Chicks Hatched!!

Here they are!

 Chicks Hatched! So what is it about Sundays around the Silver Spur Ranch? Even though it’s supposed to be a day of rest, seems that is when our livestock goes into labor! Hee hee! The calf was born in the wee hours of a Sunday morn. We hadn’t fed the livestock this morning as we left early for church. When we got home and I was feeding the chickens and turkeys, I looked in to our Buff Orpington hen who has been nesting.

 She was in a different spot (not on her eggs), then I noticed egg shells and looked further…sure enough, there were 8 little perfect chicks!!

Kelly had to fight me to give her a nest as I had been short on eggs the day he separated her from the flock and I didn’t have an extra nesting box. I’m thankful that he went ahead and did it anyway. Isn’t that always the way? Well, it often is with me! (wink) Today is also my birthday and he reminded me of the fact that she hatched them on my birthday! I made a joke and said, “Men…they’ll do anything to get out of shopping!” Ha ha! Well…actually he didn’t plan it that way but it was pretty funny!

Since they are newbies we are not going to fuss with sexing them just yet. I was going to re order this year, but now I am rethinking that idea. We might just hatch our own this year as I’ve not been selling many chickens or eggs since we moved to Texas, like I used to in Colorado. In Colorado, I was selling hens and eggs to other Ranchers who had orders to fill for restaurants and such but their production was down due to the cold weather. Kelly was raised in the mountains of Colorado and really has a keen sense when it comes to cold weather and getting livestock to produce in 20 below conditions! In Colorado, I would order 100 chicks or more a year. Every 2 yrs. I would rotate and butcher the older hens unless they were good broody hens. We had one, Short Stuff (a little bitty Banty hen) who would get very upset with me if I got eggs out from under her. She would let me, but she was NOT a happy camper. The funniest thing was a rooster she hatched who was from another hen’s egg. He was huge but whenever another chicken would go after him, he’d run and hide behind his little banty hen mama!

 Stay tuned for more updates around the ranch! Give us a call and head on out to the ranch when y’all get a chance.

From up at the Main Bunkhouse,

Happy Trails!

Elvira

Suzy Threw a Calf this morning!

A while back, Daniel’s heifer Suzy got out on us and wandered down to the neighbor who has a herd of Black Angus. Of course, I was dealing with cancer so all of the kids headed down with the stock trailer, herded her up into it and brought her home. There was a passing thought of wondering if she got out due to it being her time. But, due to my cancer, no one put much thought to it except a little thought of…“Hmmm…I wonder?”

 

Yesterday she prolapsed just slightly, so Kevin palpated her to see how she was doing. He couldn’t feel anything, but got her back to regular shape. Jessie had been saying she thought she was carrying and she seemed full in her udders. Well, this morning, when Kelly went out to feed her before church, there was a little black calf right beside her! She must have thrown that calf in the middle of the night and she did just fine. This is always the most crucial part…a heifer or her calf can die while in the middle of calving. But, Suzy is proven now! Those Angus were full sized old boys and she did just fine all by herself the first time out!

 

 Strong, healthy, good conformation and getting colostrum! We are all excited! Daniel has his start to a herd! We haven’t decided exactly what we’ll do with the little one just yet, but if she is sold, Daniel will have the money for more heifers and will be able to AI them!

Summer on the Ranch...

We started out summer by working rodeos!! June is a big rodeo month. We worked the Johnson County Sheriff's Posse Rodeo here in Texas which is our new rodeo family that we are getting to know and love! We weren’t able to make it to the Elizabeth Stampede in Colorado this year but heard from friends they had to shut the rodeo down for a short time, due to tornadoes…with that came hail and cold weather. Yep…typical Colorado weather in June! We did make it to Cowboy Up in Kiowa, rodeo which was late June, so hot days and nights in the 50’s…brrr. We enjoyed working it and working with our Colorado rodeo family!

 Here we are with C.J. & Janet under the hospitality tents before the rodeo got started.

 

 

 

Kelly & Daniel with Mike Smith...we used to help Mike and Anita out at Flat Acres Farm when we lived in Parker, Colorado. They put on a great Fall Festival and I've heard they are expanding the place!








Jessie giving Anita one of the necklaces she made.

