What You Can Learn From Our 5-year old Cattle Rancher

1. He can tell you the difference between cows, bulls, heifers, steers and calves.  In detail. 


2. He knows the numbers of the 2 cows I brought to the Kittson County Fair 10 years ago when I was still in 4-H. He can also find them out on pasture.

3. He's learning how to write all our cow numbers. He's learning how to write all of Grandpa Lowell's cow numbers. He's learning how to write numbers of random cows we find on the internet.  He's obsessed.

4. Why do we keep the heifers and sell the steers? Ask Clarence.  He'll tell you that heifers make you money because they can have more babies and steers make you money because they can't have babies.

5. He can tell you what you should feed his little calves in the barn. He can tell you what you should feed the pigs. He can tell you what to feed each of the pens of cows we have in the yard...not in great detail, but he'd be very helpful if you needed to come over and do chores for us. :)

6. Do you know the difference between a hay bale, a straw bale, or a corn bale? Clarence can help.  He can also tell you the difference between beet pulp and corn silage.

7. Clarence can tell you all about preg checking...you know, checking to see whether the cows are bred or not. That's all I'll say about it. Yes, I know he knows too much about some things for his age.

8. He can tell you the numbers of his cows out in the pasture. Sure they have orange ear tags and we don't, but he can write down their numbers for you. Pretty cute.

9. Ear tags. Who has what color? Ask Clarence...Grandpa Lowell/Uncle Chuck; Nathan; Nikki and Mark; his Daddy; his Mom; him. 

10. He can show you how to run calves down the chute.

11. Clarence is too brave for being 5. It scares me sometimes. He can show you how to sort heifers... the bigger ones. The other day, he came into the tractor and told me he had some heifers sorted out in the barn that we should keep. I asked him if they were fancy,  and he said, "Yeah, they're really nice. I have two black ones and two with white faces." And he did...they were all sorted out and stuck in a little pen in the back of the barn.  Ahhh!

 

Well, I hope you've enjoyed a little insight into the life of this little cattle rancher. He's a fun kid to have around!