You gotta love her….

Wooz and I spent an enjoyable few hours with son, Church, today photographing much of our herd.  We wanted new photos to “freshen” the website.  We also wanted to grade our younger cows…such as X64 here with her mom.  64 seems to turn out “A’s” year in and year out and her calves are always among the first to be singled out by potential buyers.  We, in turn, make sure that we always keep two 64 females in our herd for protection.

In the main pasture right in front of the house is part of that “protection”, U64.  She’s the granddaughter of one great Rotokawa bull, 974, and just bred to the grandson of another, 688.  This heifer is another of those who seems to understand she’s special.  She loves to pose and will generally swish her golden tail to show off.

This whole subject of breeding is fascinating and we do follow certain rules that we learned from our New Zealand friend and mentor, Ken McDowall.  (Can you have a mentor who is younger than you are?)  But no result is guaranteed.  A friend mentioned the other day that one of the big bull studs says there are about a million-and-a-half possible DNA combinations in any mating.

Ken says the the only hard and fast rules are “patience” and “ruthless culling”.  It’s that “ruthless” part that bothers Wooz.  I mentioned that in addition to photographing, we were also grading the cows.  Wooz, as a former teacher, is a much easier grader.  She feels better grades encourage the cows to better performance.  That is, if they think they’re an “A”, they’ll become an “A”.

All of our cows understand cognitive psychology.

And when it comes to selling, I have to “sell” Wooz on selling much more than I have to sell the buyer.  And she grades the buyers much tougher than her heifers and young bulls.