Caring for Newborn Problem Calves... And Books
A momma got confused today, leaving a calf to fend for itself. But - we got them together again, and they worked it out - contented again, now. Meanwhile, book writing and publishing continues...
Hi,
More new calves. One problem solved, a confused identity sorted out. It’s coming up a year on this latest book project - time flies. Hope your own life is interesting, involved, and less hectic.
Farming News - Up to eight calves now. #5 is featured. And a story of mistaken identity solved.
Writing News - Things are coming down the pike. Realized this latest book has been in research for over a year now…
Expectancy - Thought to clue you in on why all this comes under the Living Sensical name.
Farming News
Here’s Calf Number 5! Another bull calf.
Two black-rimmed eyes, one white stocking on right front, a little socklet on his left front, and white-tipped tail. Of course that stripe gives away both it’s momma and pa. Technically a panda-faced beltie.
And your suggestions on what to name this young bull are appreciated. Comment on the Substack newsletter or reply with an email. Whatever’s easier.
(UPDATE: We’re up to 8 calves as of this morning! And expecting a total of 17 this spring. One more and we’ll be over half-way. Yes, I’ll introduce these one each week so you don’t get over-whumped with cute calf pictures.
The Case of the Misbegotten Calf
You’ll see this heifer (#7) in a couple of weeks - striking. Her momma got this new calf confused with her yearling from last year. Wouldn’t pay any attention to the new born. The simple solution was to pen in the new one with her (and the nurse cows I keep for this) and let the yearling stay over with the herd.
I also sorted our two nurse cows with her. One was dry, but she’s calm and helped keep everyone that way. The other is half Jersey, had delivered her this-year’s calf a couple of weeks ago, and had enough milk for two - plus will let me hand milk her as long as she has something to eat in front of her. We had to get her own new calf in with her, of course.
I got some saved colostrum out of the freezer and warmed it up, fed it to the calf. Colostrum is full of natural antibiotics they need - and have to get this inside them within 24 hours. Cows will produce this naturally, but this calf hadn’t been suckling (“tupping”) on her momma yet.
Once I got a half-gallon of this down inside the calf, then I got that half-Jersey with a feed mix in front of her and let that calf suckle on her, where they both did just fine. I stood by to keep the cow from kicking her off because of the calf’s enthusiasm.
She’d pretty much sucked the two front teats dry by the time the cow had finished off her pan of feed. So, when the cow went to go find something else to eat, I pulled that calf over to lay down while I got her real momma in. That cow had very full udders and that condition was making her a bit high-spirited. Nonetheless, giving her a pan of feed focused her attention.
I brought her new calf over and she went to work on one of her momma’s front teats, while again I was nearby to enforce the “no kicking” rule. And the calf kept this going until the cow ran out of feed. Now the was calf full, so she laid down and rested. And the cow joined the others on munching down a new bale of hay.
Late afternoon, I did the process again, but found that the calf had been working on her momma’s other teats during the day and now had two of them going down to normal size.
By the the third day, three teats on her momma were much relieved and that calf really didn’t want the regular milk replacer I’d prepared. So it went back into the fridge - where it will last another two or three days. Just in case.
The fourth day, I was able to let them all out. We’re still watching that new calf and her momma, but we’re out of the woods.
UPDATE: Some confusion last night, where the calf was calling and the momma wasn’t paying attention. I had to sort the cows out for another reason, so momma and calf got back together and are doing fine. Looks like I’ll have to keep them penned for a couple more days until this evens out.
Art Based on Science
Grazing and animal husbandry are an art, based on the science that the university people work out. The trick is that Nature has thousands of variables. And those University studies are based on just testing a few of these at a time. When they raise grass, they usually have back-up sprinklers to make sure everything gets a lot of water when they need it.
Rain is uneven, and not all that predictable. Out West, they regularly have three-year droughts. (Which is why they either irrigate with big sprinklers that travel in circles or just graze cattle during the good years.)
No two square feet of pasture are identical. They slightly different soil compositions, and also different plants that take advantage of those differences. And how many cattle graze that grass how frequently will determine how fast and how high that grass will re-grow. Cows like clover and bluegrass more than fescue and other “weeds”. This is when you rotate cattle to different pastures so you get more grass for more of the year. Letting it grow up while they’re eating somewhere else.
