NYC to Longhorns

I obviously haven't been posting here regularly, but gimme a break - it has been busy! We just got back from a fun trip to NYC (Manhattan to be precise) and had a blast. We owe a big thanks to the parents (who babysat/nursed sick kids,) our neighbor (who babysat the farm and helped with Winter,) Mary & Ram, & Annie & Kah Leong. NYC was a trip and was every bit as foreign as a foreign country. We walked forever, visited Montel Williams, ate at the craziest Dim Sung restaurant in the world, listened to crazy methed-out hookers scream profanity at each other on the subway, and enjoyed getting to know our cousin-in-laws. Overall, a very fun trip.
We got back home WAY late last night (does anything ever leave O'Hare on time?) and just crashed at ma/pas. I woke up early this morningn to get home, take care of the animals, and hook up the trailer to go get some longhorns. The trailer hookup went OK (though there was a moment or two when I thought I would get stuck in the mud (again,) and the real shocker came when I went to check the tires for air pressure prior to leaving. The passenger rear tire had NO tread. No exaggeration - it was ALL gone. Apparently, there is a road-gator somewhere out on the highway cause that tire was gone. Miraculously, it held 30 psi long enough to get me into Leonard where I payed the service shop $10 to install a tire that I had just gone out and found out in my field (more on that later.)
Anyway, I was late for my appt. with the longhorns, but got there and after (again) getting stuck a few times, we got two yearling bull longhorns (approx 1,000 lbs each) and two 4-6 month old? heifers (females - approx 400 lbs each.) They made the journey home OK and wasted no time in jumping out of the trailer and proceeding to scout out every corner of the pasture (destroying just about every electric fence they could in the process.) I tried to get our portable fence charger going, but it wasn't working, so now, instead of learning a healthy respect for fences from the get go, it is going to be a long process of getting them re-trained about fences once I can get the electric working again.
The two bulls are pictured above. These may be older images, but the horns are longer than they look (the angle of the pics make them look shorter) and they may have grown some since then. Also, one of them (the bigger one) has now got about 4" broke off the tip of one of his horns from fighting with the big bull at their old pasture. I'll try to get some shots of all the cattle in their new home soon.
We're not sure how many of those longhorns we are going to keep. The bulls are much more feisty and honestly, it might be best to just get rid of them. The deal is that I have to take some of these animals to the sale barn for the guy I am buying the other ones from. That is part of the deal. So, I have to decide who to keep and who to sell for him. The heifer calves are prolly the best, but one of them is a bit inbred, so that may or may not work well. I guess there is a fine line between inbreeding and line breeding and I am not sure I know enough about genetics and judging cattle for improvement to make the distinction.

So tonight, after dark and under the full moon, I was traipsing around checking in on the cattle when I noticed a mother-sized crawdad crawling in the runoff from the lake (it's been raining lots here lately.) I grabbed it and was very surprised to find that there were lots of them crawling around. I gathered 5 or 8 or so to bring into the house and under the light, discovered that they were carrying babies. Fun huh? Check out my finger for a reference on the size. I'll try to get some pics of the mammas tomorrow with the kids. They are spending the night in the fishtank.
Oh yeah, one more thing...it looks like two of the chickens went AWOL today, so we may be back down to just a single chicken. Hopefully they will be back tomorrow. There was a monster cat prowling around today, and we fear he may have done one or both of them in (Jessica had turned them out for the day.) The good news is that it doesn't look like that cat will be coming around anymore.