Bloomingdale

Is the name that came out of the naming hat...seems fitting with a mom named Broadway. Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions!

It's Puppy Day

Not my puppy, but my first grandpuppy. Details and photos to follow. Meanwhile here are some pics of Broadway's new daughter who remains nameless.

Feel free to leave suggestions for names in the comments if you would. I need help here....calf name burnout going on. Her sisters are named Scotty and Rose Magnolia BTW.

Have a good one.

And the Winner Is

Sinopa, out on the hills with the cows

Joated, who suggested Corolla. Thanks for all the great names! I still like this baby, although she is a stubborn and flighty as her mother, Camry, and her older sister, Calypso, a daughter of SWD Valiant. It takes a while to calm the ones who are just born wild, but it is worth the effort...after five or six lactations or so.......

Name That Calf

Been a while since we did one of these, but we have a very special calf for you to name. I am excited about this baby. She is a daughter of one of my favorite cows, Camry, a daughter of Ocean-View Extra Special out of our old Butternut cow. The newbie's sire is Juniper Rotate Jed.

Butternut was one of five full sisters by Mansion Valley Delaware, out of a cow we had that would not conceive to any other bull. She had five heifers in a row and they did really well for us. Two of them, Birch and Balsam, even won really tough heifer classes. Balsam took junior heifer calf at Altamont and Birch won intermediate heifer at both Fonda and Altamont. She was a February calf and to win against animals so much older than she, at a fair like Fonda, was a big deal to us.

Balsam was born on the 29th of February, so she is young cow in birthdays, but a bovine senior citizen in real life. She is the only one of the sisters still with us, but her family is thriving, with Bayberry, my beautiful Broadway, Rosie, and many others descended from her still standing in the barn. This new baby has a lot of promise and I have real high hopes for her.

If you've been here a while, you know how the name the calf contest goes. You folks are clever, we are unable to come up with a name, so we ask you to offer suggestions. We write them on slips of paper, toss them in a hat and pull out a winner.

Asaki is one example of a cow named this way, as is Bama Breeze. Both still live with us and are still called and registered under their contest names. And that is the prize....your choice of names bestowed upon our new little black girl, printed on her registration paper, and should she reach the show ring, on her sign.

The Snow Baby

Milking shorthorn heifer calf, by the Select Sires bull, Poker, out of Broadway

Dum Da Dum Dum....The Name

The naming hat has had its say. My new red baby's brand new name is Northstar.

Thanks to June for naming her.

Thank you all for all the great suggestions. Hope you will help again, the next time I come up blank in the naming department.


And in the pointless, but fun department, yesterday was not a great day. Weather issues, farming issues, general misery because it was still raining issues. Last thing at night, after chores were over, Becky and I ran downtown to do a few errands. We needed an extra copy of the paper for a friend, as the Farm Side runs on Friday. We also needed to pick up our own copy at the bottom of the driveway.

I always get a kick out of opening to the editorial page on Friday to see what title the editor has given each week's submission. This week I wrote a sort of tongue in cheek lament about leaving camp behind...I love the lake. Even though I love home too, it is always hard to change gears at the end.....Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had, not only a nice title, (The Vacation's Over Blues) but a cartoon! Yep right in the corner, next to that lovely 11 year old photo, which makes me feel so good every single week, was a cute little drawing

It describes exactly how I feel! I drove home grinning from ear to ear after seeing it.

Name that Calf

As promised

Long time followers and Farm Side readers are probably familiar with the Name That Calf contest phenomenon.

The rules are simple. We here at Northview need a name for a new baby. You out in blog land are clever, inventive, and kind enough to be helpful. And of course, everyone, everywhere, is eager to receive the fabulous prize, which is to have a beautiful bovine go through life sporting the name you gave it.

In past contests, lovely Bama Breeze was named by Florida Cracker. Asaki, as in "this is my cow, Asaki," got her moniker from Mrs. Mecomber. Liz has several named by kind folks as far away as Oregon. Dalkeith, Takala, Maureen, Hazel, just to name a few....

Anyhoo, it has come to pass that I have a really nice calf, and no one can come up with a name that is quite....enough....if you get know what I mean. Nothing quite seems to fit...to have that ring that stands out just so.......

The name-ee is half milking shorthorn and half Holstein, sired by our shorthorn bull, Checkerboard Magnum's Promise. Her dam is a gigantic first calf heifer out of my Trixie family (ask Alan if she looks like Trixie). Mama's name is Frieland Chilt Encore, and she is sired by a Champion son, Chilton. Her dam is my old England cow, who sadly had a preemie while we were at camp, which only lived one day.

Shamelessly nameless is the color of a pale carrot, a soft, orangy red. Her face has a faint roaning pattern that makes it look as if the sun was shining on it all the time....and she has a few snowflake-like speckles on her legs. (I will try to get a pic this morning at milking.)

She was a total surprise to me. Although Encore's maternal grandsire was Citation R Maple, none of her other family members ever showed any sign of being a red carrier. A sure sign of carrying the gene for a red coat is having a red calf...recessive gene and all. This opens up some interesting possibilities, as England must be a red carrier too. She is an old cow, but, you never know.

