New Year's Baby

Momma 242 finally had that little baby on New Year's Day. Our first calf of the year & it (I don't know if it's a girl or boy yet) makes a total of 6 commercial calves born in late November, December 2010 & now January 2011. That little baby is soooo cute! I just want to go give it a hug & give it lots of kisses. I would never survive even if baby would stand still for all that loving since momma would eat my lunch! Momma wasn't too worried about me though at feeding time last night. She was hungrier than she was concerned as I was putting out the feed. She did finally lift her head from the trough, look for her baby & look for me. I made sure I had the Kubota between us just in case she decided I was closer to her baby than she wanted. All was well though & baby frolicked about the pen while the big kids & grown ups ate their dinner.
Mrs. Black Buck doe has been fully integrated into the herd. You can sort of see her in the 2nd picture & that is the closest I have ever gotten to her. She gets right in the mix of all the cows to bed down with them or eat hay. She's kind of small to get in at the troughs with the cows, but she definitely goes back & does cleanup on anything left behind or that hits the ground. I guess the Brahmans & the Black Buck know that are fellow countrymen since they are both of Indian (from India) decent.
Today I'm going to make chicken & dumplings - yum yum! I also have all the stuff ready to go for some peanut butter sticks so I better get started on that as well. Once all my cooking duties are done, I think I'm going to go clean up the calves pen a bit - lop some broken tree branches & fix a section of the fence. The horses probably wouldn't mind getting out of the cold rainy weather to enjoy some dry hay & alfalfa cubes. So I'll work with them today regardless of weather. It's still pitch dark outside so I'll be waiting a while for all of that. The rain is so nice to have - maybe we'll get to burn our burn piles. Of course, the county will have to lift the burn ban first.