How to safely work livestock

Farming, logging, and mining are the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. To work safely around livestock, especially cattle and horses, keep some safety tips in mind.

First, make sure the animal knows you’re there, especially if it’s a larger animal, such as a horse or a bull. Most prey animals, sheep, cattle, horses, etc have a field of vision almost 360 degrees around, but have a blind spot directly in between their eyes and directly behind them. Think of making a line down their spine. They can’t see straight out at the front of the line or straight out the back. Try to stay in their field of vision.

Move slowly. Don’t rush right up to an animal. If possible, let them come to you. Otherwise, hold out your hand, palm up, either with fingers open or loosely curled.

Be polite, but not submissive, be assertive, but not aggressive. It takes time to get used to how to move around livestock. Watch how they interact with one another. Squaring your posture and striding forward directly at the animal is considered aggressive. Less dominant animals will back down and shy away from you while more dominant animals may challenge back. Always be especially careful around animals with young offspring and intact males, such as rams or bulls. Males always feel the need to assert their dominance and mommas can interpret the wrong move as a threat to their offspring and take aggressive measures. Keep the offspring between you and its mother when working in these situations.

Don’t force the animal into a corner. Do you like being backed into a corner and forced to endure unwanted attentions? Didn’t think so. Most livestock doesn’t like that either. Use the animal’s natural sense of motion. Each individual animal has a natural “personal space” where they feel comfortable. Move into their personal space and they move away. Pressure and release. Use this if you need to administer health care or any time you’re working with animals. Use the proper equipment, such as sturdy gates, and be patient. It takes their eyes time to adjust going from a brightly lit outdoors to a dark barn. Let them take time to think.

Last, remember that they’re just animals. They’re perfectly suited to what they were adapted for. Horses were meant to flee from predators, surviving on their speed. Cattle were meant to either flee or fight predators, or both, and can be aggressive, not out of maliciousness, but because that’s what they’re evolved to do. Sheep are also meant to run from predators and have the strongest group-think mentality. In sum, think like a cow/sheep/horse/etc. Understanding the animal and its species history can help you understand their behaviors and adapt your own to suit. After all, humans are the ones with the big brains. We’re meant to adapt, not the animals.

Happy Farming!

A couple post-article thoughts: if moving a large animal, move toward their shoulder to get them to turn, at their hip and out of kicking distance to move them forward. Read Temple Grandin. Stay out of kicking distance when working. Don’t rush up on the animal. I know you want to pet the horsie, but the horsie thinks you’re trying to eat him. Approach him like a prey animal, not a Labrador retriever. A lab wants you climb all over him, a horse wants to be left alone. Kindness tempered by firmness and good observational skills will take you far when working with livestock.

Twitter!

I've joined twitter, for all that it sounds like a sex toy. Maybe I've just got Bob and Tom and Twatter on the brain. :-) so its available at @axieb. Mostly just the goofy shit we say at work. Might develop into micro-fiction or something or flop who knows.

Critters (that's critique, not creatures) and Critters (creatures, not crits)

If you write sci-fi/fantasy/horror and haven’t joined www.critters.org yet, where have you been? It is the place online where writers can connect and get quality reviews of their writing. And it’s free! The system is kind of a pay it forward set up. You register, review people’s work, keeping up a review per week or so to stay in good standing, then post your own work for critique. Simple! And it’s amazing how helping others also helps you. Not just in an altruistic sense (I’m an only child, I don’t do altruism), but in your own writing. Seeing the mistakes and stuff that doesn’t work over and over in other people’s work can make you a stronger writer when you recognize the same pitfalls in your own writing.

It’s another cloudless, beautiful day here in Michigan. The snow is melting, the birds are singing… actually they’re crows, but I’m not picky. We actually saw a pair of Bald Eagles souring over our barn the other day. I’d never seen a pair before and Dad hadn’t ever seen any this far south.

At first I said to Dad that it was a hawk flying over. He came out and looked and said the wingspan was too wide for a hawk at that distance, and it’s too early for vultures… Just then, one dipped, we saw it wasn’t a hawk at all, but the white head of a Bald Eagle. SO AWESOME!!! One wheeled above us, very high, riding along the neighbor’s fence line. Then I saw the other one, almost out of Dad’s vision, which is amazing since his is better than mine. The second one was higher, just a speck, but similar in size, at least from our vantage on the ground.

So a pair of Bald Eagles, scoping out the place. If that’s not good luck, I don’t know what is. Must’ve been what made the tuna casserole so good. :) Either that or dancing in the kitchen, I’m not sure. (Aside: What happened to me? I used to be kinda cool. Now I’m all gushy-cooking/dancing with a guy I actually like? What the hell is this? I know, I know. Enjoy it Ax. And hopefully lots of other people have something similar to enjoy as well. I recommend cows. Highly.)



Was going through some old pics and found these of the Old Man.

 And of chickens...

 

And of the fucked up looking ram.

Yeah, the steers weren't sure about him either. He kept trying to hump them.

Tuna Casserole

Tuna casserole last night. YUM! It’s a Barnes family recipe, though it could have come off the back of the cereal box, I’m not quite sure.

Bag or half bag of cooked egg noodles

two cans tuna

mayo or miracle whip

½ c. milk or just eyeball it for moisture as this recipe is very forgiving

cream of mushroom soup or celery or hell whatever cream soup you want, though
chicken clashes with the tuna, I have to say

onion

red or green pepper

peas, celery, mushrooms, whatever veggies you want, frozen spinach even works well in this

Salt, pepper, a touch of cayenne and garlic power

Mix all together and make sure is a good consistency

Top with cheese, I use cheddar, but parm works, or motz-cheddar mix, whatever you like. (Maybe this is why I can make the same dish but it never tastes the same twice!)

