Oh Baby!

We got a little surprise this weekend when one of our new spring cows decided to calve on one of the coldest mornings of the winter so far! Seems like the cold fronts always trigger a calving event! Last spring we expanded our herd and purchased a few cow-calf pairs. Those calves went to sale this fall. By then the cattle markets had dropped so much we were wishing we'd waited until fall to purchase those pairs! Anyway, those cows weren't exposed to our bull until May, so we weren't thinking about calving until Feb - Mar. Apparently, these cows were already bred the day we brought them home, since we've already started calving and it's barely January! Heifer calf born Saturday morning is doing well, the calving went off without human intervention, so it could have been worse! Here are some pictures of the first spring calf born into our herd in 2009!

Peaceful chores - even on Holidays

Happy New Year! Some might celebrate the holiday today by sleeping in, but too many extra winks isn't something you can really get away with when you have farm animals to care for. I did my chores a little bit later than usual this morning, but I was surprisingly chipper this morning. I took my camera along and took my sweet time looking the animals over, rather than rushing from chores to work.

I found 7 of the 11 calves answer to my calls even when they can't see me. The other 4 missed out on the goodies this morning. Give them a little more time and they'll figure it out! I found my bottle calf is bigger than the other calves - apparently he's been spoiled with too much grass and pellets lately ;-). The ice chopping wasn't too bad this morning, but the pile of ice from the last few weeks of frozen work still hasn't melted yet despite fairly mild weather in the last week or so.

I can't put into words well the enjoyable feelings that come with doing chores everyday. It's a chance to see the sunrise everyday, see the wildlife, watch the animals, and plants and seasons grow and change slowly over time and all that is not even counting the personalities and quirks of the individual animals you see everyday. It is so much more than I can write or even demonstrate with photographs.