Calves!

When we come home off a long trip the first thing I want is a decent meal 🙂 When I went to the freezer on Wednesday evening I was shocked to see we only had 2 joints of beef left! AAGH! Now we still have steaks & hamburger so not totally empty but it was time to think forward & time to get some calves growing up here. We had actually talked about it before just never got around to getting any but now was the time.  We had either sold all our cows or butchered them before leaving Montana so really starting afresh down here. Thursday morning there was a cattle auction in Norwood, about 40 mins from here so off we all traipsed. Never bought at a cattle auction before so it was a bit of a learning experience.

There are many folks out there that say you should never buy your animals from an auction & in all honesty they are right. It is a huge risk as we were about to find out! Richard had wanted 2, I said we should get 5 & he then ended up buying 6! Cattle right now are extremely high priced – the market will go bang one of these days but for now the prices are good for those selling but not so good for those buying. We got 5 bull calves & 1 heifer. When we went to load, one of the bull calves was not looking good & we should have left him right there but being soft hearted we agreed to pay half price & took him. He died the next day & I think he passed whatever he had to two others as despite all our efforts we lost another bull calf & the heifer.  A bit annoyed about the heifer as I had wanted to graft her onto Lady Longlashes. Duchess is HUGE & well past weaning age. I want to keep Lady in milk & need a calf on here for when I am not here. Don’t want to put a bull calf on her as they tend to be much rougher on their mamas & could damage her bag.

Here are the three we are left with. These two are drinking off the bottle very well as you can see:

One of these, the naturally polled one (no horns) will be left as a bull so that he can breed Lady & Duchess when he is older.

This little brown & white Holstein Cross calf can’t decided whether he wants to live or not. Sometimes he is very hungry & drinks well from the bottle, other times we have to tube feed him.

Yesterday in the pouring rain we were able to pick up a Jersey bull calf from a local dairy. No picture of him yet as he is in the barn feeling very sorry for himself. He’s healthy but doesn’t appreciate giving up his mama’s milk for the powdered imitation stuff. We’ll get him out with the others tomorrow so that should perk him up. Now we just have to find another heifer calf without breaking the bank here.

Take care,

Liz