In Praise of Oldies but Goodies!

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Beautiful pictures. Love the Pheasant, he really does have a gorgeous long tail. So pretty.

Beautiful, Tom Hall was correct, old dogs, children and watermelon wine. How could anything sound more beautiful.

Loved the pictures, thanks again Tara, for the view from your shoes. I love to see and listen to the things you say....have a beautiful day, CynthiaM.

Hmmmm.....Oldies but Goodies.....maybe some of us fit in that catagory?


Here is Mo. He was a legend. Best working dog we have ever had. Amazing dog, friend, coworker and all around good guy!

Here he is as a pup. Very cute!





In the prime of his working life. Wish I would have taken more photos of him at this age.



We tried to retire him at one stage. The only way we could keep him from going to the ranch when we were working cattle was to lock him in the laundry room. He made the best of it!



Mature gentleman.




Working to the end.



With his son, the next generation.



Still miss him.....

Sigh, why do they not live the life length of the humankind. What a beautiful dog. Now I really got a good chuckle when I saw him in the laundry basket, literally, an audible chuckle. Cute as the dickens. Daughter has a dog that sleeps in the plastic box that keeps the recycled paper in it, below the desk where one of the computers is. Go figure, there are indeed more comfortable places to lay. Old dogs, we've had a good many too. Thanks for sharing too, Coopslave. have that wonderful day, CynthiaM.

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Seashell is so pretty! And yes, summer time is such a great time for everyone, young and old.  I love just chillin outside with my peeps and watching them soak up the rays.  Often life's finer pleasures are the simplest.

Beautiful.....roll out those crazy lazy days of summer, those days of soda and pretzels and beer. Summer has begun for surely. Yesterday for us, beautiful sun, today, sunrise 5:45 over the mountain top, sunshine in me eyes.....young birds coming from another place to go into a chicken tractor I have fixed up, with guess what, access to beautiful grass. My other birds are free ranging their hearts out. Except the cochins. They do not like to free range one little bit. Too docile, fat and lazy I guess. I let them out to try free ranging, they snap up a few greens and then want back in. In it shall be. I guess that is my lot in life, to fetch greens. and I do. I had a good number of chard plants over winter (think it was the heavy, heavy snow, which protected). Those plants are about 7 feet tall now, that is with the seed heads up about 4 feet above the chard plant. I pick off goodly amounts of those branches with seeds and leaves for part of their daily greens. Bunch of lazy birds, smiling. Gonna have a entire area dedicated to growing out the chard to protect to come up from the stump of chard for next year too. Perfect greens with millions of little chard seeds on them, perfect summer greens. Oops, this was about your most beautiful, beautiful ducks, Seashell, what a beautiful name for such a beautiful bird. Something about ducks. Have an awesome day, CynthiaM.

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We have a cow here who is 30+ years old. She's horribly ugly, but seems to still be enjoying life. She was still having calves up until a few years ago.

Love my old animals. Lots of cows at 20 plus, a couple of ewes won't see 10 again and two horses approaching 40. Soaked beet pulp and alfalfa pellets are their friend and they soon learn to step up into a pen to be able to enjoy a little extra feed on their own time without being bullied out of it. They all have their roles, whether it is to give rides to the smallest children (go round and round the yard VERY slowly) or keep the newly weaned heifers calm and inside the fence, or just leading the young ewes and their lambs back to the barn at night and to the stream in the morning.

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A lot of my older animals have pedigrees and I can see all the places they have been and all the pedigreed lambs and calves they have produced. My old ram, Duke of York, has a list of pedigreed progeny that is as long as your arm and reaches from Ontario where he was lambed all the way to here in BC. He's not quite the ball of muscle and attitude he used to be but he still has a place in my breeding plans and even though I've never seen him "at it" he's never missed a ewe in his pen....and he still has a twinkle or two left in his eye!

One more reason I like pedigreed animals - not only can those papers tell you just how old they are but some of the stories they cannot tell themselves!

HigginsRAT wrote:So this 30+ cow is old, but do you consider her good?  

Well, she's not really any trouble.

Every year, we have this conversation: "Well, I think Lumpy's on her last legs. Gonna have to shoot the old girl."

A decade or so later ... Lumpy's still alive!

Her last calf, we had to bottle feed for awhile, because the poor old girl didn't have any milk. Luckily, our cows are REALLY good cows and one of the other mommas came to let the little thing steal milk from her. They were a happy, healthy little family group! But that was Lumpy's last go at motherhood. She stays home now, and doesn't get to go out with the bulls.

So ... surprise! The world's oldest and ugliest cow had a calf this week!!!

Pictures please of grandma and her new youngster!!! What a girl still earning her keep!

Heather

I'll see what I can do! I am restricted by the distance the baby monitor can reach in relation to the location of the cows at naptime.

authenticfarm wrote:So ... surprise! The world's oldest and ugliest cow had a calf this week!!!

Therefore answering the question; Lumpy (oh my...what a name!) is an oldie AND goodie!  

Tara

Does she have milk??

A little bit it seems! We are supplementing the calf with milk replacer, just to be sure. It's quite a nice heifer she surprised us with!

That's wonderful! I have an older cow who had very little milk for her calf last year but the vet said if I dosed her with the appropriate amount of antibiotics well before putting her in with the bull there was a good chance she would produce. We are waiting for the calf now. But also have colostrum and milk supplements ready, just in case. I think any amount of milk from mother is a good start in life!