Trying to Get Pregnant II

After one week of hormone treatments and a lot of rookie mistakes, Chloe has been inseminated. We were supposed to pull the CIDR Monday at noon. Well, after at VERY long weekend with lots of driving, and a late arrival at home Sunday night, we made our first rookie mistake. We were supposed to pull Chloe's CIDR and give her a hormone shot at noon. We were so distracted from this weekend's exciting events that we totally forgot. We got up at 6 a.m. and did it. Not only did we do it at the wrong time, but I realized that I am totally inexperienced at giving cows injections. She doesn't particularly like having a huge needle shoved into her thigh, and understandable jerked away from me. The needle bent about 45 degrees, and half the injection got squirted on the floor. I had to stick her again and inject the rest.

Realizing our mistake afterwards, we called the AI specialist and asked him if our blunder was going to effect her breeding. He said it was probably best if he rearrange his schedule to come out at 7 a.m. Wednesday instead of the previously agreed upon noon. I apologized profusely for bungling very clear instructions, but he understood. The next injection came Tuesday morning. I again bent the needle when she jumped (but not as bad) and had to reinject her. This time she's had enough and promptly kicked me in the leg. Cow kicks (usually) don't cause damage, but they do hurt.

Despite our mistakes, the AI specialist arrived this morning, declared the drugs seemed to be working, and did his magic on her (the kind I want no part of learning). In about 17-21 days, if we don't see any signs of heat (the most obvious of which would be Pumpkin mounting Chloe), we can feel confident she's bred. We will still do a pregnancy test to be sure. Fingers crossed.

Also, just FYI, the cows mounting other cows in heat is not a homosexual tendency. The most common theory is that it is to let any bulls around know that the one being mounted is ready for some...ehhh...."romance". Sure, we don't have a bull, but cows don't care. They run of instinct anyway.

The New Arrival

We haven't even had Pumpkin for more than a day or two, and we already have a calf! We went out to feed them this morning around 6 a.m. and she wasn't acting weird at all. There was no signs of labor. Later on, Regina went out at about 8 a.m. to give her some grain, and there's the new arrival, laying on the ground. Pumpkin is being an excellent mother and is cleaning and warming her calf right up. This calf might be a little premature, due to the fact that the previous owner didn't think she'd calf for a month. The trailer ride home and stress of a new place might have kicked her into early labor.

So far the calf seems to be doing fine. It is alert and awake but has yet to stand and drink. I guess we'll be starting our milkings now. We still won't have any drinkable milk for the first 3 days until the colostrum is gone. We'll post more pictures and updates this week.

Dairy Trip Pics

Here are some pics of our trip to Frerich's Dairy to get our new dairy cow.

This is Pumpkin our new cow. She's due next month.

This is Belle, the Blue Bell Ice Cream mascot cow.

Here are our two girls, Pumpkin and Chloe, together.

Here's a little baby calf at the dairy.

Here are some more calves that have been weaned and turned out to pasture.

Book Review - Undaunted Courage

After 9 weeks of reading, I finally finished Undaunted Courage, a novel about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Actually, it's advertised more as a biography of Meriwether Lewis than an overview of the expedition. That being said, 80% of the book is about the expedition.

I enjoyed this book very much. Stephen Ambrose has a way of writing that just holds my interest. There's nothing spectacular about it, it's just interesting. I wanted to learn more about the expedition because you always hear about Lewis and Clark, but I knew next to nothing about what they did. I was under the impression that the U.S. didn't know where the West coast was, and wanted to find out how far the continent extended. In fact, the U.S. knew exactly where the continent ended. In 1792, an American sea captain discovered the mouth of the Columbia River and recorded its location. Speculation began about an "all-water route to the Pacific". If America could ship trade goods up the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Rocky Mts, and then go down the Columbia River to the Pacific, they'd have the quickest route to the Orient, and the U.S. stood to gain a lot of wealth. No all-water route existed, but neither did any information on what was between Missouri and the Pacific. It was a scientific expedition as much as it was for trade.

There are a couple of amazing things I learned about the expedition:

- Sacagawea was married to a Frenchman who had won her in a gambling match with some indians. Not only that, but the tribe she lived with in North Dakota wasn't her tribe. She had been kidnapped by them when she was a teenager. One of the reasons she wanted to go on the expedition was because they would be traveling west to her homeland, and were hoping to meet up with her native tribe, the Shoshones.

- Sacagawea had just recently given birth to her son, Jean Baptiste, when she set out on the expedition. She carried him on her back from North Dakota to the Pacific and back over a period of two years. Most of us complain about taking our little ones on a 3 hour car ride, or having to carry them in a carrier for more than an hour. She was tough.

