When Wooz and our co-worker Duane Ard were out checking for new babies the other evening, they spotted this cow following her young bull calf to the water trough.  Is it just my imagination or do bull calves always lead their mothers around while heifers know to follow? Duane took the picture.  He’s available for weddings, as long as it’s not his.

The buying was fast and furious at our Open House and, not wanting to disappoint a potential customer, I promised the next heifer calf from one of our favorite young cows.  And now T2 has delivered. The promise was only half-joking but I think I made a commitment.  Trouble is, I never actually sell an animal until Wooz says “OK”.  I’m taking this indirect way of telling her and now I’m going out to check the herd for a couple of hours.

…Right as our open house wrapped up the other day, one of our cows gave birth to a bull calf and that provided wonder (as always) but also a bit of amusement. Within minutes of the birth, another cow with her own calf at side came up to inspect the newcomer.  Understandably, one big red cow looks pretty much like another to a newborn concentrating on standing up, and so junior tried to nurse the wrong one.  It took quite a few strong, but gentle nudges to straighten him out. After a while our son Church realized that we were witnessing a game of “calf ping pong” and got a bit…

….our newest calf and his proud mother.  This is one of six heifers that enter our production herd this year.  She’s a Rotokawa 93 daughter. We schedule our heifers to calf at three years of age because we feel that’s better for both mom and her calf.  Other breeders like to push calving earlier, believing they get more calves over the life of the cow by starting at two.  Our experience is that by being patient we extend the productive life of the cow.  But more than that we find they are calmer, better mothers when we wait. Incidentally, the sire in this case was our Rotokawa 974 herd bull,…