Lost and Found

While I was holding down the fort this weekend, I lost my Aggie ring. (Class of '86...Gig 'em!) I was on the phone with my Mom on Friday when I realized I had better tend to evening chores. I throw a can of cat food out for the barn cats.

 I scatter some scratch and scraps out for the guineas and chickens before shutting the chickens in:

Horses get supper if they come in from the pasture.

The beef gets fed.

 We have a doggie calf that we've started on feed.

And there are 25 calves that get 100# of preconditioning feed doled out to them.

Skeet's a champion chore chum:

                                 

 I've also been cleaning out the chicken coop and hauling hay from the barn floor.

                                 

Somewhere along the line I noticed I had lost my college class ring. I did not panic, but mentioned it to my Mom who kind of did. I DID want to find it, but retracing my recent steps would be challenging. I had an inkling, but after looking in all the sacks of feed, I came up empty handed. I told my mom that the calves probably ate it and it would eventually show up in a pile of manure. She didn't find that as funny as I did. I told her that if she were here, she probably would be out combing through the manure piles the next day and she said that's exactly what she would be doing. LOL. It's even more funny because my Mom is not a ranch wife. She was born and raised in Vienna, Austria and she was pretty horrified when her only child met and married a rancher and built a life as a ranch wife at the end of a dirt road. She's always told me I ought to write a book, but she's the only one who would read it. :)

The calves had been munching on feed for about 15 minutes when I  began combing through the feed in the bunk as we continued our conversation. Nothing, But I kept looking and lo and behold:

I found it! Last week it flew off my finger while I was working at the sale barn. Time to put it up somewhere for safe keeping, lest it really does find its way into a pile of cow manure!