Stockyards

Our heard was close to being depleted (that was a good thing...people are buying more beef from us)  and we needed to replacements for our late winter/early Spring orders. Nothing says quality family time like heading to the country and spending an afternoon at the Stockyards. It's been too long since we all have been to a sale together (kids and I are in school all day long) and made this time extra special. The kids were beyond excited and we needed a little change in environment (and animals) since the whole Lighting incident last week.

Early morn' caught up with him

Hayley had found a baby calf that she had spotted as soon as we got there and planted herself in the front row because she was going to make sure nobody bid on her. Poor Brian was not going to hear the end of that if he didn't buy her. I told him that I didn't care, if that's what it took to get her mind and obsession on something else, do it!! Thankfully she went fairly cheap and was healthy enough to buy. She was on cloud 9 and already had a name picked out for her (Emily) before we had the trailer loaded.

First stop was to the local vet to dehorn some. I had never seen this done and was pretty excited about watching it. I will spare you the pictures, but it was very cool!!

Since we had bought 16 we needed to get tags in their ears, it was a perfect time to do that since they were already in the chute for dehorning. This is a job that the kids FIGHT over who gets to do (with a little assistance from Daddy).

Once we got back to the farm we turned Emily out to pasture while we cleaned out trailers and moved cows around. You can tell that she has never been messed with and came straight off her Momma because she ran thru 3 different fences and fields, took us a good hour to catch her. Lesson learned...and now have her in the stall and a halter on!!!

All in all it was a very successful day, filled with lots of memories and quality family time. Just what we all needed!!