The Worse Happens! Dealing with a Dead Mom and her Calf.

[Music] hi guys i'm mike this is our wyoming life and thanks for joining us be sure to subscribe follow along as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary we're on our way out to deal with a situation that i can tell you that in 14 years here on the ranch i've never had to deal with before and it's going to be an interesting day because well we're going to get to do all sorts of new things so i hope you can stick around uh let's head out and take a look and see what we got to deal with [Music] alrighty this right here is number 97. she's one of our oldest cows on the ranch and unfortunately sometime during the night she passed away the problem lies was that she has a calf out here somewhere number nine is about 40 days old and we need to find him or her actually her and bring her in because she is going to be our next bottle calf she's not going to be able to survive without mom at this point she's somewhere probably where she's able to eat some grass but she still needs that milk and that nutrition that comes from it so because we take care of the living first our first task is to go find number nine and bring her in then we'll deal with mom and we're going to show you how to compost a cow but that's a little ways off i have no idea where her calf is but we're gonna go find her so i really have no way of knowing what killed number 97 my guess would be old age she was an older cow but there's really no way to tell at this point there's no reason to do any type of uh autopsy or necropsy or anything like that um we're just gonna chalk it up to old cows die and that is the circle of life that happens out here but she is gonna give back to the ranch like i said we are going to compost her takes about a year to compost a cow but we're going to get that process started today and of course her calf a heifer calf will be giving back to the ranch as well because she will stay in our breeding herd so the thing is we gotta find her first [Music] so unfortunately number nine is too big to just scoop up and throw in the gator being a calf that's you know 40 some days old over a month old is going to be a little tricky we're going to have to pretty much move this calf like we would move any cow and that's why we're out here on the four-wheeler today see if we can make this happen we haven't found her yet here's three more calves down here though let's take a look there she is number nine right there so hanging out down here in the mud let's go hey come on come on girlie okay so this isn't working she's just wanting to follow the other cows which are now leaving the vicinity because you know we're causing a ruckus so our next option is to use the gator come out grab that calf little hog tie throw in the back the gator take it back to the shop so that's our next option now that calf is probably pretty hungry i don't know how long ago mom passed away but i'm sure that she's ready for some food so we're gonna run back to the house grab the gator and change our game plan okay so uh change of plans like i said we're gonna be grabbing this calf and tying it up and putting in the back of the gator a little bit so to help us with that i'm actually grabbing a sheep's hook this uh we can use to grab the calf i hope i'm also gonna grab some rope or some twine or something see what i can find just bring a lariat along with us [Applause] hi there's too many other cows out there telling that calf what to do are you okay yeah so what's the plan so i brought the sheep's hook so i might be able to just grab her and tie her legs together throw her in the back of the gator sit on her or something she's not that big but she's definitely got her own idea about what she wants to do here so yeah that's her that's for her okay okay so this is a new one and try this out and see how it works aaron's going to drive up next to the calf because she's not letting me walk up to her i'm going to try hooking her [Music] now [Music] [Music] look [Music] i'll just come back out with the four wheeler and i'll just rope it forward [Music] or something but maybe we'll be back okay so the sheep's hook total failure in fact uh it broke so it's like 30 years old it's probably 30 years old and it broke me so now we're going to switch out we're going to go grab a couple four-wheelers go back out and just try to get the rope around her we can probably get pretty close to her with a four-wheeler hopefully and just be able to drop that rope around her and uh get her tied up and then aaron will come back and get the gator for us to transport her back to the house already bring all the cows back and sword around yeah no we're not gonna do that no that would not be any fun well it's an option it is an option there's lots of options i mean technically we could go out and get some chloroform get up next to her hold it over her nose kidnap her basically but we're trying to do this you know somewhat nicely okay so we're back out four-wheelers aaron's gonna film so i'm gonna try all right here we go it's hard to drive a four-wheeler one-handed it's hard to do everything one-handed [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] i got it settle down what can i do go get the gigger okay do you want to flip him while i'm gone you got to flip him i'm not leaving so you get them on the side there you go hold on hold on tight loose on the neck loosen the neck good so um we have a bunch of barbed wire back there that i don't really want to get tangled up in okay there you go okay so i thought this was a girl it's not it's a boy but we're going to get