This last week it seems all of my cows and horses have quit the hay. I’ve got a half dozen hay rings almost full of hay and nothing eating it. Most years I’d not think too much about it. However this year, six big round bales are worth about six hundred dollars. That’s a chunk of change to just lose because the cows are chasing grass. I shouldn’t gripe though, I carried about twenty bales over for next year. I know most people that didn’t have near enough hay.
The other day I visited with a guy that puts on big team ropings. He’s feeding 300 steers about seven pounds a day. I ciphered at it and it looks to me like he’s spending over $10,000 a month feeding those steers. On top of the feed bill he has to truck those steers around, hire a bunch of help and rent those big indoor arenas. All I can say is he must really like team roping. It looks to me like an awful lot of expense before any ropers ever show up.
I usually start putting hay out in late October. This year I sold a bunch of old cows and cut my numbers way down, because of the drought last summer. This year was what I’d label a mild winter, we didn’t have a lot of snow or any real long stretches of super cold weather. If it would have done much snowing or really long cold snaps I doubt my twenty extra bales would have stretched through.
This time of year it seems the cows and horses both look like one of those half shaggy Buffalo from up there in the petting zoo. I’m always ancy to worm every critter on the place in the spring. It’s kind of embarrassing to me, no good farmer should keep a bunch of wormy looking cattle with dead hair. I like them fat and shiny and I don’t care if it is early spring, it’s just kind of a pride thing for me.
I’ve got to air up the tires on my sprayer. Those durned yellow weeds are coming out all over. Those weeds suck the fertilizer out of the ground. Fertilizer is just as high as everything else these days, so in my mind I can’t help but see them as costing me money each day they are alive.
I wonder if one of those therapist in town has a remedy for my tightwadedness. It seems I fret over everything from weeds to wormy cows in spring. I know it’s the time of year, but I can’t help it. I worry and worry if the livestock will grow off good and if the pastures will keep running the same amount of head.
There’s a passage in the Bible about sparrows and how they don’t store up nuts for the winter. It says we are worth way more than a sparrow so we shouldn’t worry. There’s also the parable of the talents, and it says we are supposed to work. So I kind of argue with myself about working all the time and then also worrying. I guess it’s a good thing there’s some passages in the Bible about going fishing, because I think the crappie will be biting soon.
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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