Preg Testing

Saturday we did our annual preg testing of our cows.  This year we had 81 to test!  The vet was scheduled to come at 9:30am on what turned out to be a beautiful day!  Jared started getting everything ready early in the week.  He had to set up panels to make a makeshift alley, he had to fix fence, he had to divide the pen for cull cows and the main herd, he had to sort the numbers out and decide which ones should be culled and on top of all that he still had to feed the calves and cows!  It was a busy week for him!  But thank goodness he did it all before hand so we weren't rushing that morning. 

Saturday morning came and Dave, Char, Blake, Emry and I helped get the cows out of the their pen and into the alley, so much better having the new alley so all the cows can fit at once and we don't have to go back and get another group out of the pen.  It would take up so much of the vets time and he'd just be standing around waiting for us. Now things run so much more smoothly.

We were expecting Dirk to come preg test but his son, Stephen, came instead!! We were happy with the change as we really like working with Stephen.  Dave herded a group of cows into the squeeze and on we went! Char, Blake and Emry kept the cows moving through the shoot thingy, I recorded whether they were pregnant or not and wrote out new tags if they were needed, Jared ran the squeeze and gave ivomec, tagged them if needed and gave them a shot if needed too, and Stephen did his checking! 

We had 6 open (not pregnant) cows, only one of those being a heifer (a first year calver) and then we got rid of 8 others because of their attitude and behavior!  Some are a little aggressive which we don't like to keep if we can help it! We finally got rid of my favourite cow, she likes to jump while in the shoot and she could really hurt herself or someone on the cat walk.  She did it last year too and I convinced Jared to keep her telling him she was just spooked, but when she did it again this year he had to make a decision :(

This is similar to what my favourite cow looked like, I love the dark on their faces.

It was a crisp day with the wind but once the sun came out it was turned into a beautiful day.  After all the cows were run through we went to our house for some lunch!  I'm glad it turned out to be a successful day and all the preparation Jared did before hand sure made things run a lot smoother.