Our herd is mostly registered or eligible for registry and we each own our own cows, so we always know who is who. Because I pay the bills I am usually more willing to sell mine when the time comes than might otherwise be the case.
Thus, my herd was getting pretty small. However, with the boss giving me Asaki things were looking up.
Then I was just on the phone with Alan, who almost never makes it home any more, and he gave me Zulu, AKA Alpha Zulu Pinecone, or "Runner" because she always comes into the barn on a high jog and you don't wanna get in her way.
I am delighted. I always milked and liked her mother, old Zinnia, a swing-bagged, big-bodied old misery, who liked me for some reason and pretty much let me do whatever I wanted with her. Otherwise I couldn't have milked her as she was HUGE and her udder hung almost to the floor and was wide as a washtub. Not being awful stretchy in length, I had to put my head right down under her to milk her. If she had wanted to she could have killed me, but she never did. She was not quite as kind to others and was a calf thief as well.
So anyhow, I have two new (to my bunch) cows to add to those I already own.
Let's see....Broadway my original milking shorthorn, Scotty, my three-breed cow, Egypt, small, black, cranky, but hard-working, Velvet, not exactly my favorite, but...Northstar, another milking shorthorn, Dublin, young cow I got in a trade, Carlene, probably my best cow, another one the boss gave me, and Lucky, red carrier, bred back to Maxwell, hoping for a red heifer, but not holding my breath.
Some heifers too, Betty, a Citation-R Maple coming up to calving, a few more milking shorthorns, Pumpkin, Laramie, Rosie, her full sister, Bloomingdale, Strawberry, Cayenne, some Holsteins, including Liverpool, Lucky's last year's calf, Bastille, sister to Bama Breeze, a shorthorn steer calf, CleoPatrick (out of Egypt), and probably a couple of others I am not thinking of.
Wow, I feel lucky! No wonder I keep wanting to hang on and keep going with such a good bunch of girls (and the one steer).
You think up the BEST names :o)
ReplyDeleteI hope you can hang in there until you are way, way too old to pick up a milker. That's the way Terry and I want it for ourselves!
ReplyDeleteLinda
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Awww. . . . it must really be something to work so closely with such large animals with such distinctive personalities. That description of Zinnia . . priceless :)
ReplyDeleteTruly clever names!
ReplyDeleteCaroline, why thank you! We have a lot of fun naming them
ReplyDeleteLinda, thanks!Getting there fast alas. Poor boss went out looking for missing heifers a couple of times and can barely hobble after falling in a hole.
Cathy, lol, it was funny about Zinnia. On one hand she was miserable to work around. She would do anything to get to any calf and steal if from the mother and bellow all day and night if you didn't let her. she was really hard to milk! And yet I always liked her and gave her whatever extra it took to keep her going. She lived to be quite old.
FC, thank you sir! We still have the one you named for us, although I gave her to Alan. She is a real nice little cow!