Ain't It Good

Super Awesome day today.
Started off getting all the Christmas decorations out of the storage barn & to the front porch for sorting. Dang but Mom had a thing for boxes & bows. I think I have 4-5 large plastic storage tubs full of those items. Found all the decorations, but no lights. Forgot what a fire paranoid she was & the lights got thrown out every year. So...ran off to town to buy lights. Didn't think I'd have enough & was sorry to prove myself correct on that. I guess it is off to another town close by to buy more tomorrow. I can't finish getting the tree up, much less decorated without those lights!
WB & I took a trailer full of the girls in to town for branding this afternoon. That is one of the girls getting her L open A on her left hip. Freeze branding is so much easier on the cattle than heat brands. No burning or scaring or any major discomfort for them & we have our brand & the inventory number on the cow just like always. Kinda cool - no pun intended!
WB especially likes the freeze branding at the vet clinic because that means he can sit back & let other people do the work. I was photographer & timer. Helped a little bit with getting them out of the trailer & into the chute. Other than that, we just make sure that the correct number is being permanently frozen onto the cow's hide. Really neat how it works. Basically, the liquid nitrogen gets the branding irons so cold that when left on the hide for 1 minute, it kills the hair follicles. So, no hair will grow in those spots. If you leave the iron on for less than a minute on a black cow, the hair will grow in white. The follicle remains in tact, but the hair color is permanently changed. Really really cool - again, no pun intended there.

Here is a display of the turf wars that went down. We have put the two herds of girls together from the north & east pastures. Woo Hoo - North side meets East side. So glad that they only have horns because we'd have been extra busy with clean up if they could use real weapons! I think they mostly have their hierarchy all worked out. This gal was certainly getting her display of her badassness on. I wouldn't want to tangle with her!! At least now we finally have all the cow work done for 2010, but will have to get started fairly quickly with it in 2011. All the pecking order skirmishes should be done soon & things will go back to normal.

Back to decorating the tree tomorrow & I have a pork shoulder roast that is begging to be simmered in the crock pot all day & then be made into enchiladas tomorrow night.