11/09/2024
WELL SAID.
Here at Clear Creek, our baby calves are born sometime between the middle of March to the middle of May.
The following fall, these calves are weaned off their mamas. Since we maintain a purebred operation, it means we evaluate the female calves and decide to keep some for our own breeding program. These females go into their own pen over the winter. The following year, when that female is somewhere around 15 months old, she will be turned out with a bull for the first time, in a small group of other females her same age.
In October or November, when that female is about 18 months old, she will be run down the long alley and into the chute where she will be ultra-sounded to see if she is pregnant.
This is exactly where this heifer you see, was yesterday. She is a stunningly beautiful Native Shorthorn, who carried with her, a lot of OUR hopes.
And as perfect and normal as all seemed, she didn’t get bred this summer. Disappointment over a heifer being “open” her first season isn’t just short term disappointment. It’s long term. That is because most heifers here don’t get s second chance. And I could not find enough time and room to tell you why. It just is.

She may find a second chance elsewhere. Otherwise, she is destined for your grocery store freezer later this winter.
These are business decisions. But also, they represent that “quiet hard” that 99% of humans will never know nor understand.
Not all things are roses and sunshine. Not all things are plain to see. Certainly, these are not things that most people would ever want to have to decide.
Perhaps it helps shed light in why we are extra sensitive to the insults from the uninformed that say our calloused nature is “not to care.”
We care more, than you could ever know.