I am going to say thanks in advance for all the wonderful names I expect you will probably come up with. I enjoy the connection I feel with my blog friends when I care for animals that you good folks have named. I get a huge kick out of the clever and perfectly good fitting names you have come up with too.....Liz has the naming hat (into which we put slips with your baby names) all primed and ready....

So, ready, set, go......

Liz Needs Your Help

She has another calf that needs a good name. Suggestions welcome at BuckinJunction

Busy week

Not two sides of the same calf...nope these are two different bull calves, one a Citation R Maple out of Liz's show heifer Blitz, the other a Rain out of my Bubbles. If we weren't so busy I would advertise them as potential oxen. They sure are a pair. Wish they were both heifers...oh how I wish!





A baby Holstein/Milking shorthorn heifer calf. Born yesterday and up trotting around behind mama in a few hours. Wish they were all that easy.



By Myrik out of my dear little Etrain cow. This is what I did yesterday...watched E and then pulled this huge heifer, then took care of both later in the day. I am thrilled to get a girl and so far E is doing pretty well. We are working on names. In the hat so far are Texas, Email, Pizza, Flamingo and a couple others that are funny as heck and begin with e (this is my e family and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel for names...thus the potential for names beginning with other letters) but are simply not suitable for this particular blog. If you have any preferences among these potential names, or others as far as that goes, let me know please.

TNT Hattie, one of Heather's three milking daughters. Hattie is far and away my favorite Jersey on the place. Not that we are friends or anything, as she would love to hook me with her head when I lock up her stanchion (I think she thinks I want her grain). She is just a pretty, elegant, little thing and I like to look at her.

Sorry posting and writing are sparse, late and lame. These are not all the calves we have had in the past couple of weeks with more to come and problems too numerous to mention. Some years things work out well and you feel lucky and all. And then there are the other years....like this one.

Name The Calf...

It's actually Liz posting this. But Mommy said it was okay. I'm doing a 'Name the Calf Contest' over on Buckin' Junction. This one is a black heifer calf in desperate need of a "D" name. And I am plumb out of ideas!

Asaki

Mrs. Mecomber gets to do the honors. Thanks again to everyone who participated in the naming of this baby.

Name the calf

Time for a name that calf contest.
As always, all suggestions are welcome. Names submitted (in the comments please) are put into a hat, one is drawn, and the winner gets to name the calf.

Your exciting (????) prize is to have a purebred Holstein heifer go through life with the name you chose on her registration papers. Previous names chosen this way have been Hattie, one of our best Jerseys, Bama Breeze, Veronica and a couple of others I can't think of just now. This girl has potential as a show heifer so her name could be up in lights so to speak (well, really, just up in a little picture frame over at the show but....)

The particulars on this baby...her mama's name is Frieland LF Volcano. Her sire is a Select Sires young bull, Kingdom. This baby is a bit special as she is only the second red and white Holstein female we have ever had here at Northview. The other one is her half sister, Magma. You can see a rather bad photo of her here.

Have fun....the name chosen will definitely be one that you submit, as we are plumb out of names at this particular time. Happy naming!

Name the Calf

It's actually Liz posting this. But Mommy said it was okay. I'm doing a 'Name the Calf Contest' over on Buckin' Junction and Maqua-Kil Farm. See, I've kind of had two heifer calves born in the last couple of days, which both need "S" names. I've got one, but need another. Wanna help me out? You might just get to see the name you put in on a calf. Head over to one of the two to check it out if you have the time and inclination.

Name that calf

Since an outrageous percentage of the calves belong to Liz anyhow, she is hosting her own darned "Name that Calf" contest over on BuckinJunction. If you are clever with names, give her a hand.

Name that calf....again

Name That Calf

When you have a registered dairy herd your animals must be named. If the herd has been in the family for a while and you follow the trend of naming a calf something that starts with the same letter as its mother’s name, you soon start to run out of names. Trust me on this.
When I started going out with the boss he was delighted to turn the task of naming over to me. By the time kids came along I can’t tell you how happy I was to start turning it over to them.

Now we are asking you to try your hand. Yesterday’s little heifer needs a name, preferably beginning with either ‘a’ or ‘s’. So far the suggestions are Sprite, Amarillo and some weird place name that I can’t spell or pronounce.
If you have a good idea for a name, just leave it in the comments section.
Please.
We will pick one out of a hat like we did when we named a ‘v’ calf through the Farm Side.
(A word to the wise: virtually every conceivable conjugation of the name ‘Ann’ and most ‘a’ fruits have been taken already.) Have fun.

Doesn’t all this naming and registering stuff make you wonder why we need a national animal identification system? As soon as little ‘a’-whatever is named and looks like she will survive all right, we will take her picture, write that name with our our herd prefix, her date of birth, the date her dam was serviced, the registration number and name of both sire and dam, the name, address and account number of her owner, whether she was a twin or not, her color, and whether or not she was an embryo transfer on a registration blank. Then we will sign it and send it (plus money) to the Holstein Association. Later we will get back her nice new registration paper, clearly identifying her, us, and where she came from. You will not only be able to trace her, but you can have a look at who her ancestors were and where they lived back to the 1800s if you go on the Holstein website. What the heck more do we need? An ear tag that will rip a big hole in her ear when it gets ripped out on a feeder or tree? Nah, it is just a government gimic to keep tabs on our business. You know it.

Farming
NAIS