Buying Calves

The other day I was offered two  Holstein/Angus cross calves and after some deliberation and research  I have decided to buy them.(Though I will also need to buy more hay for their winter feed).

So today I will drag the stock trailer out to their farm and collect them. One is a heifer and one is a steer. So he will be BobbyT3 and will be raised for beef and the heifer has no name yet. I may breed her to Carlos next year I am not sure yet. Or I may breed her to a mini Angus (in my efforts to create a beef herd of smaller beasts: my farm was a swamp before John’s great grandfather drained it with that big deep ditch and it is soft ground). The heifer is hand raised and tamer which means I can have her AI’d if I choose.   They are both black and very nice looking calves. Born in July and bred by a reputable breeder and have had a good start.

They are both from Dairy show cows crossed with a beef cow to get a low birth weight calf.

These two are still on milk (milk replacer) so I will gently introduce them back to cows milk and if they do alright they can keep drinking milk until I finish milking. The longer they drink milk the better for their weight. Now that I have no visitors I have extra milk which is another reason I took these two calves now instead of in the spring.  The pigs won’t miss a gallon.

I was in the garden with my neighbour yesterday and spied these two Aubergine – in America they are called Egg Plant.  I will make something delicious with them tonight.  Though I am not sure what yet.  But fresh Aubergine in October is a real treat. 

Below is the storm cellar. It is down in the back paddock closer to the creek that is now that deep, deep ditch.  Before our house was built there was another old house down here. Way before anyone can remember. The concrete pathways still exist and this old storm shelter. John thinks that it would have been built as a storm shelter and used as a root cellar. If they are built deep enough they will stay above freezing in an ordinary winter and the old timers, if their own house did not have a cellar,  would pack their tubers  and apples in straw and store them down here.

It has no door now of course and has  had many different uses over the years. Now it will be a pig shelter for the winter.

The calves have been known to go down there too every now and then to get out of the heat of the summer.

The little cows are in this field for another week or so then I will swap them out and bring in four (or maybe six depending on sales) of the Tween pigs pictured at the top of this post for the winter. But the weather is still holding so there is no hurry for winter quarters yet.

I hope you have a lovely day.

celi