 Kelly behind the shoots with the sheep before Mutton Bustin'. This was about as close as I was able to get for pictures in Kiowa...it's hard to get close to the shoots. He was behind the shoots with Daniel in the next picture, but he was too far away for my little old camera to capture.

As you can see in this picture, that is Daniel to the left standing, he had just helped to get that bull through the shoots when it decided to go up and over the top of the gate. That is about an 8-10ft gate at least! The bull was half way over but by the time I took the picture, he had slid back down a bit!! We had a great time and a great visit up in Colorado with friends and family!

Summer at the Ranch has us all working in the mornings and in the pool by afternoons! Haven’t posted much lately as we’ve been a bit busy getting a lot of things done so we can ramp up activities for fall and the school year!

 We often have ranch hands come out for day work or to live on the ranch and have them give us a hand in their own particular talents. We have also found ourselves giving young folks a start in ranch life or life in general. We’ve enjoyed Luke’s stay and help in putting in much of the railroad ties for decks, help on the little bunkhouse, putting up a welding/work shop, staining fence posts, etc. He will be moving on to greener pastures in the big city after getting his first job and first truck while working here with us. He got a job up there and will go to college and hopes to have a ranch of his own one day.

 We have a new hand, Kevin, who is a West Texas/Panhandle real, authentic cowboy who grew up on a ranch in Oklahoma and has been helping us work our horses. He’s also been working fence, fixing and putting up our green house and will be taking over the little bunkhouse from Luke to continue the work on it.

 As you can imagine…there is always a lot of work to be done on a ranch, no matter how big or small it is. Barrels need to be sanded and painted regularly for barrel racing, tractors need to be used for many things including clearing weeds with a brush hog and prepping for an arena or keeping an arena in good shape. Of course, there are always repairs to do on the tractor itself but most of those come in the winter months, once we get the workshop finished, there’ll be time enough for that. I am soo thankful we won’t need the tractor here in Texas for snow removal the way we did in Colorado!

 Up at the Main Bunkhouse, we’ll be staining cabinets in the kitchen soon, while we still have some of that warm Texas summer weather and hoping to start on tiling the kitchen counter top soon after. I finally got the last of our things from the storage building we've been renting for over 2yrs. and have them stored here on the property. I’ll be going through some things to see what I have to put up around the ranch, from our last ranch house. Including some baby/toddler things as our grandson turned one year old and we have a new grandbaby on the way…due come next spring!

 The horses are up in the main pasture right now due to mesquite thorns getting into their hooves. Kevin did a great job with their hooves and Kelly was able to find the source of the problem!

 We were hoping the pond would dry up over a hot dry summer as we now have a tractor and had wanted to dredge it up to make it deeper to store water in it over the summer and use the soft shiny silt for arena dirt! But, we’ve had an ample amount of rain this year so it’s not empty yet. They say we are still in a mild drought…so here’s hoping we can still get that cleaned out!

 The turkeys are getting bigger and enjoy it when I hose them down during the hot days of summer, as do the chickens. I’ve been thankful to finally feel like getting out there and caring for them since I’ve not been under cancer treatment. Some of the simple things in life hold the most joy!

 The trees are all showing the wear of August as their fully formed leaves turn a darker green with a little drooping as if to tip their hand that fall is nearing. We had a colder than normal winter and summer so here’s hoping we won’t have a cold fall as I really enjoy fall here in Texas!

 Our garden has done tremendously well this year and there are already plans underway to extend it ever larger for next spring! We’ve had best luck with tomatoes & peppers of several varieties, along with Okra works well in the Texas heat. We also have, Swiss chard, lettuce, sweet basil, dill and green beans. We hope to start squash vegetables (cool weather plants) soon. Here’s a shout out to our friends, Sheila and Jennifer who helped get us accustomed to Texas style gardening! Hoping to be doing a lot of canning, cold packing and dry storage by next year! It will be nice to have our gardens producing that much again, like we did in Colorado and I imagine even better eventually as battling heat and bugs isn’t near as hard as blizzards, hail and a short growing season in the high elevations of Colorado.

The mother board went out on my computer so it had to be sent out to get the work done on it and sent back to me (The pony express would have taken less time y'all) ! Between that and a busy workin' summer, I'll have to apologize for not many posts going out. We have a lot of plans in the works...so keep on comin' back to take a look at what's up around the Bunkhouse and the Silver Spur Ranch!