The Cattle Call...herding up our new cattle on the farm!

guys before we get started with this video if not for the folks that helped build this fence right here we wouldn't have our cow so I want to give a special shout-out to sloop fence Langly fence out of Salisbury in Asheboro North Carolina Luke with farm fence solutions in Worthington Indiana who is kind of the proprietor of all this fencing that we built and also a shout out to Jake Wilson up there near Harrisonburg Virginia thanks a lot guys Vince is working great hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the farm it's another sunny beautiful day here in North Carolina today we're going to be messing with our four new cows so we just bought two more cows with heifer calves and we have a total of three cows and three calves right now and we've got two pregnant cows so that's going to be pretty cool we'll have some more babies pretty soon what we got to do today is we got to round up the cows we got to show them where to go to get water because they haven't drank much water since they've been in here and I don't think that the new cows have even found the water so the challenge for today is to grab the Kubota and push them towards the water I'm gonna try to do it on foot first see if I can just call them with the bucket and me and some feed take them down to the water if I can't do that then we'll push them with the Kubota kind of round them up hurt them down to the water alright [Music] new h-bomb okay this is the first cow-calf pair that we've gotten and they've gotten a little bit used to us now so I don't guys help me name the cows we need to name the first two cows somebody suggested that to me this is the baby and this is the mama I'm gonna say the baby somewhere in the neighborhood of three weeks old ish something like that and then the other two cow-calf pairs are right up here and there is donkey so we know what donkeys name is don't get somebody suggested I named it Dutch after keeping it Dutch but I think we'll just name it donkey so what we got to do is round these cows up and I'm gonna try to do it just by walking with them so this first cow right here that we got on the farm isn't quite as friendly as these other two and they're kind of quote-unquote bucket trained so what you want to do when you have cows like this in case they get out you want to have them bucket trained in other words train them to a bucket so we're gonna grab a five-gallon bucket we'll put a little bit of feed in it we'll hop in here and we'll walk and see if we get the cows to follow us [Music] I don't think there's any feed in there what do you think and I don't see any so if you know cows sometimes you can just give a holler and the cows will come running so let's see first of all we'll go we'll go easy first we got a reaction anyway but they're like nah dude we know where the food is so I've got the food and the water in different places I think that is a mistake so today we're actually going to move the two feeders and the feed down the hill to where we'll normally feed them let's get a bucket so we're up here to the feed barrel and we got our Home Depot bucket oh yeah do you think guys I think this is gonna work everybody came running everybody's bucket trained so let's do a little walk about here we're gonna walk all the way around the edge of the field and see if we can get them to follow us [Music] if I can pick up a bucket it's working it's awesome man so I want to teach him I want to give him some signals for when I'm coming up and every cattle farmers gonna be a little bit different so I want to give him some signals to come up to me I want them to hear the bucket and come running for the bucket or hear me go whoop that way they know that noise means food also a horn blowing would get the cows rounded up so here we go whoo [Music] the whole bunch is coming come on baby that's awesome didn't even have to get in there but I will have to go in and load up those feeders I'm gonna take them down here to the water huh MA the reason we have our water is down here is that we don't really have water set up per se so right now we're just feeding them off the water hose from the house we're watering them from the water hose right off the house and eventually we'll have a well drilled up here for agricultural water service I grew up with cattle and I was really young when we had cows and when I got my cow education as a young man I don't remember much about it I guess so what I've learned is that cattle like to graze and stay at the highest point on the farm and in the summer time I hear they want to go to the lowest point the coolest point so this is the lowest point on the farm or the lowest point in this pasture come on woof all right let's see if they drink there you go get some water boss cow get you some water boss cow what do you guys think boss cow is that a good name get some water boss cow the only thing I can figure is that the darn cows just aren't thirsty I guess I don't know I'm gonna pour this little bucket out right here and see if I can get them to hang out here for a little bit they must not be thirsty this is all the water that's been drank in the last week and we had two cows on a donkey in here now we've got three cows three calves and a donkey and that's all that they're drinking here they've just decided well things do didn't gonna give us any feed so we're rolling out see if we can get them back whoo come on come on we'll just pour them out on the ground can't tease them can't just give them the bucket show it to them and then take it away without pouring the food out I think I've spoiled this at least we got him down to the water [Music] whoo [Music] whoo [Music] let's see what she does with this bucket you can do that bucket [Music] we can do that but [Music] so our calf here is trying to drink there's one right beside you it's all the way full buddy you can just drink right out of that that's drinking I [Music] guess as the saying goes you can lead a cow to water but you can't make it drink man there they don't really care about the water it must just be cool enough out that they really just don't need a whole lot of water right now they're only drinking from one of these the one that was the dirtiest this one has crystal-clear water and they're not drinking from it pretty weird pretty odd let's go up here and talk about the fence stuff real quick I've got a big pile of fencing materials and I want to talk to you guys about why we're not fencing right now so on the project list for the farm here we've got a bunch of fencing we've already got a bunch of fencing videos out right now but we don't have Josh fencing videos out so what we have down at the bottom of the hill is a three-point post driver from pro tech machinery and we have all of our fencing materials here from tornado wire and from farm fence solutions and we'll be building fence as soon as it dries up somebody put it to me very simply December mud versus June mud June mud dries up December mud never dries up so we'll be riding around on the farm here beating the crap out of our fields trying to put this fencing in in the middle of the winter so we want to do that sometime in the spring once the soil and the land dries up so we're not cutting ruts in our field so that's what's up with the fencing material we've got a pile of fencing stuff here and we've got a big pile on the other side of the farm so enough to do three more miles of fence that's a lot of fencing material this right here is proof positive you just can't drive out into the pastures right now so we may have a few days here maybe four or five days that are dry enough to where we can actually load up all this manure so I've got the John Deere still hooked up to the manure spreader and I have a huge pile of manure to probably take me all day to spread all this manure out but I can't get out and spread it because of this weight of the manure and the tractor is just going to tear off the land so it's going to do more harm than good until it dries out or the land free is really hard and I can load that stuff up and spread it out on a good freeze the cows just bounced out they just walked on up the hill so they're like well this guy ain't going to feed us we're out of here we still have a lot of good green grass this really isn't the best part of the pasture but up on the top of the hill there a lot of green grass we won't have to hay these animals unless we get some snow or ice okay it'd just be a tease let's get them some sweet feed and get them a little bit of grub here look at him I came running man like they're starving to death you guys are not hungry no that's sweet feed get some come on everybody come around okay so the adult cows are eating at the adult feeder and this is the baby cow feeder so let's see what happens this is calf starter I don't know if they're gonna come to it or not oh look who knows where the calf starter feed is shame on you eating a baby's food number three shame on you number three just went number two good stuff well guys that's what it's like that's what it's like here on the Stoney Ridge farm today I just want to show you a little bit of what we've got going on I had to get the cows rounded up a little bit once they eat from this feeder I'm gonna drive in with the Kubota load the feeder up take the feed down to where the waters are that way they'll kind of hang out there and they'll always have plenty of water and I'll know that they're drinking good and getting the nutrition that they need pretty awesome guys thanks a lot for joining me here on the farm if you have any questions please post comments post questions pound that like button subscribe the channel and we'll see you next time almost Stoney Ridge alright free and home of the brave I'm a STONER [Music]