How about all this rain? I was going to fill the water garden one last time before winter, but now it is overflowing. The guys can’t chop corn because of the mud; my firewood is all wet, we are keeping the cows in nights, laundry won’t dry and everyone is miserable. On the bright side, we did herd health today and checked nineteen cows for pregnancy. Amazingly, eighteen were pregnant.
This is exceptional and cause for much rejoicing. We can now expect calves from Straight Pine Elevation Pete, Blitz, Zander, Zenith, Extra Special, and a number of other good bulls, as well as quite a few from our old herd bulls. The wonders of AI are a remarkable thing. (We own no bulls currently, except for the milking shorthorn, Promise, who “lives with” the heifers). However, we are still getting daughters from Foxfield-Doreigh NB Rex, Hosking-Brunn MWOD Arvid, Cristman Chairman Mucky, Keeneland Astre Pat, O-C-E-C Lindy Fred, and half a dozen others that we owned over the past twenty years. We bought these bulls from some of the top herds in the state and they have done well for us. Because we can use them over a period of time this way, we get to see how the daughters turn out and can make better matings. If anyone tries to tell you that you can’t breed good cows from bulls that don’t belong to AI studs, they are full of hooey. Right now several of our top cows are from our own bulls, Frieland Rex Star, Frieland A Marge, Frieland CCM Marvel, and a whole batch of others. In fact the cows sired by our bulls are much better in feet and legs and udders than those sired by “proven” bulls.
However, we have some nice ones of the other kind too.
Sequoia finally had her baby today, a nice black heifer by Ocean-View Derry Zander. Liz was thrilled and spent quite a while drying the new one off, treating her navel with iodine and helping her to nurse for the first time. Then she put a calf coat on her and tied her next to my twins where it is nice and dry. We had to give her mama two bottles of calcium as she had a touch of milk fever. Actually she gave us so much trouble that we had the vet give her the second one. For a sick cow she sure could fight!
Much as I hate it, I guess I have to head out to the barn for another round of wet, nasty chores. I sure will be glad when the rain stops!
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- threecollie
- Embracing agricultural diversity, one species at a time. All rights reserved
Wow, this is interesting but a little confusing for a city person. You've got calfs coming that were sired by bulls you bought over a period of 20 years but have no bulls presently. I think I understand, but had always thought that dairy farmers never had bulls on the farm, that breeding the cows was all artificial insemination. How long do you keep the bulls and where did they go? I've always read that they were too dangerous to keep. What is the Al stud. Is it a breed registry. Do you have computer program that keeps track of the lineage of your cows. You certainly have a fascinating blog.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the questions, but they don't teach this in biology class.
We have Dependabull from Vernona NY come in and "draw" the bulls,(or we take them there) freeze the semen and do AI using our own animals. Bulls ARE horribly dangerous and we have kept no large ones since we had children. We used to keep them about two years and sell them, sometimes for beef and sometimes to farmers with big freestall operations that use big bulls. The AI stud is a company that "proves" bulls by testing their daughters and then sells semen from the best of them to farmers. We do use a computer now, but just kept paper records until recently.
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking time to read my blog and for commenting. I enjoy that very much.