- When negotiating for horses with the Shoshones, Sacagewea would translate Shoshone into Hidatsa, her husband (who spoke poor Hidatsa) would translate Hidatasa into French, then another man would translate the French into English for Lewis and Clark to hear. I would imagine a lot was lost in translation.

- The expedition relied VERY heavily on the indians they encountered to help them get through the trip. It is doubtless it would have failed without them. They stayed with and traded with Indians during their first winter in North Dakota, they traded with indians for horses to get over the Rockies, and they lived and traded with indians living on the Pacific during their second winter. They would have starved or gotten lost in the mountains without them.

- Contrary to popular revisionist history, not all the indians were noble and honorable. Some were, and were invaluable to the expedition. Some were not, and attempted multiple times to steal from the travelers. In one instance, Lewis and one of his men had to kill two indians who were attempting to steal their rifles and horses, two items that were desperately needed for survival.

- In some indian tribes, the indian women were very promiscuous with the whites (some at the insistence of their husbands) and venereal disease was rampant among the men of the expedition. Lewis and Clark claim to never have partaken of the services offered. 80% of the medical complaints and ailments listed involved VDs.

- Only one person died on the expedition, and that death was unavoidable. One of the sergeants developed an appendicitis and died after his appendix ruptured.

- The expedition literally travelled into territory were no white man had. They were the first to see the Rockies, the great plains, and grizzly bears. It was the ultimate adventure and they could never know what to expect.

- It took so long for the expedition to get back to St. Louis that President Jefferson didn't know whether they were alive or dead. A rumor had floated that they had been captured by the Spanish (the Spanish and English both claimed land west of the Missouri River), and were slaves in the silver mines.

- The Spanish learned of the expedition through their spies in the U.S. government, and sent out four different armed parties to arrest them. None were successful in locating them.

- Guns were some of the most prized commodities amongst the indians. The expedition had to be on guard at all times because they could be easily overwhelmed and slaughtered for their weapons.

- Meriwether Lewis was prone to severe depression (inherited from his family), and committed suicide 3 years after the expedition.

I could go on forever, but this was a great book. If you're a history buff, I highly recommend it. My next book is a biography of Abraham Lincoln. We'll see how that one pans out. I'm determined not to try and finish any book that loses my interest. I like to finish whatever I start, but I have so little time to read that I can't waste time on boring books.

Trying to Get Pregnant

No, no. Regina's not trying to get pregnant (remember, we don't try anymore...). I'm talking about the cow, Chloe. We found an AI (artificial insemination) guy in town and he gave us some supplies to aid in the process. This morning we (Regina, actually) inserted a CIDR into Chloe's....um....well, "you know." It has Progesterone on it, and was followed by a Pregesterone injection (done by me). In a week we will remove the CIDR, give an injection of Estrumate, give an injection of Estrudiol, and she will be "AI'd" by the technician the day after that. All these injections are supposed to foce her body to go into heat, so she can be bred by the technician next week.

Total cost: $60

Not bad considering taking her to a bull is a lot more trouble and not as predictable. One thing I've got to mention is my complete disagreement with people who say cows have no facial expressions. If you saw the look on her face when she was having the CIDR inserted, you'd know what we're talking about. The poor thing couldn't figure out what was going on. Luckily for cows, they forget pretty quickly. I just hate poking her with all these needles. I don't want her to start associating us with getting a painful shot.

Fingers crossed, she will be preggers sometime next week.

New Cow

Well, as you may know from Regina's post, we have a useless cow. I know that may sound mean, but a dairy cow that is not either pregnant or milking is pretty useless. That will all change of course when we have her AI'd (artificially inseminated), but for now she's just good for providing us fertilizer.

Therefore, we have decided to buy a new milk cow. We are not looking to replace Chloe, but we're not willing to wait 9-10 more months for milk. Our plan is to raise them both for the time being, and depending on which one we like better, sell one of them next summer. Needless to say, Jersey milk cows are hard to find around here. This is beef country, not dairy country.

Good fortune has smiled upon us as we have found an all Jersey dairy in La Grange, TX that is willing to sell us almost any of their cows. They have a herd of 140 and said every cow is worth something, so as long as we're willing to pay, they're willing to sell. Their Jerseys range in price from $800 to $2500 depending on health, milk production, age, etc. Seeing as how Chloe cost us $1800, we're happy with the prices. Subsequently, we will be traveling there on Oct 28th to look at some cows and decide on one. We're also going to purchase a young (just a few days old) Jersey bull calf to raise for meat. Our herd is about to increase from one to three in a very short time.

One cool thing is that Belle, the Blue Bell ice cream mascot cow, resides at this dairy. Regina saw her once when she was brought to A&M, and she said Belle is the prettiest cow she has ever seen. We hope to get a couple of pictures of her. I never thought I'd say a cow is pretty, but Jerseys are just gorgeous.

Wish us luck!

