Switching On Both Sides Of The River

It is not as wet around here this month as it was last month. We have still had measurable precipitation each day, but the daily volume is down to only a few hundredths each day rather than inches. The ground is still saturated and a muddy mess, but at least the standing puddles are not as deep as they were. Two big things were planned for this day. One, the bull that had been sold last week was going to be picked up and Two, the calves that have the green weaner clips installed across the river needed to be moved into the space in my show barn where the sold bull was penned.

I had to give you that setup in order to visualize how the day went yesterday. We were scheduled to have the bull buyer arrive sometime between 9 and 10am with his stock trailer to pick up #43 HeartThrob. You may remember, he was born on Valentine’s Day last year (hence his name). Since the road to the show barn where we housed HeartThrob for the night is fraught with deep muck, we attached our trailer to our tractor to load him. Once loaded, we planned to back the trailers together in the driveway with the back doors open to create a ramp for HeartThrob to walk from our trailer to his new owner’s trailer.

The farmer was driving truck and trailer from Washougal, Washington and got caught in the morning commute traffic as he negotiated the highways even before he got to Portland, so he stopped and called to say that he would not make it by 9:30 or 10 as expected. That threw our day into a tailspin of revamping our schedule. Instead of waiting to feed the main herd across the river until after the sold bull was gone, we had to bring the herd into the far barn and sort out the two calves that had weaner clips installed.

Instead of moving the sold bull out of my show barn and trailering the newly weaner-installed bulls from the main herd. We switched the sequence and planned to move the weaners to the show barn first, where they would begin the next phase of growing up.

We moved our stock trailer that was already attached to the tractor, up the county road through the big logging gate, across the bridge and over to the far barn. Once we opened the gate, the main herd including the two weaners walked in to see if breakfast was being served indoors this morning. We penned the weaners away from the herd and moved them easily into the trailer then moved the main herd out of the barn and fed their morning meal before tractoring the trailer, with the weaners inside, back across the bridge, the road, the driveway, and out to muddy road to the show barn.

We fed HeartThrob some grain and closed the headgate so he could not back up and moved the two weaners behind him to a safe middle pen in the series of pens before closing gates and securing them away from the much bigger HeartThrob.

By this time it was about 11 am and we just left the trailer right where we had just unloaded and released Heartthrob from the headgate while we waited for our traffic en-snarled farmer. I stayed in the pen with HeartThrob just in case he decided to walk himself into the trailer, I figured I would be able to do a little reading of my library book on my phone while I waited. But HeartThrob took one look at the trailer and walked right in to investigate so we locked the middle (slam gate section) and closed him in proper while we waited for the farmer to show up. I did not even have time to open the book.

In about 20 minutes the farmer arrived and positioned his stock trailer in the driveway, Mike backed our tractor with trailer to meet his back end to back end and HeartThrob calmly walked from one trailer to the other without hesitation. Once secure in his new vehicle, the farmer was able to head back to Washougal before the afternoon commute of heavy traffic would slow his progress home.

Thank you so much for supporting our stories. We appreciate every reader we have and love it when you spread the word about SchmidlinAngusFarms, fill out the FOLLOW information so you get each story right to your email each day and/or leave comments about the stories. I would also like to take a moment to thank those who click on the icon to do shopping with the affiliate, your clicks give me credit for directing people to their site (clicking on the affiliate icon does not make you purchase, only gets you the their site) and sometimes I get a small commission from your purchases if you do shop, without a cost to you! As always, Prime and special codes work with the icon and you do not have to purchase any item that I promote. Please consider using my link when you do your cyber shopping. Thank you for your support