No, not the stork…

We had nine new arrivals here at the farm late yesterday.  They came by trailer from Ernie Reeves’ Mossy Creek Farm in the Shenandoah Valley….were dropped off at the Rose Hill Veterinary Clinic in Little Washington for processing (tags, tattoos, dna tests, de-horning)…and then loaded back up for the trip here.

These are all embryo calves; embryos created here at Thistle Hill and then implanted in recipient cows at Mossy Creek.  It’s what we do to capture genetics that aren’t otherwise available.  In this case it was the all-time great Devon bull, Rotokawa 688.  A friend—Bill Walker in South Carolina—donated the rare semen and we donated two cows.

Five of the embryos were line bred, which is to say we bred 688 to his daughter.  This is a procedure advocated by one of the Devon gurus, Gearld Fry, to concentrate the genetics for maximum impact.  We wanted to try that controversial procedure and Bill was hoping for a polled female, that is one without horns.  (For our civilian readers, female cows can have horns, too.)

We have very mixed feelings about this line breeding business, but we do a lot of experimenting and wanted to see for ourselves.  I’m sure we’ll have more to say about this later.

Luckily, of the four females, one was, in fact, polled.

But unluckily, it was that one heifer Bill wanted who managed to escape as we were unloading here at the farm.  She took off for the woods but we didn’t chase her for fear we’d only drive her farther away.  So we’ve left a pen open near her herd mates and hope that she’ll eventually get lonely and return.

Meanwhile, Bill, she’s out there….waiting for you.

One problem with raising calves away from the farm in very large herds is that they’re not accustomed to people.  So now we have to calm them down.  Wooz and I have developed a technique that seems to work:  each evening we bring them in, set up two chairs, and pour some wine.  Along about our third glass, the calves seem to get quite mellow.