Ebersole Cattle Company

WOW!! Mother Nature sure hit us good this week!! It was really hard to get an accurate measure with all the wind and blowing, but I believe that we had just over 12 inches of snow on Tuesday.   Then Mother Nature had fun blowing it around and dropping temperatures on Wednesday and Thursday.

The calves that were weaned this last weekend all made it through ok.  We rolled out hay & put some soy-hull pellets in a creep feeder for them to eat.  The cows weaned pretty good too, they've all stopped bawling and moo-ing!  That makes the nights a little easier to sleep!  Because, I'm always nervous during weaning that a cow will make a hole in the fence and everyone will follow her out of the hole and run loose in our road.  (Nevermind that we couldn't get any traffic because we were snowed in!)

Beau tried to make it to town on Wednesday & was stuck two times in 3 miles.  Needless to say, he turned right around and came home!  He did make it in to town on Thursday and bought new batteries for our truck.   It was gelled with dead batteries in the driveway.

Some of our pipes froze in the house on Thursday and we had the cow-waterer freeze up too.  Our high temp on Thursday was 12.  With a 25 mile an hour wind. BRRRRR!

All the water is thawed and we now have new heat tapes installed, so we hopefull won't be repeating our experience.

But, the world IS beautiful with this fresh coat of snow, and all of the cows and calves made it through healthy and happy!

We do take two beef to be harvested on Tuesday too!

I hope you are all safe and warm!

Shanen, Mama to the Momma cows at the Ebersole Cattle Co

Sunday was a big day and we did accomplish alot!  After the cows were finished, we moved the Mares and weaned the colts.  Again, it may not sound like much, but it is usually a very difficult task.

We stopped at the house and the guys tightened their cinches and I haltered the stud and hopped on the 4-wheeler.  We then went looking for the mares.  Our mares are kept behind the house in a 160 acre pasture.  As expected they were at the far corner of the pasture.  Koda (our stud horse) followed the 4 wheeler great and we went back about 100 acres and finally saw the mares.  Koda was very excited!  He was still respectfull and we circled and started heading back to the house.  The mares spotted him and came at a run.

I wish someone else had been helping and could have taken pictures because it was quite a sight.  Imagine 30 Mares and Colts at a run following you.  Manes flowing behind them, some playing and bucking, and horses playing tag.  It was beautiful!! 

We crossed the creek, 5 horses wide and made it up to the tricky part, the gate....  You see, after we go out this gate, there are no fences.  We have to go thru a small paddock and cross the road to try to lead them into the corrals.  Beau and Branden were on their horses bunching the Mares together and trying to keep up.

A short tenative pause at the gate on my part, and out we went.  30 horses went out in the open.  They followed me well across the road and right into the pen!!! YEAH!!!  WE DID IT!!!

You see, usually this takes at least 8 people to block the road and help funnel the unbroke mares and colts into the right pen.  Not anymore!!

Then we slowly started sorting mares from their colts.  This is a very trying and traumatic thing for some of the mares.  The don't want to leave their colt, or any other colt alone.  Even though they are only separated by a fence, they still don't like it.  All of the sorting went well, with only one small cut on a colt.

Today (Tuesday)  the colts are still upset and not eating.  This is not good...  I put a couple of old geldings (they got out of their pasture, another long story) in with the colts to teach them to eat from the Hay bale.  This should help them to get more comfortable with eating hay.

We will sell half of our colts, so if you are interested in foundation bred Quarter Horses keep stopping by my blog and you will see pictures as I can get them.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoy my stories from the Ranch!

Remember, we still have a couple of Beef Shares available and we will customize them to fit your family.

Shanen : )