Homesteader Beef Blog : Bring Out the Ranch Jackets

The first frost of the year has brought out the ranch jackets

It was a lite frost but the weather has been cool enough for the ranch jackets. The temperature only dipped down below freezing for a few early morning hours, so the grass wasn’t damaged. What little grass there is. Recently a few showers during the last few weeks has popped up some of the cooler weather grasses. But we’re still stuck in the worst drought in Texas of all time.

Saturday morning I did put on the rain jacket and wet gear for a little while. It was nice to know my rubber boots didn’t dry rot from lack of use. I’m hoping and praying that wearing those rubber boots becomes a common occurrence soon.

Not looking forward to putting on the ranch jacket on for full day, I can do without the colder weather. Just hoping that I don’t see that really cold spell until late January and it only last but a day or two. The weather has been nice with temperature around 70’s during the day with colder mornings. That’s normal November temperature for south Texas.

The calves have their ranch jackets on

We’re pretty much set with this group of calves. May pick up a calf or two but we’re fine for now with ten calves being fed on the bottle. I don’t like to go over twelve. It starts to be work then. The break down of the ten calves are seven Holstein steers, red with white face baldy steer, and two heifers one red with white spot in the forehead and yellow white face baldy.

There has been a few run of the mill scour cases, but nothing that has blown out of control. So far. Two of the Holsteins steers came down with a respiratory problems. Droopy head, coughing, and feeling icky. It has been a tough case for the both of them. I gave them a shot of Draxxin to start with which normally cures about 85% of most cases but it didn’t help much with these two. Four days later I followed up with Micotil and an anti-inflammatory shot but it still didn’t knock it out. About 5 days later they started to turn for the worst again so they got some more anti-inflammatory and Baytril. One snapped out of it and looks like he is going to recover nicely. The other still is battling with it some. I probably should have tried Nuflor instead of the Micotil but I have had go success with this follow up combo lately. The others all look good and everyone is nursing the bottle well.