We woke up to snow this morning. It wasn't a surprise or anything as they've been forecasting it all week, but it still is a bit odd waking up the day before Halloween to measurable snow. The first thing I had to do was go out and put some hay out for the yak. I've been wanting to get around to it for a few days, but it was quite cold and rainy the last few, so I figured I'd wait for the precipitation to turn to snow. I have no issues working in the snow! The yak were pretty excited for the hay! I also turned the newly made two steers in with the herd. There was some tussling. Okay, there was a fair bit of tussling! Interestingly, a lot of it was between the steers and the cows! Multiple times I saw Mr. Bull come and break them up because he apparently thought it was getting too intense. Herd mechanics are fascinating! In this video, you can see Mr. Bull breaking up the fight between 93 and 418, our golden bull... err, steer. It's interesting to me for two reasons: first, 93 and 418 were very close before I separated the herd upon the arrival of the new group, and second, it was 93 who seemed to be instigating and actively seeking battle. You can clearly see Mr. Bull separating the two and standing between them, keeping them from going at it again. Again, I find it interesting that 93 was so adamant about picking a fight with 418. They always hung out previously. In fact, I often wondered if 418 was her calf from a few years ago. Here they were the day 93 was in labor this June. It almost seemed like she was laying her head on his shoulder! Anyway. Hard saying what all the fighting was about today, but Mr. Bull was having none of it! After I hayed the yak, I went to go check on the elk. They were all grouped up in the upper reaches of the pasture and seemed pretty happy to see me. 603 let me pet her multiple times and that included parts of her face, too! Previously, she only let me touch her nose, but I almost was able to touch all the way up to between her eyes! Of course, she was grinding her teeth at me the whole time, which is an aggressive gesture for elk, so I'll only be trusting her so far. I still never go in the pasture on foot when they are near. I missed catching a video of it, but while I was there, 604 stood up to nibble on some tips of the hemlock trees and managed to dump a ton of snow on herself! She wears it well, wouldn't you say? The wee ones are experiencing their first cold weather, but they have thick furry coats and didn't seem bothered at all! Just another day being an elk, I guess! And, of course, Big Guy was there, watching with his deep, penetrating stare the whole time I was out there. Always watching. Man, I like that critter!
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I try really hard not to name animals that are being raised for meat. I love my animals, I want to give them the best possible life they can have, but I can't get tooooooo attached or things become really difficult down the line. However, sometimes, a name gets attributed to an animal due to circumstance. Take Piggy, for instance. That food motivated creature was such a pig when it came to food, we couldn't not call him that! One of this year's calves has a really fluffy tushie. All elk have longer hair on their rumps. When they are agitated and their hackles are raised, the hair stands up a bit and makes them look bigger, I guess. It makes them look something, anyway! 604 tends to raise her hackles a lot and her rump gets fluffy plump, but she's got nothing on this wee one! All the calves have fairly long hair on their butts right now, but this one is exceptional. When the light hits it juuuuussst right... well... it practically glows in its fluffiness. You can see in this photo, that number 001 (a little bull calf) definitely has more fluff going on. He's the youngest of the bunch, but he's also the most nervous. I suppose it makes sense then, that he would put his hackles up a lot - but what a coiffure! Now, listen, 001, there's no reason to get testy about my calling you "Fluffy Butt," it's all in good fun. ;-) I mean, really, when you think about it, it's rather spectacular!! Thanks for putting a smile on my face, 001, every time I go out and see you're fluffy tushie glowing in the sun!!
Yes, I can! Peekaboo! These little elk babies are growing so fast! They wander out and about quite a bit these days, but when they're not actively on the move, they still like to "hide" in the grass. They're not quite as good at it as they used to be! I mean, don't get me wrong, if you don't know they're there, they would still be easy to miss, but I see one... two... three babies hiding in the grass. Honestly, if it's weren't for the flies, it might be harder to find them, but those darn pests have been horrific this year! The babies put their heads down and disappear and then have to bring them up again a moment later to shake the flies off. I've been trying all kinds of crazy things trying to control the biting fly population. Nothing has put a dent in the population yet. Poor things! The babies are so fun to watch. Sometimes, they make it a bit hard to get my work done because I just like to sit out there and talk to them. At them? :-) But, I mean, really! Can you blame me? Who wouldn't want to hang out with a cutie like this?
