The guilty Governor of Goatville

I really had a great day today. It did not always seem like it was going well but in the end it was just excellent. Whenever you are in the middle of November and the daytime highs reach the 50’s and it is not freezing on most nights that alone are enough to make most days great. I started the day checking on the fall calvers. I have been kind of nervous about the new pairs with being exposed to auction saleyard conditions, hauling and the wet weather. So far so good, the cows seem to be doing really well and the calves are good except for one calf that seems to have a bit of a cough. I will be keeping an eye on him. When we worked these new pairs last week we wormed and gave vaccinations to the calves but I decided to put off the extra stress of branding and castrating the bull calves. I need to work the fall calves I already had anyway so maybe in mid December we will do that.

I worked on some WCA stuff today like getting my email cleared out, trying to get a signature made and responding to a few things. I can see that this presidential thing will really put a dent in my time on the computer that I am able to surf and mess around. I am sure a few people in many political discussion chat rooms and message boards will be happy for my absence. I was someone that was reluctant to join the World Wide Web. Not because I feared the computer I feared the time I would spend if I entered that world. I really love information and feel that learning should be a lifelong process. The internet is great for that but wow can you burn a lot of time if you do not discipline yourself. For a guy it is bad enough with all the sexually related content but you would be amazed at how much information related to the cattle business is online.

Weather reports, market conditions, articles, and ability to save records online, nutrition information, the list is quite endless. Those topics alone could shoot my whole day if I let them. The problem for someone like me who loves information is that it really does not matter what topic it is if I feel I am learning something I did not already know. I am going to share links to a few articles that I had saved over the years that were almost too absurd to read but still I took the time to check them out. Now who can resist reading an article about Russian fishermen catching an alien?

http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/07-02-2007/87167-alien_monster-0/ not only did they catch an alien they ATE said alien. That’s funny I don’t care who you are! Just when you think you are free from the Pravda site you find a link to something livestock related. http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/12-01-2010/111621-sheep_human_face-0/ Read the article just for fun. I was most amazed that this rare birth did not happen in Montana. The article also talks about something similar in Zimbabwe. I quote “In Zimbabwe, a goat gave birth to a similar youngster in September 2009. The mutant baby born with a human-like head stayed alive for several hours until the frightened village residents killed him.

The governor of the province where the ugly goat was born said that the little goat was the fruit of unnatural relationship between the female goat and a man.

"This incident is very shocking. It is my first time to see such an evil thing. It is really embarrassing," he reportedly said. "The head belongs to a man while the body is that of a goat. This is evident that an adult human being was responsible. Evil powers caused this person to lose self control. We often hear cases of human beings who commit bestiality but this is the first time for such an act to produce a product with human features," he added.

The mutant creature was hairless. Local residents said that even dogs were afraid to approach the bizarre animal.

The locals burnt the body of the little goat, and biologists had no chance to study the rare mutation” Now tell me that the time I spent on this was not worth it.

This afternoon was spent catching some of the spring calvers. I had one heifer calf and one cow of the neighbors I wanted to return. I also wanted to weigh on his scale a few steers and a few pregnant coming two year old heifers. The corrals are really muddy and it made things difficult on not only myself but poor Festus seemed to spend as much time swimming today as walking. He did a nice job though and other than a few frustrating missed sorts and the time it took for such a small task it ended well. I tried to take animals that were representative of the average of their contemporaries. I am always somewhat pessimistic about the weight in my own animals and was happy with today’s weighing. I guessed the steers would average right at 600 pounds but they were 655. I even separately weighed the smallest steer which confirmed the average as he weighed 638. The heifers weighed very close to 1050 and I was guessing about 100 pounds lighter. Those weights really made my day and the task kept me from internet gems like http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101116/D9JGTGAG1.html

Woman tries to cut tattooed name off boyfriends’ neck.

Today’s real environmentalist species found on the ranch is Great basin desert parsley aka Lomatium simplex.

Today’s picture is cow 3913g and her steer calf on February 14^th 2010 and again on October 20^th 2010.