New Calves

I know these cows are not ours, but a baby is a baby!  In the last ten days, three calves have been born.  July arrived one morning after a little rain shower.  What I mean by that is, her proud mama led him out of the trees to join the herd at that moment when the rain shower was ending.

July loves to run ahead of his mama, then wait for her to catch up.  
A couple mornings later, just as the sun was hitting the pasture, Sunshine and his mama joined the herd.  This little guy has had a big adventure.  He got to ride on the Go Buggy when he was separated from the herd a couple mornings after his birth.

 That adventure has made him stick closer to his mama and she's keeping him on a tighter "leash."

Three mornings ago, I was watching a giant flock of blackbirds and cowbirds, when I noticed a mama laying down.  I thought this was strange and if she had laid there much longer, I was going to call the owner.  She stood up, something was hanging below her tail, and then a baby was born!  It was too amazing!  Of course I named this little guy, Birdie.

These three little guys are slowly getting to know each other.  One or more of their mamas are watching them all the time.

The older calves in the herd hang out together, are starting to eat grass, and are acting more like teenagers instead of babies.  But for now, we have these three little fellows to watch and enjoy.

Forward

Completion of the new fencing was another step toward the goal of becoming cattle ranchers.  I think there might be some kind of cow and acreage numbers where you actually become "cattle ranchers." Since I don't know what those numbers are, I guess we're cattle ranchers (some term that describes extremely small numbers of both would be more accurate??)  Anyways, this bit of fencing has been completed.  The guy who rents the rest of our pasture was allowed to run his cows in this new area so the old hay grazer plants would be eaten down.  We've had the area shredded once and we mowed once.  It took the big tractor with the large shredder about 20 minutes and us 10+ hours mowing once. Still the old hay grazer was continuing to grow back and take over; so we thought the cows might enjoy something different.

It was good to see that it took the cows longer to eat the hay grazer down than it took us to mow it!  I enjoyed seeing the calves up close too.
There is always a down side...  Red, the bull, decided to show off in front of the girls and knocked down our protein feeder.  It didn't have any food in it; he was just showing off his muscles for the girls.  Red has been doing the same thing where we have the deer feeder set up.  It is getting old!

We've spent our weekends lately spraying brush and mesquite.  The mesquite seems to continue to out pace our attempts to kill it!  What a hardy tree!