It's official. We are now officially in a drought. It's been obvious for some time now. Except for a few teasers... you know where it starts to rain and you get all excited and then you turn around and it's done, I cannot remember the last time it rained. We had 1 minute and 47 seconds of rain today - not even enough to hardly wet the driveway, let alone moisten the parched ground. Look at the grass in Big Guy's pasture! Crispy fried, like it's late August or something. The only good news is that I haven't had to mow in almost two weeks (but it's on my agenda for tomorrow). But look at him!!! We're nearing the end of antler growth. Another month and a half and they'll be hardening up in preparation for the rut. I love how symmetrical Big Guy's antlers are. They are just so impressive. I hadn't seen him in about four days, so I was glad he decided to say "hi" today. And this girl? Well, she's still trying to recover from her ordeal. Now she's fighting a bit of infection, so the vet wants me to medicate her every day for a week. The first two days were a bit awkward, but I think we've finally figured it out. My chute is an elk chute... not quite made for such diminutive creatures. Our first issue was that yak have some of the thickest, toughest hide I have ever tried to put a needle through! Wowza! At first I was trying to give her the injection in the muscle of her hip because I simply couldn't immobilize her head enough to allow me to do it under the skin behind her shoulder, but it was so dang hard to get the needle in, it was a huge ordeal every time I had to inject her... and, of course, the dose is big enough it has to go in two separate jabs. I finally realized if I raise the chute up a bit and then close it all the way, I can pretty much completely envelope her and safely get her doctored up. A little grain helps too. Here she's asking me, "You sure you don't want to jab me again? I could use a bit more of that grain." I am just astounded at how quickly these babies grow! And they are so much more willing to come out than Little Girl was last year. She was a bit of a scaredy cat - still is, truth be told, but not these two. They listen if mama says they should move away from me, but it doesn't seem like they're really scared of me. But that doesn't mean I'm getting up right next to them or anything. If I zoom in on my camera, I can see quite a bit, but it's still tricky to determine gender at this point, at least it is for me. I think we might have a boy and a girl for the first two. I've still only seen 602's baby from way far off, but I did see it this morning at least. Not sure if 603 will grace me with fourth baby, but I can't say for sure she won't! Fingers crossed. And 100, my other yak cow, looks like she might be starting to bag up. Her udder seemed just a bit less floppy today. ;-) As you might imagine, things are crazy busy for me. There is always ten times more to do than I have time for, but I just keep plodding along! I picked these roses tonight to crystallize tomorrow since I expect my dehydrator to finally be empty in the morning. That thing runs 24-7 this time of year. I've got strawberries to process, cheese presses to make, and plants to water. So. Many. Plants. To. Water. Boy, do we need some rain. I sure would like this drought to end. Officially.
It feels like I'm seeing our elk babies more often, earlier than I did last year. I'm not sure if it's just my perception or if that's really the case, but it seems like they're hiding less than Little Girl did last year. Maybe it's because there is more than one calf this year. Maybe it's because one of our cows is now an experienced mama. Or maybe I'm just more patient now that it's not my first go round. The other night, as I was walking past the pasture after finishing my work up for the day, I could see 604 back in the corner of the pasture with both young calves (and Little Girl) while the other cows were out grazing. It was too far for a picture with my phone, so I just watched for a while before heading up for the house. Just a little bit later, I looked out my kitchen window and saw that everyone came out to the buckets together! I ran to get my big camera and document the occasion. It's still a long way - thus the pictures aren't great - but you can get a nice peek at those two little calves. The whole herd hung out for a while, both calves nursed, and the calves wandered around a bit. They're pretty steady on their legs now. I've occasionally caught glimpses of them doing the zoomies out in the pasture, but never for long enough to get a video yet. I look forward to watching them play together before too long! And then I saw the hand off. 604 had done her time babysitting. Now it was 601's turn. She called the kids and they both got up and followed her dutifully. "Come on, kids, it's time to go!" In the next photo, you can see 604 in the back left, and in the back right, you see 601 taking the kids off to go rest. I love watching the family/herd dynamics in this group. Sometimes, I think we anthropomorphize animals too much, and then sometimes I realize that us animals are really all the same deep down. It takes a village! :-)
That Little Girl. She's not even a year old, but boy is she getting big! She was born last July 8, so here she is only 10 months old, and I'm having a hard time telling which one she is on first glance. I always have to look twice now. I thought we might play a little game. I'm going to post a picture and you try to figure out which one is Little Girl. Make your decision and then scroll down for the answer. Keep track of your score - inquiring minds would like to know how you did!! ;-) We'll start with an easy(er) one. Which one do you think?? There she is! Let's try this one: Do you see her? There she is! Here. Try this one where they're easier to get a look at. That's 604 in the front. I think we may at least get another baby out of her this year. She's been looking a bit more rotund lately. But which one is her girl? What do you think about this one? Maybe this one isn't so hard? They're all so scruffy looking right now while they're shedding! But which one is Little Girl? All right. How's your score so far? One more left. I saved the hardest for last. I asked my husband which was Little Girl and he picked every other elk in the picture before he picked Little Girl!! Got your answer? No peeking!!! And the answer is... Well, how'd you do? All I know is that as far as growing elk, I must be doing something right. Now if I can just get the conception thing worked out, we might be able to get somewhere with this elk farming thing!! Let me know how you did in the comments! I'd love to know I'm not the only one having a hard time picking her out of a crowd.
