The Life of Me: An AutobiographyJohnson, Clarence Edgar
History
The Life of Me: An Autobiography
Johnson, Clarence Edgar
Fisher County (Tex.) -- Biography; Fisher County (Tex.) -- History; Johnson family; Johnson, Clarence Edgar, 1906-1994
At least once each year, we had to brand all the new calves,
those we had bought as well as those we had raised. We had to
reduce the little bull calves to steers, vaccinate all young
cattle against blackleg, both young and old had to be vaccinated
against some other disease--I have forgotten what it was called,
and I'll bet a quarter we farmers didn't call it by the same name
that veterinarians called it. And finally, all calves that had
not been dehorned had to have their horns cut off. I remember
one time we had 25 cows, a large bull, and 55 calves to work.
That meant 135 vaccine shots, 30 to be branded, about 20 to be
dehorned, and maybe 15 little bull calves to be worked on.
Anita was big enough to keep a fire going and to keep branding
irons hot and to hand them through the fence to me. Dennis was
big enough to help drive the cattle into the stanchion, hand the
vaccinating needles to me, bring in more cattle from the feed
lot, and turn out the ones we were through with. I was big
enough to catch the cattle in the stanchion, vaccinate in the
shoulder with one needle, in the hip with another, brand a Lazy-J
on the left hip, cut off their horns, and work the little bull
calves.
We never fooled around with a chute because we found that cattle
were reluctant to enter a chute. That would be too slow and too
much work. Instead, we used a stanchion that was installed
permanently between two small pens. It opened large enough for
the largest bull to go through and it closed small enough to hold
the smallest calf. And it wasn't all that expensive. It
probably cost me $1 for second-hand lumber and 50 cents for a
rope to pull the top ends of the bars together.
It was easy to get the cows to go through the stanchion since it
formed a gate between the two pens. Our milk cows passed through
it every day. Most any cow or calf would be glad to go from one
pen to another, especially if there were some cows in the other
pen.
The system was fast, and by far the easiest I have ever worked
with. We three did the 80 cattle one morning but finished a
little late for dinner. We sat down to a one-o'clock meal
instead of a twelve-o'clock meal.
I mentioned before that we sometimes cut feed for the public. At
first, Ima went along to drive the car. But later on, I build an
iron "basket" at the back bumper of the car to carry the front
wheels of the tractor. Then I could drive the car and trail the
tractor and the binder, and Ima could stay home. One patch of
feed was 50 miles away in Kent County. Where the road was so
sandy that the car couldn't pull the tractor and binder, I would
crank the tractor motor and let the tractor push, with no driver
on it. And we learned that low air pressure in the auto tires
would allow it to go most anywhere in sand. We parked that Buick
on top of nearly every sand hill in Carriker's big sand field.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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