Put in pan and bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes.


J made fried taters to go with, which were excellent. We’re gonna get fat together I swear. :) Problem with having two good cooks who like to eat in proximity to each other. Valentine’s Day was obscene. Fake-baked eggplant parmesan ziti, anti-pasta and banana-strawberry dessert. We cooked all day. Actually a really fun time. Gotta love culinary adventures with your honey! :)

Snow on the ground, garden in mind

Dad, MJ, and I sat down this weekend to make the seed order. So great when it’s all snowy outside to think of things green and growing. Even got J. excited about plants. (FYI, using initials and nicknames since I haven’t asked these guys if they mind me writing about them.) The garden looks like it’ll be bigger than last year, more potatoes and onions, and we have plans to store them better. Lost a lot of onions and potatoes due to poor storage plan.

We ordered a food dehydrator, which I’ll review when we start using it, and I’m looking forward to using. I’ve got extensive herb garden plans this year since I like mixing my own teas, for headaches and stuff, and they should dry well in this dehydrator. We’ll see.

Dad even agreed to plant horseradish so we can cook our own. Maybe we can grill some hot peppers in the house while we’re at it since both tend to blind you with the fumes. (Yes, that was sarcasm :) We didn’t order any flowers, though they were tempting. But I kill flowers with a dirty look. J and I decided our flower selection would be crazy since we’re both drawn to the unusual and exotic. Absolutely nothing would match. Feng Shui help us if we ever decorate a house together.

Winter dragging a little on the farm, especially after this last snow storm. My car gets stuck if a fat guy sits on it, so the slush wreaks hell on it. Getting tired of getting stuck at the end of the driveway and Dad getting tired of pulling me out. At least last night it was still light out and not three in the morning with me just getting back from the bar and after-party at a friend’s house.

The cows aren’t complaining though, at least mine aren’t. Dairy cattle always complain. My cows, all 29 or 30 of them, we can’t ever get an accurate count for some reason, luxuriate on a hundred acres of corn stalks, and think they’re the luckiest cows on the planet, acting like range cows in Nebraska or something.

I’ve had a few opportunities to take classes this winter. Both Allena Tapia’s Get Pad to Read through LCC and Annie’s Project put on by the Clinton County Extension Office have been great resources. More on both later. For now, I need to keep a forward momentum. Worked until 3 a.m. last night and up before 8. Coffee so wearing off.

Book Review

Sexy/Dangerous by Beverly Jenkins, HarperTorch, Nov 2006, 343 pages, $6.99, ISBN 978-0-06-081899-9

Two Rottweilers and a gun. What more could a girl want? In this romantic thriller, those are all the good things in life, at least until Maxine “Max” Blake, ex-marine and ex-cop with the attitude to prove it, meets scientist Dr. Adam Gary. He’s designed a top-secret world-revolutionizing piece of technology; she’s the government agent sent to protect him from those who seek to kill him and steal his work. A South African terrorist group in particular has their scope locked on Adam’s prototype with the intent to use it in acts of terrorism to restore apartheid South Africa. But Adam doesn’t want her protection and Max is determined he’ll get it; come broken water pipes, a mouthy assistant with marriage mind, a house falling to chaos, or sharpshooter snipers.

Through home cooking and great, long legs, Max slowly wins Adam over, as he wins her own himself. But after two divorces, Max isn’t looking for anything serious, even if the long, sweet lovin’ blows both their minds. Max isn’t sure she wants to give up The Life, swatting mosquitoes in third world jungles, taking out bad guys, that’s what she lives for. And Adam only wants to research and design, not be tied down, even by some fine lookin’ sistah. Especially one as dangerous as Max, a spook, and a killer. But Max’s first priority is to keep Adam alive long enough for either of them to admit what they have goes deeper than just between the sheets.

From high-amped car chases across the state of Michigan to the White House, Sexy/Dangerous is hot from first page to last. Jenkins’ style and sense of pacing makes the story feel like visiting with your best girlfriends and riding along with James Bond all at once. Sexy/Dangerous ties into Jenkins’ previous work, The Taming of Jessi Rose and A Chance At Love, as well as the companion book, Deadly Sexy, featuring Max’s sister, JT, another addition to Jenkins’ string of strong-willed woman loving men who prove worthy of them.

Guess who's back? (Back again?)

I took a, what? several months long hiatus to “reinvent myself” as a friend of mine would put it, but guess who’s back

(back again, shady’s back…anyway…)

with farm tales, short how-to posts, maybe some writing tips, recipe successes and disasters, book shout-outs and reviews, knitting and crochet disasters, and the occasional old-fashioned all-around rant, most days of the week? At least, that’s the idea. :)

So, for those of you who don’t know me (and a sorry to those who do), I’m a Michigan writer and farmer; I milk cows (not mine), read voraciously, and spend way too much time in the barn.

I want to include some book shout-outs. It’s not like Stephen King needs any more publicity, but I finished reading his Dark Tower series the other day. Loved it! Must read for anyone who loves western/sci-fi/horror. At the other end of the spectrum is Beverly Jenkins. Needed a break from the sex and violence I tend to write and read and found it in her books. I’ve read Sexy/Dangerous, Deadly Sexy, and just received Captured in the mail so looking very forward to that. Every book is like visiting with my favorite girlfriend. I got to see Beverly speak at a reading in Jackson last year, along with Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, and have been as impressed with her books as I was with her. A great all around package. And for the record, I hate romance. That says a lot for her style and characters.

Well it was a long night in the parlor. Cows worked good and it wasn’t too cold. But I’m whupped after a writing most of the day and five-mile jog. Will wrap it up here now by saying it’s good to be back.