Logwood Farms

Our focus this year was to recover our pasture from the extreme drought of last year, sell our calves in the spring, add a few more adult/calf pairs to our herd, and have a rent-a-bull come have fun so we could have a fruitful calving season in the spring of 2018.

As much as we tried to make friends with the calves, all but one were very leery of us and would run when we walked up to the fence. Their mothers too would nudge them away when we approached too close. The half white face calf of our half white face mama (#29) was the exception. Slowly she gained trust in us as we fed her grass from our side of the fence. When we came outside she would walk over to the fence and wait for us. Dick warned about becoming attached to the calves since we would be selling them in the spring. He was right. It was a sad day when we sold eight calves, especially the friendly one. The mama cows were mooing for them for a couple of days which added to the sadness. Lesson learned, no attachment ever again.

In June, we sold eight calves, and the Charolais cow that abandoned her calf to die last fall. We added three more adult/calf pairs to our herd. One, a full white face, had “panda” eyes, she came with a bull calf with a white stripe on his head. The second was a brown brindle colored cow with a good looking brown bull calf, about 3 months old. The third pair was a black cow with a black heifer calf. The bull came the same day to start doing his job.

Losing two of her calves to sale, seemed to be too much to bear for our half white face cow. She lost a huge amount of weight rapidly. We shot her with antibiotics. She never recovered, and one day could not get up due to weakness. We had to euthanize her. We were absolutely devastated. On that same horrible day, our new brown calf died from bloat. We were defeated and were questioning our decision to go into the cattle business.

Continuing on, we worked on improving the pasture for the rest of the year and getting ready for calving season next spring. The new bull calf we acquired in June really grew quickly; unfortunately, he grew in meanness too. He started to become a bully, we were worried how he would respond to the new calves next spring.  Time would tell.

We were relieved when this heart breaking year came to a close, and were looking forward to calving season next spring.