And that’s where you select your breed of cattle and determines how many you have on those pastures. Pastures are subdivided into paddocks so they can be managed more easily.
All this is to say that you do your best with what you have. Cows have a nine-month gestation period, but can get pregnant within 20 days of giving birth. So you take the bull out for three months so that your calving period is shorter and predictable. Meanwhile, the cows are supposed to have a calf every year, which keeps the farm sustainable. So they have to be fed, watered, sheltered, and satisfied all year round.
You can have all the science texts and studies you can get, but it still takes some common sense and daily observation to see how things are improving or how they aren’t. While you don’t fix things that ain’t broke, you do have to know that things won’t run forever on neglect. So farming is a lifestyle.
For me, it’s more than just a part-time job that keeps food coming and a roof over my head. Most of my books are based in this sort of background, roughly. And like the cows, my stories take a lot of speculation at times. All tests, and working to make each day, each story, each new calf better than any before.
Tiny Home News
Only the okra is left to plant. It likes consistently hot weather, so meanwhile it will stay inside our little windowed porch with other sprouts.
Ran the hose over from the house so the ladies can water everything. We’ve got a sprinkler that’s a doozie (caught me when I wasn’t expecting it while setting it up.)
We’re moving along on our other plans to get our own piece of land, and all that entails. Again, check out Five Acres and Independence. We’re following those steps.
Writing News
With everything else, the writing took a bit of a back seat. And I realized that I’d started this research just over a year ago. I’d compiled all those earlier 20+ ebooks into a single document and started boiling them down into threads for Twitter-X/LinkedIn. The idea was to update all of them into just the evergreen principles, as I’ve covered.
Along with setting up for running Kickstarters on releases, I’ve been needing to have my own site where I could sell print books directly. So I dug around and found I had an old Wordpress installation with WooCommerce plug-in installed. Meanwhile, Lulu has been promoting its API where they can sell things through that setup. I just didn’t know what it was going to take. (Sorry for all the technical jargon.)
Several hours of work got the two of them working nicely together. The site isn’t live by any means, but now I can work through the books one by one and both update them and put them up for sale on my own website. Another step forward.
Next steps will be to do a process of upgrading every single book I’ve published, in order of sales with existing paperbacks first. Good thing I’ve already started in on this four-book series, so I’ll crank those through first. Getting them through their own Kickstarters will then pave the way to re-release my earlier books with new covers, etc.
Having my own integration with Lulu then allows me to send those books to them for shipping and fulfillment - plus having a place to send people to for author-discount sales..
Finding and Rewarding Your Audience
As usual, there is a lot of ballyhoo about this area which is all conventional wisdom about using social media and taking out ads.
The trick with finding your audience is much simpler: once they read and find they like your style of writing, then they’ll want to read your books. That is your audience. The trick is to get samples to them. And that’s where you giveaway your first in series and post your short stories to websites.
While social media stinks for getting people to opt-in to anything, there are places who offer big readers new free or low-cost ebook versions as a service. Authors pay to have them promote their book. Readers get a new book just for trying out a new author.
In the back of that first-in-series, you have an excerpt for the next one - a cliffhanger first chapter or prequel, particularly. And a list of your other books organized by series. So when they reader gets to the end, then they know where to go to find the next one.
On ebooks, these can all be links to buying pages for those books.
While you get their email as part of their selecting your free or low-cost intro book, the better you reward your new readers (and the quality of your newsletter) will then keep them coming back for more.
Again, this is a long game. You want to be constantly writing and releasing your books and promoting each one of them both when they first come up and then again when you update or upgrade them (and sell them in bundles.) More is always better.
The attitude here is that any author should know their audience intimately, and deliver what that audience needs. Meanwhile, you encourage that audience to get on board with your mission and form a community around your books. With Kickstarter, you can then reward them with quality hardbacks and paperbacks they’ll treasure. And those will come back for your other books, particularly as you upgrade them into highly-polished editions they love.
Your only duty is to ask them for their help, and reward their reach with a book and offer which is way more than what they can get anywhere else.
Readers become audience becomes fans, become superfans. All in how you treat them.
