The Best anti-depressant? Cow.

I have not felt this good in years. I am not too sure what it is, but ever since the ladies got here, I have not been sulking or too hard on myself. Was this the challenge I needed? Has all my years of being Chronically, sorry they changed the term, clinically depressed is because of the lack of a cow in my life. I have trained dogs, and cats, and have deal with many other animals. Yet there is something odd about this whole cow thing, and I like it.

Edie is a fast learner. I have heard it reported and I never doubted that cows have the same intelligence level as dogs. Edie surpasses all the dogs I have ever dealt with.

Mama is a bully, plain and simple. She is the "herd" leader. She is in the stanchion first, while Edie is left to complain. I have to tempt mama with a little more grain to get her out of the stanchion. She doesn't scare off, or even respond to the tap on the rear that all the homesteading books say to do. Edie and I have it all figured out. After Mama has been brushed down (which by the way she loves, she'll lean into it) I leave the barn and grab a small bit of the grain. Edie will then walk to the back end of the corral and wait for me. I drop the grain on the ground, and Edie and I both wait for the selfish Mama to come and gobble it up. She does indeed get there rather quickly. Then Edie will rush past her, running to the barn and the stanchion even before I am running down the other side of the fence line. I grab the feed bucket, set it in the stanchion, tell Edie she's a good girl, as I run around the backside of her to lock the gate. The first time we did this, yesterday morning, Edie would look up at Mama threatening her from behind the gate. Last night however, she didn't look up at her once. She caught on quickly. Mama, however is tricked by food. She might catch on soon, but I am hoping she catches on to the fact that she wasn't called, there for she doesn't get to be in the stanchion.

Yesterday I got all my chores done before 10 am. I am feeling that good.

And my husband has started overturning the soil for the potato beds.

Thank you all for your help with looking for cow labor. It looks as though Edie's udder has begun to fill out. I spotted some mucus dribble, and my husband compared cow privates (I still don't trust getting that close behind them) He says there is noticeable difference in the two. But I will guess that we really won't know until it happens. This is our first time ya know.

I am going to leave you today with a little NAIS. Let's start with Radio Iowa, who reports that One livestock expert says the recent recall of more than 240,000 pounds of ground beef, the nation's largest-ever such recall, could have been prevented or greatly minimized through better cattle tracking methods. Dr. Randy Wheeler, an assistant state veterinarian at the Iowa Department of Agriculture, says programs to follow a cow's progress from the barn to the slaughterhouse are already in place, but they're voluntary. continues>>>>

Then head over to see why Henry Lamb wants to know where the USDA inspectors were, and that NAIS wouldn't have helped in this case.

The biggest meat recall in the history of the world topped the domestic news this week: 143-million pounds of beef, processed over the last two years, now scattered throughout the nation's schools and fast-food joints – all recalled. The U.S. Department of Agriculture had little choice. An animal rights group released videotape of "downer" cows being pushed around by a forklift and being dragged across filthy floors before joining healthy cows on the hamburger highway.

The big question raised by everyone is: Where were the USDA inspectors? continues>>>>