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Monday, May 28, 2007

Babies

I guess it's that time of year. Three calves this week, two heifers, one bull. One of them will put to good use a fine name that was suggested by a respected fellow blogger recently.

Frieland LF Bama Breeze made her long-awaited (nine months in fact) debut in the Holstein Heifer Cowbell Choir here at Northview just a couple of days ago. She is the much-welcomed daughter of Frieland MG Beausoleil, who was given to me for Mother's Day some nine years back. (Actually, it wasn't so much that the boss gave her to me as that he wanted to sell her as a baby because he didn't think much of her dam. I liked her right from the start so I begged. She is a sweet old cow now, and a big favorite, which just goes to show...)
The other heifer will also be named after music, Countrified. Her dam is Cisco, out of Cubby, who was thus named because she was tied next to the barn cupboard as a calf. (Desperation often rules the naming around here so we are always grateful for good suggestions.)

There was a baby on the bridge this morning too, hop-skipping cheekily just out of reach. It was new and not long out of the nest, but quite able to handle itself, thank you very much. The new-fledged song sparrow was just a shade less brightly colored than the adults, perhaps offspring of the one that sings on the heifer yard gate every now and then. It wasn't exactly soaring like an eagle but it certainly could fly better than I can.

Other critters are having babies too, some of them causing me very mixed emotions. After all, bunnies are cute. The bring chocolate at Easter and look pretty bouncing around on the lawn. They are soft and fluffy and have big, brown eyes. Bunnies also reproduce at a phenomenal rate and eat just about anything vegetative. They consumed my apple trees this winter, despite wire cages three feet high (the four-to-six-foot snow gave them a paw up so to speak.). Anyhow, Alan uncovered a nest with the riding lawn mower, exposing fourteen little syvilagus floridanus babies, which rolled out onto the grass. (This is the first mowing this year and the lawn is about hip high.) I will spare you the details, but lawnmowers are not good for animals. They provided a quick meal for some passing crows and a couple of barn cats anyhow.

I tried to feel bad about them, really I did. I mean, how awful to be run over by the mower and eaten. It will be at least a couple of weeks before their mother, which escaped unscathed, can produce fourteen more. However, I'm sorry to say that I failed miserably.
I like apples.
They are my favorite fruit except cookies.
There is a whole orchard right next to the lawn, full of untended trees, large and small, which the rabbits could have eaten this winter. They could have mowed down as many box elders and mulberries as they wanted too, no complaints.

Why the honeycrisps I ask.

Why?

5 comments:

R.Powers said...

"Bama Breeze"
Woohoo!!
Now THAT is a fine name.
I had to read that aloud to my crew.

Did I say Woohoo yet?
Thanks!

threecollie said...

FC, it is I who must say thanks to you for the idea. Great name and I am always grateful for them. Hope she lives up to it....it is perfect, giving her a name from music as Beausoleil is a Zydeco group.

Deanna said...

Cubby is a great name!

Anonymous said...

Glad they all made it into the world safely.

Yeah, the lawn mower... here it's snakes and frogs.

threecollie said...

Cubby, I am glad you like it. She was a nice cow and has many descendants.

AMWD, we really needed to get started mowing a couple of weeks ago but the mower had a flat tire and the milk tank washer and the corn planter were both broken. Guess which got fixed first.