Cold weather means more chores

Bad weather sometimes means a break from school but it only means more work in the barn! Getting to spend most of last week at home rather than going to school was nice but we had more than enough to do to keep busy. Between frozen water tanks, itchy steers and cow pens full of manure, I think I’d rather go to school.

As I wrote last time, frozen water tanks are a problem because cattle use water to help regulate their body temperatures when it’s really cold. We’re still rotating plastic tanks in and out of our cool room with the heater running trying to keep them thawed. Trust me, my mom is really impressed that she pays to cool it in the summer and heat it in the winter.

We’re pretty sure our lice are gone, but itchy steer hides remain. With all of the scratching going on, and the weather as cold as it’s been, it’s been hard to keep our steers clean but we used our break from school to get everybody cleaned up again. We are careful to wash them quickly and then put them in a warmer room to blow them dry. And we have to blow a lot! My dad always says he wants them like a MASH Martini, whatever that means, but then he screams dry dry dry! He’s old and says a lot of things I don’t understand.

Annie’s pen is full of manure. This makes it really hard to keep the boys clean because we run them all together at night. It’s been really hard to get fresh bedding for her because of all of the snow so we bought

10 bales of wood shavings to make due until we can spread sawdust. I have never seen cattle as excited as ours were when they could kick up their heels in the new shavings. Come to think of it, they acted like my sisters and I in the snow! The only difference is that none of them went crying to mom when it stopped being fun.

Being out of school has kept us busy in the barn but we aren’t complaining. We have running water, shelter and everyone is healthy. We’re doing a lot better than some in our country so we aren’t complaining. We’re just hoping for an early spring.