We had a beautiful little girl (heifer) born here on the farm on Tuesday morning,8-16-11. She was very unexpected. Based on when we had put the bull in with our girls we thought that we would have three calves born in the late winter/early spring. Well we waited and waited and finally we had one born in April. Then we waited and waited and waited some more but none to follow. We had to face the disappointment that two of our three cows did not "take" if you know what I mean.
With everything else going on this summer we just sort of put it on the back burner and said well that's farming for you?!? We had thought for a while that one of the other two cows looked like she might be in the family way but then nothing ever happened so we just wrote it off to eating a lot of grass. The funny part is the mamma of the new calf is not even the one that we thought looked pregnant! (Can you tell we're new at this? lol) To add to our excitement the third cow appears to really be pregnant now so we're thinking she might deliver in the next month or so. So much for planning when our cows will have calves!
Another exciting aspect to this is that it is in fact a female! We have had only males up until now. We had thought in the beginning that we would slowly grow our herd by adding any females born to the breeding stock (it's safe to do that for one generation) And then of course we had male after male after male until now and finally a girl! And she's a real cutie! The girls named her "Snow" because she looks like she's been walking in the snow and got it on her feet and ears and face of course.
