New Additions To Our Family

We have 2 new additions to our family!!  No, it's not goats as we are still waiting as patiently as possible for them.  We do, however, have 2 new bottle calves.  We weren't really looking too hard yet for the kids' bottle calves for the 4H county fair, but we got a call that a local farmer had one and a week later another call.  We went to look at them and we can't ever say no unless there is something clearly wrong with them!

The first calf is a twin of a heifer that the mother didn't want at first.  When momma finally decided to take her, she wouldn't drink -only from a bottle.  Big farmers don't have much time to bottle feed a bunch of calves!  Lucky for us!  She is all black and a cross between angus and simmental.  She is huge for a twin and doing very well!  She was born on 3/4 and already eating a little Kent calf starter feed.  She will be my daughter's to show at the fair and she has named her Stella.  This is my daughter's first year at the fair, so she got first dibs.

A week later, we got the second call.  Twin angus calves born to a momma that had only enough milk for one.  She is also black and smaller than Stella.  Her sibling is a bull so she will most likely be sold eventually.  She is about normal size for a twin.  She is also doing very well in the barn.  Hopefully these girls will be buddies!  This calf is my son's to show.  He had kind of a time showing his 2nd year bottle calf last year at the fair and wanted to go back to bottle calves at least for this year!  Last year it was very hot and dry and his cow had been cooped up at the fair for a couple of days before the show.  When she got to go out of the barn for the show all she wanted to do was eat grass!  She kept heading for the lawn but he did very well keeping her in line.  It was just a little more work than he intended, I think. 

The kids are enjoying feeding them and "playing" with them and as soon as weather permits they will start the halters on them in the yard.  For now, I may have jumped the gun on spring a little as today is very cold and oh so windy :(  It is the first day of spring, though, and hopefully mother nature realizes that soon!!!!

I had planned to post some pics of the new girls today but chicken out of staying outside long enough to photo them.  I did chores as fast as I could!  I will post them soon, though.  They are cuties!

As always, hope everyone has a great day!!

Deep Well Pump Problems

We have learned so many lessons these past few years and gained a wealth of knowledge, but as we were reminded of this week --we have sooooo much to learn!

On Monday morning I went out to do morning chores and when I turned on the well pump NOTHING happened!!  Called my hubby who said the handle must be frozen due to our amazing Iowa winter that has seemed to go on forever.  He would take care of it when he got home --NOT!

After 4 days of carrying 5 gallon buckets of water (my poor husband's back was at the brink of breaking!) from the house to the cows, goats, etc I finally called a repairman.  Keep in mind that we have never had our well pipe freeze and it has been lots colder here than it is now.  I was sure it was the pump gone bad or something horribly expensive to fix.  The repair man was here Thursday for 5 minutes in the pit and knew it was frozen.  Apparently the southeastern winds freeze them faster than anything.  We informed him that we haven't ever had this problem.  He replied "I've heard that a thousand times this last week". 

He also informed us that we should have a pressure tank in the pit so that when the pump does it's job and pumps tons of water that the spicket cannot possibly pour out fast enough it doesn't burn up the pump eventually!  Had no idea that this could happen to a pump that he says should go forever!  That would have been a cool $1500 fix!  Yikes!  While we had him here we decided the $350 investment for such a pressure tank was a good investment and had him install it as well as put in an outlet for a heat lamp.  Took about an hour and voila running water again!  Yay!!

This morning the darn thing was frozen again due to the heat lamp he put on it was shattered, so again we thawed the pipes which was a 30 minute fix and replaced the heat lamp bulb.  Hopefully the new tarp, hay and wood we put over it all will fix the heat lamp problem and we are good to go for the remainder of winter --which I hope is not much longer!!

This summer will be a revamp of the whole coverage we have on it to hopefully prevent all this in future years!

HAVE A GREAT DAY AND STAY WARM!!