As I write this article it is minus 28 degrees.  We now have six to eight inches of snow on the ground.  A week ago it was sunny and 55 degrees.  That is an 83 degree swing in temperatures.   Such an abrupt change in temperature is hard on everything.  Man, beast and machinery.  Tractors had their diesel fuel treated for cold weather, but not this cold.  So they are balky to run, until we get more fuel additive in them.

With the cold weather coming we had started to feed cake to the cows to give them a little extra protein.

We dump buckets of cake on the ground out of a moving pickup and the cows come running to eat cake off of the ground.

Then we needed to turn the rams or bucks out with the ewes so we get some lambs next spring.  We decided this year to use a black faced buck on the ewes and to give the bucks a chance to breed some ewes we turned our four black faced bucks out by themselves first. They will be with the ewes for the first week then we will turn out about fifteen horned rams.

Here I have opened the trailer door and the bucks are looking out at the ewes and the ewes are curiously looking at what the trailer has brought them.  The guard dog "Opal" looks on to check out the newcomers.  She does not miss any thing that goes on.  The bucks will soon meet her approval and be accepted into the herd.

Then we had to put another bale in with the ewe lambs to fill their hay feeder.  I use my ugly tractor to put a bale into the feeder.

The lambs await their new bale so they can eat on it.

Well the outside temperature has now warmed up.  It is now only minus 20 degrees, so I guess I can go out and feed every thing.  At least the sun is shining and the wind is not blowing.  I will go the Rapid City today and pick up Tammy at the airport.  She has been in Minneapolis to a meeting most of the week.  These pictures were taken with her new camera so hope you can see the difference.