Normal tail position
Tell-tail sign that she has been bred.
Colonel’s Blog, Earthdate 26 June 2023…
Hey Y’all!
Good evening and I hope you had a great Monday! The weather was a bit cooler today than it was yesterday but still hot and dry. Today, I’m going to focus on updates since Friday evening’s blog. First, while I was writing the blog, it would seem that Happy decided to stand for it because by the time we milked Friday evening, she was bred. How can I know if I didn’t see it happen, you might ask. Well, I thought you might ask that so I took a couple of pics to show you. The pic of Black Betty’s rear end and tail is the normal way they stand. Happy’s rear end and tail is how they stand for a few hours after being bred. Notice the way she is holding her tail up and away from her body, that tail is a sign telling us that she was bred…a tell-tail sign! Even before we saw her tail, we knew something had changed because the bull wasn’t interested in Happy anymore and was after Betty. Betty was having nothing to do with him and was consistently running away but he is quite persistent! By Saturday evening, she was more interested in him and no longer running away. When we went out Sunday morning, the bull was back with the beef herd, Betty was by the milk barn, and she was holding her tail away from her body. The same tell-tail sign she was bred. We are considering this a win for the farmers that we were able to actually pull this off and get it done in minimum time. We put the groups together on Thursday late morning, Happy was bred Friday, Betty was bred Saturday night, and the groups were separated again on Sunday. The market was slow Saturday but we saw a few loyal customers and met some new folks that want to buy milk. Saturday afternoon we were busy getting ready for a big farm tour the next day. The tour started Sunday afternoon at 2:00. We had 13 folks out to see the farm and we had to walk instead of drive with that many people. We took about 2 hours to walk about a half mile, stopping to watch and chat about the animals around the farm. The only problem was that it was 95 degrees with a 102 degree heat index and SUNNY. Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves and really enjoyed the smoked pulled pork after the tour. We started with the sheep. Tank and TJ came over to check things out and warily accepted a couple of pets on their nuggets. As we walked on, we called Sheepster, our bottle lamb from last year. She came running and the flock followed her so we got a good view of the flock. We continued to the pig area and stopped in the shade to look at the great job they are doing clearing the woods. We walked a bit more and stood in front of the pigs who were lounging under a big cedar tree. We spent quite a bit of time with the pigs as folks were quite interested in the entire process. Leaving the pigs, we went to see the beef herd and where the past rounds of pigs had cleared the forest. As we walked up, we immediately noticed one of the cows had just had a calf. We watched as the calf stood up for the first time. Everyone was excited to witness it. We cut that section a bit short so we didn’t disturb the new mom as she was getting a bit agitated with all of the people around. By the time we made it to the beef chickens, we only paused for a moment as there was no shade for us and everyone was getting quite hot. As we made it back to the house, the shade on the porch with the ceiling fans felt good and the pulled pork was delicious. Today, we moved the beef herd across the creek and plan for them to be there until Tuesday. We had to give the new guy a ride since he was napping as the herd left. We stayed inside this afternoon and worked on our website and webstore. Whew!
Local Farm Report for 24 & 25 June 2023…
Harvest:
41 Chicken eggs
1 Duck egg
0 Goose eggs
13 Gallons of milk
Cheers!
Psycho & Shelley
Does the Bull get a bonus for his quick "work"? 😂