him back to the house either way put him in the barn get him a little bit settled in before we try to give him his bottle i imagine he's pretty hungry like i said earlier he hasn't eaten for a while so the rodeo probably made him a little bit more tired it did me so a little ride on our way home and we'll get him settled in so back when i thought this was a girl my thought was to call her orphan annie now it's a boy so i guess we could call him orphan andy why not we'll call him andy come on there you go look at you go now you feeling better all right now with him in the barn we let him sit in here for a while i let him cool down let him cool down he's got water chill out for a little bit well that was a super amount of fun and now we're going to come back and check on him in a little while see how he's doing um but for right now we are actually going to move on to the educational portion of today's program and not so much the rodeo portion and we're jumping in the tractor where number nine's mom is going to kind of uh i guess give her last to the ranch i went back and looked and she was an old cow she actually had 11 calves over her lifetime here on the ranch so she was definitely an older cow i guess you know being able to [Music] have her serve one last time even in the gardens is going to make a big difference now we are going to compost her it's going to take about a year for that process to complete so we're going to get it started today and actually the process really isn't that complicated and the first question you have to figure out or the first answer that you have to figure out is where you're going to do this and so we decided that we're going to do it up here in our hay yard now this is the lower side of our hay yard where any drainage is going to be moving away from the hay that we store here and to get us started we're actually going to lay out our very first layer which is going to be just straw we're going to put that layer down and then we're going to put the cow on top of that [Music] so a couple reasons we put it down here in the hay yard number one i can get a little smelly so i don't really want it right up next to the house or even next to the corrals so that's a good thing the other thing is that it could and there's a chance that this could happen it could actually draw in predators whether they're coyotes mountain lion other scavengers maybe even a badger or fox or something like that and i don't want them close to the house either in fact i don't want them close to the chicken house so that's why we're doing it out here and hopefully none of that happens because it is still pretty close to the highway there's a lot of traffic over here i think that'll keep most of things away but at night we could actually deal with some of that so over here in the hay yard a good place to do it next step since we've got our straw down is to go over and grab the cow and this is where things get a little uh more complicated and a little disgusting uh because the cow is going to basically build up gas over the next couple days as she as she starts to decompose and as she builds up that gas she's going to blow up like a balloon as she blows up there is a chance that she could actually pop it doesn't happen very often but it can be a problem it could cause a bit of a mess whatever else so one of the things that we like to do when we do this is we actually puncture the rumen so we're actually going to puncture the cow herself and there's a couple different ways to do that you can do it with a knife you can take a scalpel or whatever you want and basically cut open the side of the cow that's one way to do it we actually have these grapples on the uh on the tractor which will probably end up doing it for us inadvertently as we go and pick her up so we're gonna go grab her and bring her over lay her down and make sure that her rumen is punctured before we go on to the next layer of the compost [Applause] so we're gonna get the inevitable question and somebody's gonna say well why didn't you eat her uh to which i answer ew we race tears uh we have plenty of great meat in the freezers we offer beef uh for sale online along with pork and all you have to do is go to our website become a patreon supporter uh for as little as one dollar per month ten dollars per year and you can order all the beef you want off the ranch delivered directly to you that's good her not so good uh i don't think i would subject myself or anybody else to that but i could see where it's a valid question but since we are raising beef uh just not the highest quality that we would expect so she does get to pay her respects however to the ranch and continue to serve the ranch forever and ever and she actually becomes a part of the ranch which i think is pretty dang cool my phone's ringing yellow oh no problem no problem at all that's okay all right bye-bye wrong number okay so we're going to take her over now uh when i got the the grapples around we did not puncture her rumen which is probably good um but we are going to have to lay her down on the straw and do that ourselves to make sure that that she doesn't blow up and you know cause a mess so we're gonna get her over here to that straw we just laid down and then get her taken care of [Music] one thing that i normally wouldn't do that i'm actually going to do today is i'm going to leave the ear tag on this girl the main reason we usually would take it off the main reason i'm going to leave it on is because this is for youtube and in about a year hopefully we will be able that will be pretty much the only thing left probably is that