Now that I have two totally different types of livestock, I find myself noticing some interesting differences between them. I mean, obviously... they're different. Yak have horns and elk have antlers, for instance. They may both grow out of their head, but one is regrown yearly and one is a permanent fixture. But one of the reasons I got the yak was because they are, in some important ways, very similar to the elk. I like that they are an ecologically sound meat choice in that they both convert feed to meat in a much more efficient manner than beef or other traditional livestock. In general, elk and yak use about one third the feed of beef to produce one pound of meat. That's pretty incredible when you think about it! Scientists claim that matriarchy is fairly rare in the animal kingdom, describing less than a dozen species that practice it. Elk are one of those species. Except for during the rut, when the bull doesn't really lead so much as terrorize the cows into submission to keep them away from rivals, the head cow leads the herd in their day to day decisions. This last rut, Big Guy was very protective of his harem, keeping them deep in the woods out of sight. In fact, for a few weeks, he was so protective, he wouldn't even let them come and get grain from me, despite their clearly wanting to. The rest of the year, however, the herd is clearly led by a cow. Initially, it was 604, but last summer, as she approached calving time, after a number of very impressive boxing matches, 601 took over the lead position and has held it ever since. In my day to day observations of them, her leadership is fairly clearly seen in where they go and who does what when. I spent most of my formative years working cattle out west on fairly large ranches. In those outfits, the bulls are kept separate most of the year, and - honestly - they just seem to be interested in doing their job and then resting (it's hard work, I guess! Ha!). I suppose because most of the year it's just a bunch of female cows hanging out, it didn't seem weird at all to move onto an elk farm where the predominant social structure is one of matriarchy. So I was a bit surprised by just how patriarchal the yak are. The big bull is clearly in charge... of everything and his herd dutifully follows his every move. The video below is a perfect example of how they follow him around, strung in a line, head to tail. Growing up, I loved watching Nature on PBS and other wildlife shows. One of the things I love about my little farm is that it almost feels like my own episode of Nature every time I go out to check on my critters. Sometimes I'll go out to feed and my husband will call me and ask me why it's taken me two hours to do a twenty minute job. Oops! They're just so fascinating to watch - I never get tired of being out there with them!
Three years ago, who would have guessed that today I'd be farming elk? I'm not really sure I even knew people farmed elk, to be honest. I'd hunted and eaten them out west. But raise them? Who does that? In the two and a half years since I became an elk farmer, I have been completely converted. They are amazing creatures. Handsome. Curious. Flighty. Self sufficient. Photogenic. I'm not sure I could ever go back to regular old livestock! Before I married my husband and embarked on a fifteen year journey of suburban living all across America as a military wife, I spent my formative years working cattle and horse ranches out west. The deal when we got married was that I'd follow him around until he retired, but when he did, I got to have a farm. But I expected to be raising cattle! Or maybe horses or pigs or something. You know... something normal. Something commonplace. Never did I expect to be raising such unusual stock as elk and now yak. Previously when I was farming/ranching, the question of what I did for a living did not consistently blossom into a lengthy and involved conversation as it does now. People want to know. Elk? You raise elk? What are they like? How does that work? They are so curious and I have come to be so fond of raising these critters, that it is a pleasure to take the time to answer. Watching Little Girl grow has absolutely been the highlight of my time on the farm so far. What an amazing privilege I have to be the steward of her life... to make sure that she can experience what it is to be an elk in a way that is fulfilling to her. Can I replicate the exact kind of life she would experience in the wild? Of course not. Although I might argue that her life with me here is in many ways better than what she would experience out there. In my care she will never know hunger. It is unlikely she will ever have to fend off predators trying to take her or her calf. And when her time is done, she will have a clean, quick end. Nature doesn't often provide that. I didn't intend this post to end up about death, but when you raise animals for food, inevitably, that's where you end up. Raising meat animals is a huge responsibility and I take that responsibility very seriously. Fortunately, harvesting is a teeny, tiny part of being a farmer. Most of the time, I get to enjoy caring for these amazing animals and doing everything in my power to make sure that their lives are as fulfilling and comfortable as possible. And I may take a picture or two of them. Or maybe five or a thousand. What an amazing job I have.
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