A couple or three days ago one of the cows had a calf out on the hill. The boss was the one to find it and reported a beautiful heifer. He left it out there as it was too new to stand. The next morning the mama came down without it, but he saw it was okay so he still left it out there. He is the one who gets the cows most milkings and he didn't want to mess with it so it stayed out there under its mama's eye until tonight.
Every milking and sometimes in between we debated...what to do with this calf, what to do, what to do. You see its mama, Kid, AKA #152 is a total miserable witch of a cow. Her whole family is kind of on the nasty side, but she is the queen of mean. We milk her because she is also an excellent producer, but she isn't at the top of anyone's popularity list. We have more heifers than we need, so selling the calf would be an excellent option. However, we never seem to get market value for our heifers at the sale barn. We suspect that someone who is affiliated with the place buys them for themselves. It is frustrating. When heifer calves are bringing 600 bucks we will get two or three hundred or even less. We thought about trying to sell her to another farmer...or maybe saving up until we have several and hauling them to a sale out in the western part of the state. Finally we figured we would just keep her and see how she turns out. No one was real happy about it though. We have heifers all over the place and no more housing anywhere.
Tonight when the boss went up to hook up the feeder wagon the calf was sleeping under it, right next to the gate to the barn. When it saw him it jumped into the wagon and stood there swaying, legs spread wide. He wished for a camera and wondered if he could just hook up the wagon and bring it on down. However it soon jumped back out.
It was a good traveler by then though and when Liz and I were "being fence" while the cows came down to be milked it trotted right by with its dam. Beautiful calf. Then came the other debate. The cow was bred twice 19 days apart (the normal heat cycle is 21 days) She calved almost exactly half way between her two potential due dates....so was she bred to our own bull O-C-E-C Lindy Fred or Duregal Astre Starbuck? The calf was white and quite sharp around the head so we were leaning toward Astre. Fred throws them strong and black. If it was Astre then this calf is the first one put in there by LIz who studied AI in college and bred the cows while the boss was laid up last year.
Then Liz went out to catch the calf and pull it into the barn. She came back in muttering under her breath.
The muttering got louder.
And louder.
We soon understood why.
After all that discussion, all that fretting, all that deep concern over what we were going to do with that questionable heifer calf, she took a closer look at its plumbing.
And it is a bull!
So rather than deciding what to do with the calf we have to decide what to do with the man.
Monday, July 28, 2008
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9 comments:
I have a feeling the Boss is going to take a little cajoling about this "plumbing" mistake :) and that Liz isn't likely to let him forget it for a while ~ lol.
Hope your weather is drying out -have a good day :)
Soooo funny! This has happened to all dairy farmers, I think, and it's acutely embarrassing. Poor boss.
LOL, poor Boss, but you know if they didn't operate in the dark so much maybe they would know what their looking at. hehe Just kidding!
A neighbor's hired man called us once to come help with difficult calving, (this man was 50ish)when we got the pasture, the "cow" was down alright, but was a steer who had ingested a poisonous weed! That would have been a difficult calving...
I know how he feels, though, it's easy to make mistakes, when you have so many other things on your list every day. Just another exciting weekend at Northview! Thanks Boss, I'll be grinning all day. Hope you're getting some hay weather.
OOps!
It IS getting harder to tell these days.
Uh...what are your options with the different plumbing?
That's too funny! I bet you all aren't letting the boss live this one down.
Oh how I miss life on the farm.
Wish I had never left.
I'm catching up on my blogs, dear, and just have to say that yours is such a wonderful mix of beauty, whimsy, common sense and fun.
It is so amazing that you mentioned 'ticks' in the previous post. Today I met a woman who is a recently retired Ohio dairy farmer. Her husband got Lyme Disease from a tick bite.
Apparently they didn't get a correct diagnosis for years. Finally he's getting the drugs he needs and is doing very well.
She said that ticks like manure. I had no idea.
Anyway. I thought about you as she related her stories.
Back to your blog: I love the soft fog-festooned morning pictures. And lucky, lucky you to have a mockingbird!
Thanks for dropping by my blog and wishing me well. It's always good to see you there:0)
deb, he is good picking up to a point as he is a fairly good sport...and we know when to stop. We are getting one dry day anyhow...hope you do too and thanks!
NW, this is not the first time here either and in his favor, the mother is pretty aggressive and didn't exactly let him get close.
Nita, that must have been incredibly funny. I read it to the boss so he could feel better about his error in gender determination.
FC, yeah, and even with cows, both the boys and the girls wear ear rings!
Jan...ummmm, the boys have boy plumbing and the girls....don't
STacy, I am being kind on one front anyhow. This incident begs to be made into a Farm Side column, but all his friends read that and they are still picking on him about a sheep incident that happened years ago, so I won't write about this one there. lol
C&L, it's a great life if you don't weaken....most days.
Cathy, delighted to see you getting around. Hope you are feeling better!
The tick and Lyme issue is truly troublesome. Back when the disease had just been discovered in Connecticut, my parents' neighbor, a power company worker, developed a mysterious and debilitating illness. He suffered for years and then DIED of it....wasn't diagnosed with Lyme until afterward. He had worked in Connecticut but nobody thought of Lyme. It was just too new.
Thanks for your kind words! I love your photos too!
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