone.

Then last but not least is my pride and joy and mascot to Back Valley Ranch, Brain. Brain is a blonde bull calf with a bit of white on his face. He was named Brain after the cartoon Pinky and the Brain. We do have a Pinky as well, and like his name he’s not the brightest calf on the planet. He thought his mother was a tree for the first few days and had a hard time getting him away from it to follow his real mother. Brain is smart and right from the beginning we knew there was something special about this boy. He never acted like regular cattle did. He followed us all over the place and was just so laid back, even by our herd standards. You can call him and he’ll come over, tail wagging, begging for butt scratches. Even after coming from 5 months off the mountain range he was still as tame as the day he was born. Both Brain and Andre are proving that we made a right choice in keeping them bulls as they continue to grow and fill out. We look forward to seeing what their babies look like.