Weekend at the farm

This past weekend Louis and I went up to see his parents in Milford and to pick up the kids, who have been staying with Grandma & Grandpa. On Sunday afternoon we had some great "family" time with Grandpa Jack & Grandma Lynne. For those of you who do not know, Jack is a veterinarian and a beef farmer. They raise Hereford cattle. Since Louis and I were visiting they figured it would be a good time to "work" cattle. What that means is that we catch all the cows and calves (& some bulls) to give them their vaccinations and take blood samples. It's a lot of work to run over 75-100 cattle through the barn. Jack, of course has the hardest part of the job, giving the shots and taking the blood samples, which are taken from the underside of the cows tail. You wouldn't believe how strong those tails are when they don't want them lifted up! I would say it took us about 4 hours total to round up the cattle from the pasture and bring them up to the barn and then run them through individually and then put them back out to pasture. Caisha was great help! She was in charge of writing the cattle's number on the blood vials and handing them to me so I could insert the blood from the syringe that Jack had just filled up. Lynne ran the head gate (an apparatus that catches the cattle's head so they can't back up or go forward), and Louis seperated out the cows and calves and brought them into the barn. We had a pretty good system going and things went fairly smoothly. Funny as it sounds, it was a great afternoon!