Hauling Hay

Last week, we stocked up on hay for the winter. I found a good hay dealer here in town and we decided to go ahead and buy a year's worth. That way we wouldn't have to worry about it for a long time. We bought 96 bales of alfalfa. Each bale weighs about 60 lbs so I lifted a total of 5760 lbs of hay that week. Alfalfa is not easy to find around here. It requires more water to grow than we usually get here. Luckily, this guy has an irrigation system. It was expensive by hay standards ($8.50 per bale), but $2.00 cheaper than what the local feed store is selling. Not to mention the fact that Chloe likes this guy's hay better than the feed store's.

The kids had a blast climbing on the hay. I asked Sean if he would help me. He agreed. When I inquired as to whether he could lift a 60 lb bale he said: "No, but I can watch you do it." Thanks for the support. The kids climbed all over the bales and Sean and McCulla pretended to be a king and queen sitting on a throne. I never thought I would pay $800 for grass, but priorities change when you have animals.

Next year we're thinking of buying round bales. You save about 40% on cost because they're cheaper (mostly in manpower) to bale and move. It feels good to know that we're stocked up for the year, and I smile any time I look inside out hay shed. I love the smell of hay.

Where's The Beef?

So where's this calf we've been waiting for for the last 7 months? Check out Regina's blog to find out:

http://reginaorganizedchoas.blogspot.com/2007/10/got-milk-no.html

Chicken Processing Day

The day finally arrived this weekend. It was time to process our meat birds. Given the fact that this whole experiment was my idea, I hoped and prayed it would go well. My in-laws were in town to watch the kids, because we knew it would be an all day adventure.

The day began at 6:00 a.m. I set up the chicken scalder my father-in-law and I built a few months ago. You have to scald the birds after they bleed out so the feathers will come off easier. The water is not boiling, but it is hot enough that you don't want to stick your hand in there (I learned that the hard way when the sink stopper came out). I set up the processing table where Regina would eviserate the birds, and put out trash cans to put feathers and discarded body parts in.

We ate breakfast and started on the first birds around 7:30 a.m. I hung them up, bled them out and let them hang for 10-15 minutes. Then I would scald them for about 30-60 seconds, hang them back up, and pluck them. Hand plucking is by far the most tedious and time consuming part. It took me at least 30 minutes per bird. Not only that, but wet chickens don't smell the best. The closest thing would be wet dog, but worse.

After the plucking Regina would eviserate and cut off the legs. The feet can be boiled with the bones to make chicken stock. Apparently they are rich in collagen. She made me cut the heads off, which I found hilarious. She can reach inside a chicken and pull the guts out, but cutting off the head is too gross.

With a break for lunch and another to refill the scalder, it took us almost 13 hours (10-11 of which were spent working). The sun had long gone down when the final chicken was in the freezer. It feels good having a freezer full of farm raised chicken.

It was hard work, but having enough chicken for 5-6 months makes it worth it.
Here's what we learned:

- Most of these birds were as large, if not larger, than the ones you buy in the store.
- If we're going to do this again, I need a mechanical chicken plucker. My father-in-law and I will build one this winter. It has these little rotating rubber fingers that strip the feathers right off the bird. Even if it can cut the plucking time in half I'll be happy with it. Plucking is really the only reason it took as long as it did. We could probably do twice the number of chickens in one day with it.
- Our chicken scalder needs a better drain plug. We also underestimated the time it takes to get the water up to the right temperature.
- Hanging the chicken upside down to deliver the coup de grace works, but it's mighty bloody. Chickens like to flop around quite a bit as their bleeding out, and it tends to spray blood everywhere. It is possible to make something called a "killing cone", pictured below. You stick the chicken into it head first and it holds the bird still so they can't flop around and makes that part of the process a little cleaner.

- We liked raising our own chickens, and will do it again, however, we didn't like losing 1/3 of our flock to health problems. We're going to try a couple of different approaches, like buying stock from a more reputable hatchery, and buying breeds that don't grow as fast, so don't have as many health problems.

Just to give you an idea of how fast these meat birds grow, take a look at this picture. The brown chicken is an egg laying breed we bought at the same time as the meat birds. They are the same age (8 weeks) but you can see a massive difference in size. They are meaty little freaks of nature.

Bringing Home the Bacon

Yesterday I literally "brought home the bacon". Pork Chop's pork chops were ready for pick up at the local butcher. She ended up yielding 221 lbs of pork. Wow! We had no idea she was so big. Pig's are supposed to dress out at 80% of their live weight, so if that holds true then she weighed 275 lbs.

We ate some of the sausage this morning for breakfast and it was excellent. I could slaughter a pig if I had to, but it's kind of nice to be able to drop her off and get the meat back in nice clean little paper packages.

