VET Excursion

"Guess who's going to the vet today? Do-daah, Do-daah!"

Bovine Beatrice

Round-up:

This meadow lady, at the encouragement of every farmer we've met (for reasons of safety), will be losing her horns.  Then everyone can play nice around the water trough.

Maggie

Everyone seemed a little nervous, all huddled around.

Sammy, Maggie, Meat Loaf & Beatrice

Even the donks came sidling up to see what was going on.

After loading the three girls, Meat Loaf became visibly irritable, pacing up and down beside the trailer. He started moo-ing (the first we'd ever heard) and was clearly unhappy that his girls were being taken away.

The 20 minute journey to the livestock vet went smoothly.  We pulled around the back and let the professionals take over.

Shoot! I mean chute

There are my girls!

"But I thought you said we were going to the park"

I guess they don't call it a
SQUEEZE chute for nothing

And just when the vet thought he was going to have a quiet afternoon, Thousand-and-one-questions arrived.

Peanut Gallery
(Do you see what happens when
you let your kids dress themselves?)

The girls received their shots and the two Hereford's were dehorned.  I say that like it was nothing.  Truth be told, it was an ear-curling, nasal-assaulting, visually traumatic event that both the hubby and I would like never to repeat.
Now the boys, on the other hand, watched with morbid fascination as the vet used his full body weight to manually clip the horns off and were transfixed by the pouring of bright red blood.
UGH!

"Look Mom, no horns!"

Anyway, we survived to tell the tale and headed straight to Dairy Queen,… as any good Texan would.

The End Of Lunch

A couple weeks ago, our dear farming mentors, N & S, graciously allowed us to purchase half of one of their pasture-raised, home-grown steers (after the not-too-surprising realization that Walmart beef prices aren't keeping up with it's reputation).  

This was a new adventure for me as I'd never experienced "up-stream" meat processing (OK, so I made up that term), and I was quite thrilled to witness how this all goes down (minus the blood).

We headed north into rural Texas and pulled up to Fischer's Meat Market (www.fischersmeatmarket.com) in a "German" town called Muenster.  Then got in line...

The Rig

'Lunch' seemed calm and unaware of his pending doom.  He was a beauty - half Brahma, half Angus - Brangus?  We had no doubt he'd be good eatin' - as they say around here.  He was born to be eaten - just the right amount of fat and a dedicated vegan ;)

Lunch  

We placed our bets as to how much his live weight would be. 

The Biggest Loser Weigh-In

After silently thanking our Creator for the gift of this magnificent animal, we said our tearful good-byes (I probably imagined that) and headed inside to chat with the head butcher.  

For the most part, I pretended like I knew what I was ordering (filet mignon, T-bone, ribeye, flank, skirt, striploin, chuck etc. etc.)  but somehow it all worked out.  

...17 days later, Lunch was packed, deeply frozen and settled comfortably in to my freezer.