The Recurring Special Offer:
MEANWHILE, the beta-readers version of Writerpreneur OS is still available. I’ve updated the tweaks from the first proofing, and then added an extra section onto its end. And by now they should be freshly uploaded. (So you can download the new and improved edition if you already have it from earlier.)
Here’s the link: https://livingsensical.gumroad.com/l/WOS01-beta-readers
See if you can find more oopsies. Leave comments, reviews. Ask questions. Be one of the first anywhere.
It’s just north of 250 pages these days, depending on format. Available are epub and PDF. No charge. (Free download, in other words.)
Nearly 20 years of writing-publishing-entrepreneuring - all rolled into a single book. And updated. Condensed.
AN ASK: if you’ve downloaded it, please give some feedback. Leave it in the comments, send me an email. Something, anything. Like it, could be better.
Expectancy and Believing
Why “Living Sensical”?
Many years ago, about 2015, I came across a minimal system that explained many things in life. It showed how things work in the actual world as opposed to the “real world” we are told about every day.
It’s called “sensical” because it’s the opposite of non-sensical. And conventional wisdom is some 90-plus percent non-sensical. Living sensical is aligning your operation to the things that work when they are tested. All the time. Every time.
My research is generally down the lines of looking for commonalities when I’m comparing workable operations with others. They will have common principles and patterns in spite of being in different fields. Like apples and oranges look and taste different, but are both fruits.
Business and life operations have commonalities. Like the Golden Rule. It’s found everywhere. There are also common patterns that work in different businesses. Entrepreneuring itself has a recurring pattern (another system) as I laid out at the end of that WriterpreneurOS book above.
When you compare these patterns, you’ll find common elements between the patterns. And when you find a minimum of four interlocking elements, that is a pattern. (Napoleon Hill’s system for goal achievement had between 13 and 17.) Each element improves the output of the whole, far above sheer mathematics of addition. You get an exponential function.
Living Sensical as a system has four elements:
Mind - how you use your imagination and inspiration to set a vision and develop planing to expect and achieve great things for yourself.
Body - physically taking action and caring for the neuro-muscular machine you operate to take the steps of that plan you laid out for that vision.
Value - producing something worth exchanging with someone else for something valuable (like that commodity called “money”.)
Bliss - a form of personal passion you have for a quality of life and fulfillment.
These four, together, create a better life for yourself.
That’s Living Sensical.
The original Manifesto is introduced below:
Thanks for being there, opening this.
Sharing is caring. You’re who I do this all for. I value your input.
Leave a comment if something strikes your fancy.
I hope your life is not too interesting to be overwhelming, but sufficiently engaging to keep you amused. (Like some of us here...)
Robert
PS. Again, you can always email me about anything.
PPS. Again, do upgrade to the paid newsletter version. That helps me keep the lights on - so I can keep all this coming to you. As much or little as you want…
PPPS. I’m considering putting my entire library up (digital versions) for the Patron (Founding Member) level. I’ve done that before in parts, as many of you know. Do let me know what you think about that idea. Reply to this email, or leave a comment on my Substack page for this.
(Meanwhile, I’ve put my archived newsletters and articles all available as free, instead of behind a paywall.)
You lead a full life, Robert! Managing a farm with cows and all, is no joke. And, you still have time to write! It’s admirable what you do, Robert. Bravissimo. 🙌🧡
The calves are adorable. Thank you for sharing your experience and everyday life, Robert. It reminds me of my uncle’s farm in Tanzania when I was a kid. I used to love going to his farm. He had more than 400 cows. He sold milk, butter and Ghee. He doesn’t have it anymore. The government expropriated all his land many years ago. He had a whole private beach on his lands, and sometimes a stray cow was captured and eaten by lions. We would find a carcass sometime. It was exciting and very scary! lol. But the wild animals never came near the homestead nor the farm buildings per se.
Now I live in Spain, moved here with my parents 50 years ago. Sometimes I think, and wish we would have stayed in Tanzania, I don’t know. Life is very good in Spain, I’m not grumbling, but as I have very good memories of my childhood in Tanzania I sometimes think it’s all a paradise. Lol.
Take care, Robert. Once again, thank you for the photos and recounting your experiences with us. I enjoy reading your posts, and allows me to a different life for a few moments.
I wish you all best.
Stay blessed. 🙏🧡🤗