We still have to wait another 3 weeks for the hams and bacon because they have to cure. That's another 56 lbs of meat waiting. It's a good thing we bought that freezer. I think we could fit a cow and a pig in there, but not much more.

One funny thing is that they gave us the back bone. I'm not sure why. If there's any meat on it we can boil it and use the meat for soup. Then the dogs can have a treat.

This morning we had fresh eggs from our own chickens and pork from our own pig. The only thing that was missing was milk from our own cow and fresh wheat bread ground from fresh wheat and made by hand. That's coming soon.

Here's the break down on the costs of raising a pig:

$40 - purchase price
$77 - feed costs
$152 - processing costs
Total - $269

Price divided by lbs of meat = $1.21 per lb

Not bad

How Many Kids Are You Going To Have?

We have been asked that question more times than we can remember. It's a valid question. We forget sometimes that the average American only has 2.5 kids, so it must get people wondering just how many we plan to have. Not only that, but the close ages of our kids is unusual as well.

Well, Reg and I decided to tell everyone the truth, that way there's no more wondering. The best answer we can give you is: We don't know. That's an honest answer. However, a bit more information is probably warranted.

To be blunt, Regina and I have never really felt comfortable with birth control. We began our marriage not using it (hence Sean's birth 9 months later), and haven't used it since. We couldn't shake the feeling that we were taking the control out of God's hands. Our plan was to have as many kids as we wanted, and let God plan when they came. Then we could stop.

Nevertheless, we kept getting this nagging feeling that we were still trying to control things ourselves, instead of leaving it up to God. Still, we ignored it. I mean, how many people do you know that have more than three or four kids? Large families are just rare today.

Then we stumbled on it. At first it seemed stupid, but the more we thought about it, the more it just seemed to make sense, and the more God chipped away at our stubborness. We don't like to lump ourselves into some defined group, but the closest thing to our philosophy would be the "quiver full" movement. If you'd like to read more about it, you can find it on Wikipedia. The term comes from Psalms 127:3-5:

"Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate."

The basic premise is that children are a blessing. The Bible makes no distinction between the blessing of children and other God-given blessings (money, prosperity, health, etc). Most people would absolutely agree that their children are blessings from God. The difference is the way we perceive those blessings. We kept asking ourselves: "If children are blessings, why would we actively move to limit those blessings? Would we ask God to stop giving us health, money, or prosperity? Absolutely not. So if children are blessings, why should we want to stop having them?"

Not only that, but the Bible is also very explicit about the fact that God is the sole authority on opening and closing the womb. There are plenty of examples. So if God knows when to give people children and when not to, why am I acting as if I know better than He does? Some people who are "quiver full" think they should have as many babies as possible before their fertile years are over. We are not inclined to that. We feel that is again trying to take control of something that God already has a plan for. We would rather just let Him decide when and how many we have.

Now there are some sticking points in this whole thing. First, there are people who are loving, devoted, godly Christians who just can't seem to get pregnant. We are not going to judge those situations. Is God closing the womb due to some undealt with sin? Is it just not time for them to bear children yet? Does he have some other purpose for them (missionary work or adoption)? These are questions that can only be answered in earnest prayer on their part. Secondly, there are women who literally take thier lives into their own hands by getting pregnant. I've met them. Doctors tell them it is extremely dangerous to have children because of some ailment or condition. Should they continue to let themselves get pregnant? Again, I can not answer that. I think only God can speak to each individual couple.

Lastly, do we realize just how many children we could have if we don't use birth control? I can answer that one. Yes, we realize, and if you don't think it scares us, you're dead wrong. It scares us. Can we handle it? Can we afford it? We don't know. What we do know is that God is in control of everything, and the Bible is very clear that He takes care of His children. I can't believe that He would give us children without giving us the money to feed and clothe them, or the strength to organize, care for, and raise them. It is an enormous responsibility, and can be frightening, but we have complete trust in the Lord and that He knows what He is doing. We are reminded that up until about 80 years ago, there was no such thing as birth control (other than abstinence). People didn't have a choice other than to trust God, and their circumstances could have been far worse than ours today.

Another step we will not take is to become legalistic about this. This is how God has spoken to our family, and I would never imply that others sin or displease God by not having a large family. If you are earnestly seeking His will and leaving your heart open to His leading, He will guide you where He wants you to go. That's all we can do as believers, and this is where He has led us.

This whole thing is quite unnerving and uncertain to us, but that's a pretty good indication to us that it is from God. The more we turn our lives over to Him the more we find Him leading us down paths we never even thought of before, and the more peace He gives us that He is in control. It's a matter of faith, I suppose. We have recently met some Christian families with the same philosophy as ours, and that is extremely encouraging. They are wonderful, happy families, and we have already learned so much from their faith and experience.

Anyway, that's our family's philosophy. I don't expect everyone to understand or agree, but we felt we might as well let you know where we're coming from.