Exciting time of year as new calves arrive in stages. Since we ran bulls all year with cows it is a guessing game on who will calve next. Here we have our second calf of the year. This adorable heifer is from Patches and our first from Luke. We wondered if Luke being white with only dark tips was going to wash out all his calves but she is looking great. If his calves get this kind of color we are great. Luke is over 2 years old and only 43 inches 'ACROSS his back' at the hip bones. I point it out as I dislike the industry allowing animals to be measured anywhere lower than the top, as I feel it misleads new buyers. (look for other post). We fully plan to keep this little heifer and show her in our string. Mom is heading to CA state fair end of July. The next one we have is actually our first heifer. Valentina. She is likely the only heifer we will offer this year for purchase. She is out of our first generation cow, Ruby
who had amazing horns and was a light reddish blonde colored cow. Blondie had horns that were slender and went out for ages. We do plan to keep Valentina but could put her in a package deal with a bull if someone wanted. We sold blondie and have been raising Valentina on our jersey milk cow while milking once a day. She will be put in halter training soon and expect to see her at CA state fair.
Now for the bulls! On our way to see this guy for the first time we were playing the guessing game to see what everyone thought it was. The kids all had their guesses and was split 50/50 for heifer vs bull. One of them ask me if it was a bull if I would keep it. I said probably not as we have two sisters of this one so would be difficult to use him. We pull up and mom has him off in a corner where we had to walk out and around tom him. Boy did I change my mind about giving him a chance. This guy has color to spare for three. He was born brindle and also has other darker spots on him. I am still torn on what color to call him. I plan to register him as Kaleidoscope Kid with all that color. He will be at CA state fair with his mom end of July.
Next we have so far a nameless calf by Delta. Delta has given us two copies of white. One with black tips, (genetically parker brown) who is Luke our new herd sire and Stormtrooper 1, a steer that we sold. So we opted to try out a new bull with her instead of getting another white one. We put her with our Jr herd sire Dr Suess and boy cow can moo can you. This little guy certainly has color, there are the large spots and under a lot there are small ticking as well. I am not sure what we are going to to do as far as keep for a steer to show or sell with him yet. I try to only keep one bull each year and this is making it hard. I really like this cows horns and on the sire side the grandam has 90 inch horns so this guy could add great potential to the mini gene pool. So we will likely grow this one and previous out for a year to see how they turn out. We are excited for what this year holds. Come see these guys at CA state fair the last weekend of July. Pick yours out in person. We are expecting one more before fair and exciting one by Diva our smallest cow and homegrown so super exciting. We also have three coming in the fall. Next year we hope to have all the cows calve within a month. We are putting the bulls out soon to breed them all back at once. We shall see how that goes.
Comments