Cow Update March 9/13

Just a quick note to tell you that Maggie is slowly bagging up and is looking like she will calve in the next month or so. Papa and I have tenitive plans to buy a dairy steer when her calf is born and raise the two together. Two is very little more work then one and the way we've been going through beef we are gonna need two! Besides that we will skip a year with beef if we do not and we are enjoying it too much to go without it unless absolutly nessasary.  

Isabel was checked recently and found to be open, in other words not bred. So we are once again watching for heats and hope to try AI-ing her again soon. This time to a brown Swiss bull! On the 13th of March she will have been milking for a full year. She started at about 8 gallons a day and is now down to about 5 gallons a day! That is really good! She is in good shape for a Holstein as well and seems to be able to blance her wieght loss and her milk production really well. Some cows give all their weight to their milk production or produce less milk and keep some wieght. Isabel seems able to do both. Other then Papa's sweet mix at milking time and a salt block she is just getting hay!  Maggie on the other hand looks bullish she is so fat!

      Maybe I will wander out there with my Ipad soon and take a picture of them for you. They are bonding and sometimes we see them licking each other for hours.

      I wonder if Isabel will make a pain of herself while Maggie's calving the way Maggie  did when Isabel calved a year ago? I hope we are around to see the birth! Maggie's last calf, Meatloaf (who is living with the neighbours herd at the moment and will be beef this fall) was born about 6 o'clock in the morning and I just caught the tail end, punny!, of the birth through the window. He was born in November 2 years ago now on the same day we butchered Billy the steer who was Bindy's second last calf. It was an interesting day that's for sure!

If you want to read some fun stories about cows click on the word cows or calves on the side panel and you'll get a bunch! Happy reading!