Flashback Friday - And the Cows Came Hom

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On a cold and sunny day in 2010, the first cows purchased for the farm were delivered.

Top left - Angus Girl, Top right - Angus Boy (Bubbee) lower left - Jersey Boy, lower right - Jersey Girl

 

There was Jersey Girl and Jersey Boy along with Angus Girl and you guessed it, Angus Boy (a.k.a. Bubbee) – pretty original names, I know.

Our intention was to have these  two pairs of cows breed and once their calves were born, we would have of all the cow’s milk we could possibly want to make butter, cheese and other dairy products. Just an FYI – Angus are beef cows and Jerseys are dairy cows.

Oh, we were so naïve and had no clue what we were doing back when we started. We have yet to get milk from any of the female cows.

Well, to be fair, Jersey Girl and Jersey Boy were sold to a neighboring farm before they were mature enough to breed (or so we thought).  The day that trailer came to pick up Jersey Girl, her udder had dropped which indicated that she was pregnant.

Angus Girl and Angus Boy did breed, but we could never get close enough to Angus Girl to milk her after her first calf was born.  No one told us that Angus cows were so skittish, we learned the hard way … getting kicked by a ton of angry beef on hooves!

Angus Girl has had several calves over the past five years.  The first year, she had Half Calf, the next year she had Little Bit and the third year, she had Sir Loin.  Little Bit has had one calf so far and his name was Ribeye.

Yes, both Ribeye and Sirloin were tagged for processing.

In 2012, Half Calf became pregnant  for the first time and unfortunately died along with her newborn calf just days after giving birth. The short story,  Her Name was Half Calf, which is about this tragic event, can be found on Amazon.

We currently still have Angus Girl and Little Bit, along with Angus Girl's newest calf, Mocha.  Our dairy calves, Chai and Latte were added in the fall of 2014.



More to come in the spring of 2015.