Hello.  Like Isaac said we had our first cattle show.  I showed Nora otherwise known as 014.  She is my sisters heifer but she let me show her for now.  Nora did really well. She was Champion Breeding Heifer at this show.  I was excited to do that well with her even though this is a smaller show.  Just like Isaac, I competed in showmanship.  This is where the judge chooses the people that he thinks that does the best job presenting their animals.  I won the Intermediate Showman award.  I was really excited to be chosen.  Our sister Samantha was champion senior showman.

We have so much more to tell you  - so we will try to add a bunch more soon. 

Hannah

Tis the Season!

Hello again friends.  We have been pretty busy this spring with my sister's graduation, my brother's confirmation, ball games and track meets. 

But we also have started tying up the big heifers and this weekend we had our first show.  It was exciting, because now I am in real 4-H and can show my heifer by myself.  Here I am with my heifer 097.  She is one year old and should be pregnant.  She behaved really good in the show ring.  There were 7 heifers in her class.  The judge put 097 and I right in the middle of the class.  Later they judged us on showmanship and I got reserve champion showman in the junior class.  I was really happy to do so well.  Hannah showed too but she will have to tell you how she did.

Isaac

Time for CAT baths!

Somehow my brother thought that the nice weather meant it was time to give the cats a bath.  They kept running from him but he kept chasing.  Don't worry the wash towel he use really didn't get the cats very wet - but Isaac seemed to have fun. I just had to take some pictures of him trying to give the cats a bath.
Hannah

Gates

Opening and closing gates and watching to make sure cows DON'T get out is one of my jobs at our farm.  It is a lot easier watching a gate than getting them back in where they are supposed to be. 

Hannah 

Libby gets a bottle

We are almost done feeding a bottle to Libby. Before we feed Libby though we feed Roza(photo above - the mom of the twin boys) as they share part of a pen.  This is nice for Libby because she has friends nearby. See how big her bottle is? She is drinking her bottle faster now but she gets more milk - so it takes just as long to feed her. She gets excited when she sees the bottle.  When she drinks she swings her tail, but not as fast as a dog.

Here comes the Hay!

Our Dad is feeding the cows huge round bales of hay. The loader bucket on the front of the tractor has a three spears on it to hold and carry the bale out to the cows.  He will put them in those round things in the back of the pen.  The cows are really happy to see Dad bring the bale in.  Around the bale there is net wrap.  The net wrap holds the hay together and protects it from the rain and snow. 

The red machine on the back of the tractor is a snow blower. Dad can move a lot of snow with it and even make piles of snow.  The piles are big and we like to play on them.

Hannah and Isaac

Roza and her boys

This is Roza and two bull calves.  They are twins. Sometimes they take turns drinking. They are growing really well, but we put them in a pen so they will learn to eat creep feed. Creep feed is a kind of feed made just for calves so they learn how to eat other kinds of food and grow faster. Roza protects her calves. Today we saw a possum near the pen.  Hannah was really scared but Roza will protect her calves.

Isaac

The Ducks are Odered!

 We just ordered our ducks.  The ducklings are not hatched yet. We hope to get them by the end of March.  They will be fun to have on the farm and show at the county fair.

Hannah

Boy thats good

This calf has just finished nursing. You can tell by his wet nose. Most calves stay close to their mama.  The do some romping with their friends but their mama's like to keep track of them and will call for them after a while.

Andrew

Calves in the Snow

We now have 22 calves including Libby.  We just finished putting tags in the calves ears. We also put a tatoo in their ear, just in case the tag comes out for some reason then we still have an ID on them.  This tatoo is required in order for them to be registered animals.  The tatoo is green and the number on their tag.  We then weighed them.  Boy have they grown already.  Most were around 80 pounds when they were born and now weigh a little over 100.  Their mama's milk is really good for them.

Isaac

Another Storm

Its is snowing again.  Everything is closed.  But the heifers heavy winter coat keeps them warm. They look like red snow monsters.  The new calves are in the barn because they are not ready for the cold and snow.

Isaac

Libby

Here is Libby.  She is a twin to a bull calf.  Because her twin is a bull she is not likely to have her own babies so her mama is raising the bull calf and Libby gets to be our bottle calf.  We feed her two times a day milk replacer from a bottle.  I get up and feed her before I get on the bus. The cats keep her company so she isn't lonely.

Hannah

Kitties

Even though it is cold today the cats don't mind and are happy to see us always. Maybe because we bring them good food. We found out that they really don't like dry cheese pizza. They really like us petting them even out in the snow and purr really really loud.

Isaac and Hannah

Piggies!

Saturday I got to go see the gilt I showed last summer - "Big D". (The D is for Duroc - the breed of pig - durocs are red with floppy ears.) While I was there "Big D" had piglets - this is called farrowing - she had a huge litter of piglets.  We thought she would have 7 or 9 babes but she had 16.  Only 11 were born alive, the other 5 were born as mummies.  The mummies had died much earlier and were being absorbed. I saw several gilts farrowing and got to clean off the newborns and trim the navels - then helped them start nursing from their mother.  The picture shows my gilts piglets nursing they are so tiny - it is amazing to think they will weigh close to 300 pounds in August. It will be great to see them again to see how they have grown and changed.

Andrew

Its is still cold

We put extra straw to help keep the lamb warm and dry.  It is bad for the lambs to get wet in this really bad weather. I don't mind fluffing the straw because it is good for the animals.  We also got two more calves, a bull calf and a heifer calf. We will try to get a picture up soon.

Isaac

Lambs are fun

We went to help Grandpa with the lambs. The ewe (female sheep) is really a good mama taking good care of her twins.  This year we are having lots of twins and triplets those mamas work hard keeping their bellies full.  The lambs look black now but in a few months will look more like their mother who is a Suffolk sheep. That means they will have black heads and legs and white neck and middle.  When the sheep has her lambs we put her in a small pen called a jug.  This will give the lambs some time to get stronger before they join a bigger group.

Some times the mama needs some help with her lambs.  We get to bottle a few lambs to help the mama.  This is fun - they really wiggle their tails.

Isaac

Cold tonight

We put extra bedding "straw" out tonight to try to keep all the animals especially the new baby calf.  We also put most of the cows in the calving barn to help keep it warmer inside.  I hope to have school tomorrow because I want to see my friends.

Isaac

The First Calf!!!

This morning at about 3am our first calf of 2011 was born to a first calf heifer.  This means she is only 2 years old and hasn't ever had a baby before.  She had a bull calf. We had a snow day today so we had to go and help him dry off and get him to walk and drink milk.  This took awhile as dad gave him milk earlier. To help him get warm so his ears wouldn't freeze Andrew put him in the calf heater. Now he is back with his mama. I will get you pictures of him up soon.

Isaac

Introduction

Hi I'm Isaac and I am growin up on a farm in Minnesota. I am the baby of the family having Samantha, Andrew and Hannah as older siblings.  On our farm we have Red Angus Cattle and in the summer we have show pigs. We also have alot of barn cats, who dad doesnt like very well.  Down the road grandpa houses all the Suffolk sheep.  I've spent my summer going to lots of fairs ever since i was a baby watching my siblings show untill I was old enough.  The reason for this blog is to let everyone who doesnt live on a farm know how wonderful it is all year round.  My siblings and I will try and give you a taste of our lives.