Weaning Time

I stepped into the silent dawn and my heart sank.

I hoped to hear a cacophony of bawling and moos from the corral.

Instead, the silence was deafening.

The day before, my brother and I brought the cows and calves home from my summer pasture, then sorted the calves from their mothers.

It was time to wean.

Calves, like some humans, thoroughly enjoy the easy life when Mom provides everything they need – warm milk, safety and easy companionship. But the cows need to spend their energy on growing their next calf, not postponing independent adulthood for their now-capable offspring.

I help the cows cut the cord. The calves object loudly.

Only this year I goofed.

As the sun rose, I counted half of the calves that had joined their cows in the pasture.

Then I found the hole they had crawled through.

I didn’t need to look for long. I knew where to find the weak spot in the corral fence.

After all, it had been there for at least eight years, maybe 12.

My husband, Steve, built this corral on the hill while my son, Will, and I added a metal roof to our house.

Steve and I could have worked together on both projects, but each of us had a clear mental picture of the task we prioritized.

Neither could refrain from emphatically suggesting improvements to the other’s mental picture. Suggestions were not appreciated.

Steve designed his round corral so we could follow Temple Grandin’s RULE for handling livestock – Round, Uphill, Light and Easy. He envisioned sorting cattle quietly, but never calving heifers or weaning calves there. Woven wire contained the livestock perfectly as long as we handled them gently.

A couple of years later, we experimented with weaning the calves in that corral. We hauled water to them and patched the holes they made.

After Steve died six years ago, I piped water to the corral. Friends helped me install poles inside the woven wire fence so the calves had a stout visual barrier.

But one spot where a dividing gate blocked space for a pole required repeated, yellow-twined patches.

So that early morning when I heard the silence, I gathered some yellow twine for yet another patch job.

Then I remembered that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over while expecting different results.

I looked around my stash of supplies.

A couple of years ago, I bought some used hog panels and metal gates without a vision of how I would use them but knowing they could come in handy someday.

Someday had arrived.

The slim, sturdy, 5-foot-tall hog panels could slip into that narrow gap between the corral fence and dividing gate.

It took only 9 years to think of this solution.

Once the calves were corralled, it was time to wean the lambs.

One of Steve’s first projects after we bought the ranch was to build the lamb lot on a hill behind the barn. Then, a few years ago, I planted some caragana trees around the lamb lot and fenced livestock out. Now we had a buffer so lonesome ewes could not nose their newly weaned lambs. Without mama standing across the fence, the lambs had less motivation to jump through the woven wire.

But one short fence doesn’t have a buffer. After I tried to clear wet, slippery pile of hay from near that lamb lot fence -- and pulled the resulting mired skid steer out -- I tied more hog panels up, giving me a distinct advantage over the lambs.

I beat back insanity once again.

The next morning, my joyful ears were filled with the sounds of unhappy adulting lambs.