ear tag in this pile the rest will look pretty much like dirt so i'm going to actually uh puncture her room in really quick you don't have to stick around for that and remember this while this may seem gruesome this is actually a very important part of the ranch this actually is these cows last chance to give to the ranch and and of course uh give to the gardens and aaron and myself and and all the people um that uh depend on the ranch for food and sometimes even entertainment so i'm gonna get this done our next step uh well it does involve dirt so stick around and like i said this part may seem awful but uh i'm going to get your reward here at the end because we are going to go back to her calf we're going to get it fed and of course uh it will become part of our bottle calf family out here so next step for this old girl is actually a pretty important step and it's one that i think a lot of people forget about when you when you come down to composting an animal and that is uh that we are going to add a little bit of dirt on top of her um the main reason for that is that there's microbes in the dirt that will actually help the decomposition of her body so we are going to just grab a little bit of dirt from out here in the field and uh and sprinkle it on her and basically put a layer maybe at least one bucket full on top of her and then that will uh get those those bugs and stuff working on her carcass so that's our next step and there's only like three more steps to go with the first layer completed we are actually going to run back and grab some fresh manure from the cow barn which we have plenty of i'm going to grab that and that's going to be the next layer that goes on top of her so not only does aaron compost for the gardens just directly from the manure which is the reason we save all this manure this is a whole different type of compost it's actually more rich but it does take a lot longer to make obviously a year put into this to make this composted and she'll actually use this compost uh for more um probably within the high tunnel would be my guess uh areas the gardens that that really need a little bit of help [Music] there we go it's a big bucket full of poop and it's the next ingredient to our compost this ingredient the manure highly highly important as is our next ingredient which is going on top which is more straw but that's a little bit of hay mixed in [Applause] and that's it we're done that is our compost pile i did get a little bit of net wrap mixed in there but that's okay we can pick that out this is where she will sit for about six months or so decomposing composting and then we'll come and turn the entire pile so make sure you subscribe follow along because in november we'll be coming back to take a look at that alrighty i promised you guys that we weren't going to end on a sad note of course you know i don't consider it a sad thing she uh she had a lot of good years on the ranch she gave a lot to the ranch and she continues to give to the ranch more than a lot of cows do [Music] [Music] but she number 97 along with her calf here number nine will continue to give back to the ranch for years and years we're gonna go make him a bottle and see if we can get him to warm up to us just a little bit i can imagine he's a little cranky with me but we're gonna make him a bottle i'm sure he's hungry and uh hopefully he has a seamless integration into our herd of bottle caps they haven't met him yet by the way they're actually over in our yard marty and frida so andy it's gonna be a nice surprise for them when they come home [Music] now [Music] not really sure how this is going to go but we'll see like i said this is our oldest bottle cap that we've ever brought in at 40 some odd days old so hopefully we can teach this old dog new tricks buddy how you doing i'm not really sure if bean would be offended to know that i called him a dog but here bud hey come here buddy trying to get out i know come here no i know you spelled it he's hitting the gate [Music] wow [Music] well he got a little taste so i am actually just going to leave this bottle in this bottle holder here just like that and the hope is that he'll come over and see what it is and finish it up so that's the hope we're going to leave him alone obviously a very traumatic day for him which i totally understand hey number nine andy come over here try this milk thing you'll like it i know but it's better than the alternative if we would have left him out in the pasture who knows what would have happened doesn't have a mom to protect him got coyotes all over the place other cows could have rejected him and you know he could have starved to death so what we're doing out here or in here in the barn is trying to keep things going so we're going to keep on keeping on we're going to check in on andy quite often along with marty and freda who are over in our yard and in great health we're going to check on number 97 and what she's doing for the ranch mid-november or so but until then a whole lot more going on the rain continues to fall looks like haying might be in our future hopefully and uh i'm really looking forward to bringing you guys along for that so be sure to subscribe follow along as we explore the ranch life and escape the ordinary right here on our wyoming life [Music] you

Channel: Our Wyoming Life

Views: 184,203

Keywords: Ranch, cow, cows, horses, cowboy, gardening, farmers market, Wyoming, our Wyoming life, animals, animal videos, peacock, farming, planting, cattle, ranching

Id: zorCYc4IOsU

Length: 28min 15sec (1695 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2022