It is the 10th of March and we have finally seen temperatures above freezing! For three days in a row! If the people of Saskatchewan aren't the ones most worried by global warming, you'll have to fogive us - this has been one nasty, cold winter.
We are still hauling water to the cattle. They've settled down to needing two tanks a day; one in the morning and another at sundown. I guess they've got used to the routine, and so have we. If I'm home I'll go, and Glen hasn't been called in to work for most of this week so he's been here to do it on the days I worked. I can't see the use of an expensive dig when Mother Nature will be making water from snow in the next few weeks, so we'll carry on like this.
One thing that Mother Nature did do for us last week was dump about a foot of heavy, wet spring snow on us. There will be tons of runoff in this year's melt - just what we've been praying for, and we're grateful. We hear on the news that just over a 100 miles west of here the snow ends and they are facing the drought nightmare we've just barely dodged. From Weyburn to the Alberta border there is next to no snow.
We will soon be bringing our cows in from winter pasture; their babies are due to start arriving the first week of April so we'll want them in where they're easier to check on. We've got last year's calves on chop rations now - it's hard to believe that they were cute little fluffy creatures just a year ago, they are huge, hungry beasts now. They are still playful though - when I step into the pen with the pails of chop I watch them pretty close. They tend to run and kick up their heels when food arrives which is nice, you know that they're feeling good, but I'm certain that a happy kick from an 800 pound animal is going to hurt every bit as much as a malicious kick would.
Glen has spent this week carting all three bulls off to town to see the vet this week. One of them has what they called "woody tongue" when their tongue swells up and stiffens so they can't eat properly - they're treating him with an IV infusion to boost his iodine levels. He's been to town twice and is taking a long time to perk up. Our biggest bull had to go in because he had stepped on something sharp and got infection in his foot, and the last guy had a boil on his jaw that had to be drained. This might have been caused by the sharp barley beard spikes in their feed that poked into his cheek and caused infection. It's just coincidence that they should all end up needing to see the vet in one week, and it's not a bill I'm looking forward to getting!
I'm going to make the best of this day of sunshine ... there will be laundry hanging out in the fresh air before noon and some windows open to move some of this stale winter air out of the house. My aunt in England writes of flowers already blooming in her front garden but by Canadians standards, this will have to do.
2 comments:
I'm glad you are getting spring. Up in northern Alberta these seems to be the winter which will never end. We get a couple days around freezing and then it drops back to -20C and snows. There is more snow in the fields then there has been in the past 10 years. Should be good for my dugouts.
Hi Rick, Spring is trying, but we've had our share of set backs too. the weatherman keeps promising that tomorrow it will be very warm, but tomorrow never seems to get here. The low spots are slowly filling, though. Glen has a CAT to work with for the next few days so he's going to be showing our son, Mitchell, how to run it and dig another duggout at the same time.
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