arthur

Meet Arthur.

Arthur is quite the celebrity around here.  Seems like everyone thinks it sounds like a lot of fun to bottle feed a calf.

They don't have to do it twice a day, now do they?

I'm just kidding - sort of.  He is awfully cute.  And we really enjoy sharing him with our friends.

Especially when said friends volunteer to feed Arthur when we go out of town.

Pedro got a little attention too.

Oh Arthur, I complain about you, but I guess we'll keep you around for awhile!

a little contest

Meet #18.

She doesn't have a name, just a number.  I name some of our cows that we've had a while, but we haven't had her very long.

She is fancy none the less.

Most of our cows are solid colors.  Black, white, red.  #18 is what we call roan. 

I like it!

Here's another view.

We've got calves popping out all over the place and #18 is due fairly soon, so here's what I want to do.  I want to have a little contest to see who can guess what color her calf will be.

We don't know what color the bull was (we bought her already bred) so it could be just about anything.

Leave your guess in the comment section.  I'll tell you my guess in my next post, and I'll be sure to take lots of photos when the calf is born.

So what do you think?

Solid black?  Roan like mama?  Purple with green spots?

The winner gets...the satisfaction of winning.  But it will be fun to see who guesses correctly!

twins

We had a cool thing happen this year.  One of our mama cows had twins.

It's not a super unusual thing to happen with cattle, but it's also not an extremely desirable thing.  What happens a lot of times is that when a cow has twins, she has trouble feeding them both, and neither one thrives the way they should.  Or one thrives, and the other does poorly.

This is not the case here.  Both calves look pretty great!  And mama seems to be doing well too.  Daddy Bird thinks that some cows are prone to having twins.  I'll take his word for it - he is a veterinarian, right?

We're pretty sure this same mama had twins last year, and I ended up bottle raising one of them.  Ugh.  Not cool.

I told Daddy Bird there would be no bottle raising this year.

Luckily, there's no need this time!  I feel for this mama though.  I'm nursing one baby and it seems like it's all I do some days.  I can't imagine nursing two!

Although, all she has to do is graze.  She doesn't have to cook, clean, and do laundry.  And her husband's not around, asking her to do things for him.

Ah, the life of a cow.



first calf of the year

I went out with Daddy Bird last evening to feed and check on the cattle, and even though it was chilly, it was really nice to have a half an hour or so just the two of us.

First we he loaded some square bales of hay on the tractor to take back to the bull and steers.

Did you know that a castrated male cow is called a steer?  Now you do.

Daddy Bird LOVES when I snap photos of him.

One nice thing about being pregnant is that I don't have to lift 50-70 lb hay bales!

Then we hopped on the tractor and drove back to the back pasture to feed.  Being pregnant does NOT, however prevent me from having to get down and open and close all the gates.  Oh well.

Here's our "red bull"!  He still doesn't have a name.

He's pretty tame as bulls go.  He will eat out of your hand, which is more than I can say for most of our mama cows.

Then we drove the tractor back to the middle field to grab a big round bale of hay for the rest of the cattle.  Do you know how farmers move those big round bales of hay around to feed their animals?

Like this.  Sorry I don't have step by step photos, but there is basically a big spear-like thing on the back of the tractor that grabs the bale and lets you carry it around.

After we grabbed the round bale, we drove up to the big field where our mama cows live, and we got to see this!

Our first calf of the season!  He/she (I couldn't get close enough to tell) was born a couple of days ago.

It's always so rewarding when the first calf is born healthy and strong.  There is so much work that is involved with raising livestock, and the little successes like this remind us that it's worth the work!

We are so blessed to be able to witness little miracles like this in our everyday lives, and my prayer is that I don't ever begin to take them for granted!