Funny Thing

A funny thing happened on the way to the feed ground the other day, the replacement heifer calves really started to look good to me finally. I'm still in shock about how good they look. Let me explain.<br />n<br />nAt weaning time I keep a number of the best heifer calves to use as replacement in my cow herd. This way I get good quality cattle to run instead of buying cows of unknown quality at sales somewhere. This year I did the same as always but I wasn't overly impressed with the calves I kept. They were the best available but they just didn't seem to be that good. I know my calves were lighter this year at weaning but it seemed to be something more than that. I couldn't define it but I wasn't happy with them.<br />n<br />nI turned them out of the corral after weaning them for a couple of days and let them go to grazing. I hate to feed cattle in the corral, grazing in pastures is where they belong. I kept watching them hoping they would perk up and start looking better and it never seemed to happen, they just kept looking the same to me, kind of sorry. <br />n<br />nI then started feeding hay to them earlier than I wanted because they weren't getting enough nutrition from the grass they were eating, they were falling off and getting sick and I figured hay would help. It did but they still looked like hell, I wasn't pleased with them at all. All through the month of December I couldn't believe how little hay they were eating, what little interest they showed in coming to feed, and how poor they looked. No matter what I tried they looked like hell. I finally quit looking at them with an eye towards making them look good and just kept feeding them all the hay they wanted. I finally accepted they were going to be a poor looking bunch of replacement heifers and I needed to live with the fact.<br />n<br />nThen the really cold weather hit recently. Quite a few days of below zero temperatures, a little snow and lots of miserable conditions. I was so busy fighting the cold temperatures I forgot to really pay attention to the calves. They got their feed but I wasn't getting the bigger picture and looking at them, just dealing. Then this week I really looked at the calves again.<br />n<br />nWhere did my poor calves go? this bunch of replacement heifer calves I got now are damn good looking and are going to make excellent replacement heifers. How they seemed to bloom all of a sudden is beyond me but they are nice. I'm proud to have them around. I swear there is more going on here than just an attitude change in me but I can't prove it. Judging the quality of cattle is a pretty nebulous thing and proving that they are actually looking better, rather than just appearing to look better, would be tough.<br />n<br />nAt this point I guess I don't care. I'll accept that either they are doing better or my opinion is better. I'm not sure which, I'm just happy they are looking better.<br />n<br />n<strong>The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice. Arthur Schopenhauer</strong>