My family has been through that several times. My youngest son who is now 33 yo came to be when he was 9 years old and said he wanted a calf to, as he called it, "show off". I had a friend about 17 miles away who had been a reputable Angus breeder. I saw him a few days later at the courthouse getting his truck tags and mentioned what we had in mind and he fixed my son up with a heifer calf to show. calf was 7 mo. old and he got up earlier every morning in order to go to the barn and work with the calf in order to get it to lead. really wasn't much trouble to teach her to lead. Needless to say, she became quite a pet. we hauled her to every show our work schedule would allow from Indianapolis to Perry GA and Baltimore to Tulsa, OK. We all learned a lot that summer and we came to realize that what makes an Angus heifer desireable was strickly in the eyes of the beholder, or in this case, the judge. some shows she would be Grand Champion of the entire show and some shows she would be last in her class. the whole family got attached to her, she was even in the family portrait for the Christmas card we sent out that year, 1994, I believe it was. Her, (named her Sally) show career ended when she had her second calf and she, naturally raised some excellent seed stock. Son's herd started with that one heifer. He now keeps about 50 head and almost all of them have Sally's blood in them. When she became 'elderly' several years ago, we talked to the vet about what our options were because she was getting arthritis and joint problems and really having a hard time walking and really hard on her to get up from laying down. We, naturally, did not want her to get to the point where she was down and could not get up. This was the same vet who cared for her in her show career, having had pneumonia, coccidiosis, and numerous other complications. my son thought of him as our primary care physician and really became a good friend and mentor to him. You have probably already guessed where this is all going........the time eventually came for a decision having to be made about, not if, but when were we going to have to relieve Sally of being miserable in standing, walking and even getting up as some days she could not. After conferring with Doc the date and time was set for him to come to the farm and carry out the plan. I dug a grave with the bakckhoe the evening before; and my son broke the news to me that evening that he could not bear to be there when the shot was given. I told him I understood and would be there with Sally and the vet. The next morning came everything went as scheduled and planned. After Doc administered the shot, we had to wait a few minutes for it to do its work and neither one of said a word. I was relieving a few tears and looked over at Doc and the tears were rolling down his face, also. Lots of memories went thru my head as we sat there. Sally was not only a good cow, but she taught a kid about life, growing up to be a man, and accepting that sometimes things just don't go the way we expect them to. Whether he won the show or came in last, everything was the same, just evaluated by a different person. As the old saying goes, some days your are the windshield; some days you are the bug.
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Today's Featured Article - Third Brush Generators - by Chris Pratt. While I love straightening sheet metal, cleaning, and painting old tractors, I use every excuse to avoid working on the on the electrics. I find the whole process sheer mystery. I have picked up and attempted to read every auto and farm electrics book with no improvement in the situation. They all seem to start with a chapter entitled "Theory of Electricity". After a few paragraphs I usually close the book and go back to banging out dents. A good friend and I were recently discussing our tractor electrical systems when he stated "I figure it all comes back to applying Ohms Law". At this point
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