Lazarus wrote:bladeracer wrote:Had a calf at 0330, just went out to check her, she's rolled under the fence and is happily sleeping in the road verge. Fine until she gets hungry and can't get back through the fence, so I'm going to have to try to get her through myself.
I have a niece who is scared of guns, never been near one and her sister who is partnered with a farmer and lives with them and sees them for the essential tool they are.
Her man is one of the mad pig stabbers, bugger that for a joke.
She had me make him a purpose built sticker, he says it works a treat.
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I've been trying to get the scared one to come out and learn but she's a townie through and through and has the "Hollywood" syndrome.
Good luck with the newborn, she'll eventually learn you're the go to guy.
Thankfully my daughter understands that I've been shooting most of my life, and shoot very regularly here. She also considers shooting, and being familiar with firearms, to be a useful life skill as well as an enjoyable hobby, though she's not very interested herself. I'm not sure she's ever done any shooting but she has been hunting, she's actually been out deer and pig hunting a lot more than I have, though her boyfriend's family hunted pigs with dogs and knives in Qld.
Drizzling out there but at least it's not freezing
Little cow was buried in the bloody blackberry, they don't seem to notice the thorns when they're less than a day old
I stomped most of it down but still got a few pricks lifting her out. The road fence has steel angle stringers in between the fence posts so you can't just pull the wires apart and push her through. But I found a stick and wedged the bottom wire up enough to get her head under, then just pushed. She jumped straight on the teat but I pushed mum up the hill closer to the gang, hopefully she'll settle down up there. We've got six more coming so we're up every three hours to check them anyway, if the wee one pushes down toward the road again we'll bring it back up.
My daughter's eleven-year-old asked me isn't it hard living on a farm. I thought about it before answering her. The rain, the cold, the mud, the cow poo, mile after mile of walking every week, high costs with low to no income, constantly repairing everything that breaks down, so many hours clearing fallen trees and repairing fences, having to trek into town any time I need something, animals getting crook and dropping dead despite your best efforts, nights spent out in the rain trying to keep a newborn calf alive, having to go and get firewood and get a fire going before you can be warm - it all sucks pretty much. But actually _living_ out here, away from people, traffic, crime, drugs and alcohol, all the petty meaningless issues that plague so many city people - it's pretty bloody awesome I reckon!